Dove’s real women – slightly overweight, surgically un-augmented – have absolutely, positively not been retouched.

Unilever, parent company of Dove, Ogilvy & Mather, the creative agency that devised the game-changing Campaign for Real Beauty, and photographer Annie Leibovitz, who took the pictures, all chimed in with statements of denial today.

The controversy was kicked off by a New Yorker profile of Pascal Dangin, the celebrity retoucher of New York’s Box Studios, who works with Leibovitz. Writer Lauren Collins quoted Dangin saying he retouched pictures in the Dove ads, a campaign that has sold millions of crates of body lotion and anti-wrinkle cream by advocating normalizing ...Read More

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CBS News almost had its own “Dewey Beats Truman” moment during the Indiana primary Tuesday night.

The network went out on a considerable limb, calling Indiana for Hillary Clinton a few minutes after 8 p.m.

Evening News anchor Katie Couric delivered the prediction during the opening minutes of NCIS.

But as the night wore on and more precincts reported in Barack Obama’s favor, Clinton’s lead became decidedly thin. The on-screen graphics at CNN, MSNBC and Fox News declared the contest “too close to call.”

Kathy Frankovic, director of surveys at CBS News, ...Read More

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Hillary Clinton’s appearance on Sunday’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos has been psychoanalyzed as much for the fraught past history between the two protagonists as for some questionable network staging decisions that left the show's host at a clear disadvantage.

 

Stephanopoulos launched the hour with an uncharacteristic full disclosure that he had worked for President Clinton from 1991-96. When interviewing either of the Clintons in the past, there were no such disclaimers. So the decision to address his resume at the top was probably an effort to deflect or contextualize jabs like the one Hillary threw at him Sunday.

 

After he tried repeatedly to get her to admi...Read More

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 Discovery Channel’s new theme song/brand spot is pretty damn catchy (see below), and the network knows it. Beginning today Discovery will allow visitors to Discovery’s mobile site to download parts of the song as a free ringtone.

 

This, my friends, is viral marketing. Now granted, maybe having the “boom-de-yada” chorus popping up during a play or on the train might not be the sort of publicity the network wants, but the positives of having the song out there surely outweigh any potential pitfalls.

 

Did I mention it’s catchy?

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I was watching the incredible John Oliver's brilliant piece on Fox News on The Daily Show the other day and actively wondering -- how do they find all of this footage? Oliver's piece started off by making fun of a Fox News documentary on the Bush presidency, but ended up just making fun of Fox News as an entity -- not new ground, certainly, but Oliver did a highly effective job of it.

What made the piece so effective was all the back-and-forth footage The Daily Show unearthed. At one point, the Fox News pundits were going off on how Bill Clinton's dodging of a subpoena was anti-American, but later footage showed them totally supporting George W. Bush doing pret...Read More

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Animal Planet is aiming to be top dog in marketing for its first ever competition reality show, Groomer Has It, which was recently greenlighted to a second season. 

The show, hosted by former Queer Eye Fab Fiver Jai Rodriguez, pits 12 dog groomers against each other to find the best in show. It premiered April 12 and the network is pushing marketing in the hopes that it grows viewing throughout the season. 

Fun tactics include partnering with doggie boutiques around the country, which agreed to give out show-touting fliers with purchases (the co...Read More

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I knew this day would come. One day, some network would give the green light to a show, most likely a reality show,which would take the prize as the worst show ever created.

 

Today, G4 announced a new show that has to be considered a front-runner for that title. Without further ado, I present to you, dear readers, Hurl!

 

LOS ANGELES, April 29, 2008 — G4 is taking competitive eating competitions to the next level with a new series that combines speed-eating with intense physical challenges. In each episode, five brave contestants attempt to consume the largest quantity of foo...Read More

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While at the NFL Draft Saturday I had the chance to speak to Charles Coplin, VP of programming for NFL Network. I asked Coplin what went into the network’s draft coverage, how it stacks up against other NFL events, and what the results of the draft could mean for NFL Network programming going forward, among other things.

Q: How have you been preparing for the network’s draft coverage?

Coplin: “We’ve been covering this thing for four months, but in terms of today, we went on the air at 11 a.m. with a four hour pregame show, we’re covering everything that moves at every angle, we’re in five different locations, we’re ready when things happen today, to either go as scripted or call an audible if things go a different direction.”

Q: From a production standpoint, what goes into producing an ...Read More

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New York- The 2008 NFL Draft is well under way. Here in Radio City Music Hall the NFL Network and ESPN have erected sets where fans would normally be paying big bucks to see the Christmas Spectacular. Both channels are on two extremely large screens above either side of the stage, fans and reporters alike have portable radios allowing them to listen to the feeds from the channels.

Oh, and the fans? They are going crazy. The Jets and Giants supporters rule the room, exemplified by the enormous cheers anytime either team is mentioned, and the boos directed at the New England Patriots and their fans who made the trek to enemy territory. The Philadelphia Eagles also have a strong showing....Read More

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I still think it’s pure freakin' genius that you can buy this t-shirt through NBC's Web site. (If you don't feel like clicking, it's a MILF Island shirt.) And I'm still waiting for Ben Silverman to greenlight the show and then force workaholic Tina Fey to write it.

However, since I posted this I've had a couple of conversations with editors who brought up one major point: Is this something a major network should be doing? (One editor also wondered if the shirts would be available in children's sizes, but apparently small is as small as they go.)

In case you aren't pop-culture literate, MILF stands for Mothers I'd Like to F**K. The phrase was introduced in the mov...Read More

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So by now you may have heard that CNN is launching a promotional campaign wherein visitors to CNN.com can click selected video headlines, and buy said headlines on a T shirt.

 

You may also have seen a URL hack on sites such as Gawker, showing how anyone can tweak the URL to create a custom tee with a headline of their choosing (see the link).

...Read More

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Can we all just take a breath?

The finger-wagging outrage over ABC’s debate on Wednesday is a bit over-wrought.

“Shoddy” and “Despicable” – The Washington Post

A “Train Wreck” – The Philadelphia Daily News

“Petty” and “Shallow” – The Atlantic

“Embarrassing” and “Shameful” – The Huffington Post

ABCNews.com has been inundated with thousands of angry e-mails from viewers upset over what many perceive as an overwhelming amount of below-the-belt questions directed at Sen. Barac...Read More

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