Here’s the background, from Wikipedia:

In 2006, WTWO aired a controversial 1 minute promotion criticizing WTHI over its weather coverage. The commercial claimed that WTHI’s Doppler radar was inferior to WTWO’s because WTHI’s doppler was located within downtown Terre Haute, thus its “dead zone” was over thousands of residents instead of WTWO’s whose “dead zone” was over a corn field.

The ad also mentioned that the combined experience of WTWO’s weather team was more than that of WTHI’s staff, and that WTHI’s power had multiple points of failure in contrast to WTWO’s. The promotion became a source of amusement on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show because of its use of hyperbole and techniques reminscent of political attack ads.

You can watch WTWO’s promo, and Jon Stewart’s reaction, here.

Now WTWO has produced another attack video — this one targeting Stewart.

Yes, it’s supposed to be funny, we guess — but in the same way that your obnoxious cousin is at Thanksgiving: He’s kidding, but he’s also not kidding.

Apparently the video was made for internal use only, but was leaked to YouTube. Watch it here.

From Financial Times, hat tip to Bill Green:

The internet will this year overtake national newspapers to become the third biggest advertising medium by spend, according to authoritative forecasts.

By the end of 2007, internet advertising will close the gap on regional newspapers, the number two medium, but will still be well short of television, the biggest outlet in the £12bn-a-year media advertising market.

The projection, seen exclusively by the FT, underlines the pace of growth in internet advertising and the challenge to businesses reliant on traditional advertising revenue.

More reason for U.S. newspapers to listen to unhappy customers like Mark.

Technorati tags: Newspapers

Technorati is growing in influence, but is not without its problems. Will they be addressed?

Our guess is you won’t be seeing much criticism of the company among bloggers from Edelman, which has partnered with Technorati, or the mainstream press, which has its own problems right now.

For the moment, Technorati’s issues are at a level where they should be highlighted by bloggers like you, so that Technorati will put aside deal-making long enough to fix its engine.

Mark Cuban, who’s turned his attention to the challenges of the newspaper industry lately, issues pointed advice in a recent post:

Ive spent a lot of time thinking about the Newspaper and Magazine businesses lately. Not because I want to buy a company in either industry. I dont. Im spending the time because Im looking for the best possible ways to promote the movies we distribute and HDNet programming.

Its expensive to advertise movies or TV shows in either newspapers or magazines. Very expensive Where entertainment is traditionally advertised, you guys know you got us, and it shows in your pricing. The pricing in the Movie and TV sections of print media is outrageous.

Which means that every single company in the entertainment business is looking for a way to never ever have to spend a nickel with you again … So its time to buck up. You either squeeze what you can and cry when it happens, or you step up and create cost effective alternatives… [C]ome up with new ideas, or a new version of your resume…

Mark’s right. In fact, his comments remind me of those of a friend of mine — a small-business owner whose company has about 150 employees.

Back in early 2001, my friend was reassessing his strategies for recruiting. After costing it out, and looking at the bang he got for his buck, he moved all his recruitment advertising out of the newspaper and onto Monster.

“I can’t believe that they don’t realize that what they’re offering is no longer competitive,” he told me at the time.

Since then, newspapers have worked very hard at making their classified offerings more competitive — enhancing their online capabilities and adding direct mail to target non-subscribers, among other things. But it took a cratering of classified dollars before newspapers took the hint.

We hope newspapers won’t wait so long to implement new ideas for the rest of their product.

By the way, Mark, you really should buy a newspaper company. That would be an even bigger challenge than turning the Mavs around.

(Image from chrisfoley484)

Technorati tags: Mark

The History Channel’s Memorial Day documentary, Washington the Warrior, features an all-Lithuanian cast of 1,500 re-enactors. This is possible because their scenes feature no dialogue.

Technorati tags: Memorial Day, George Washington