Today MSNBC announced that it’ll be dropping the simulcast of his radio show. CBS said that it is still sticking to the two-week suspension. People back at the network were starting to feel pressure from two top advertisers: GM and American Express, which added to the list of concerned companies such as Staples and P&G.

From MSNBC:

Effective immediately, MSNBC will no longer simulcast the “Imus in the Morning” radio program. This decision comes as a result of an ongoing review process, which initially included the announcement of a suspension. It also takes into account many conversations with our own employees. What matters to us most is that the men and women of NBC Universal have confidence in the values we have set for this company. This is the only decision that makes that possible. Once again, we apologize to the women of the Rutgers basketball team and to our viewers. We deeply regret the pain this incident has caused.

No tears from us.

1. Take responsibility not just for your own words, but for the comments you allow on your blog.
2. Label your tolerance level for abusive comments.
3. Consider eliminating anonymous comments.
4. Ignore the trolls.
5. Take the conversation offline, and talk directly, or find an intermediary who can do so.
6. If you know someone who is behaving badly, tell them so.
7. Don’t say anything online that you wouldn’t say in person.

This comes in the wake of Kathy Sierra’s disclosure of what’s been going on over at her blog recently.

We will be adhering to these standards here at PRpulp and encourage you and your organizations to do the same.

Papa Jobs’ love letter must’ve had an influence on the good people over at EMI.

Yesterday, The New York Times reported that EMI will no longer be deploying DRM (digital rights management) on the music files that it sells via iTunes. The trade-off? $.30/song more.

The issue of DRM has been one of the most hotly debated topics in the music industry since it sparked on to the scene by Napster and other peer-to-peer MP3-sharing systems.

Today there are several different approaches that music labels use to try and prevent others from mooching off the guy next door’s wad of tunes in his iPod. Sony failed miserably, some prevent use on other devices all together, others can be cracked in seconds.

So as the RIAA is out there trying to stop students from swapping music around at Universities, today’s announcement is somewhat of an admission of defeat.

The math probably went something like: we know x% of people who get access to a music file are going to swap it with an average of x.xx people over a certain period (factoring in those who purchase a file may have different swapping ethical standards), so the premium that we could charge ($.30 in this case, plus they’re offered at higher sound quality) could actually create incremental demand from those who want to legitimize his/her right to swap, and make it work such that it offsets assumed losses from those who won’t buy the song now with those who won’t buy because of the higher price actually allows EMI to break even or make even more money than the status quo.

From the article:

Mr. Nicoli said early market tests showed EMI that consumers widely preferred to buy songs without copy protection, even at a higher cost. Unrestricted tracks outsold the others at a rate of 10 to one, he said.

Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, who shared the stage with Mr. Nicoli for the announcement, predicted that half of the songs available on iTunes would be sold without restrictions by the end of the year. None of the other three major record labels, which with EMI account for 70 percent of songs sold today, have said how they might react.

But then again, we’re just PR dudes who like music.

If you have a young one, or otherwise have had to endure the awkward silence of Dora, then you need to check out this spoof that aired recently on SNL.

If nothing else, it’s a Monday reminder that it’s okay to poke fun at yourself – it may even help strengthen your brand image with fringe publics.

For all of Airbus’ woes, today is the day they seemed to all melt away – if for only that moment when the 550+ passenger plane touched down on U.S. soil for the first time.

The company has been plagued by delays that triggered the cancellation of several orders that add up to more than $3.3 billion in costs to the company according to The New York Times.

Today, however, it doesn’t seem to matter. The media have been abuzz with the plane’s massive body. “Flying on football field-length wings, she’s as tall as a seven-story building, roomy enough to fit 70 vehicles on its wings, as heavy as 500 Volkswagen Golfs and big enough to carry 35 million ping pong balls” they scribed. Enough soundbytes to ground a, well, nevermind…

Aside from the cool pictures, the tale isn’t smooth sailing at all. No American airline has purchased a single $319 million A380 and none has any intent to do so. Thousands have been laid off by the public/private Euro partnership and a CEO has been ousted. Airports have scrambled to make accommodations for the monstrosity with taxiways widened, runways realigned, and doubledecker jetways installed. We’ll sit tight too – waiting to jump to any conclusions on the argument that more passengers on fewer flights is a good thing until we get a sense of how much carbon this puppy spits out per passenger mile versus other aircraft.

In lieu of any hard data at hand right now (and a lack of brain cells to care that much), we’ll play along and let the jet enjoy its media tour on the two coast with a pointless flight around Manhattan ooh and aah onlookers who question physics just one more time.

Meanwhile, if you want to assemble one yourself, here’s how:

Via every media outlet under the sun.

Viacom, the parent company of MTV and Comedy Central, sued Google and YouTube in federal court today, citing “massive intentional copyright infringement.”
Skip to next paragraph

Viacom, which has feuded publicly with YouTube and its parent Google about the unauthorized posting of its programming online, said it was seeking more than $1 billion in damages. Viacom’s suit is the most aggressive move so far by an old-line media company against the highly popular but legally questionable practice of posting copyrighted media content online.

…

In a statement, Viacom accused the video-sharing Web site of “exploiting the devotion of fans to others’ creative work in order to enrich itself.” It added: “There is no question that YouTube and Google are continuing to take the fruit of our efforts without permission and destroying enormous value in the process.”

Via NYT.

Over time and with greater attention to the media, picking up on this starts to become a sort of PR sixth sense. Tune in to FOX News and you can’t go five minutes without starting to get the itch.

In more respectable outlets and across different types of paid and unpaid media, however, it’s a bit harder to notice. Throw in a mixture of distractions like photos or slick graphic design to woo your eyes over and it’s even harder to notice what’s not there.

That’s what happened this weekend when we glazed over XM’s full page ad in the NYT.

The piece was an open letter in the front section touting some XM customer promises. They included:

• You’ll continue to get great programming – and the choice to get it from Sirius too.
• Existing programming won’t be interrupted.
• You can expect to receive the same service you’ve been getting.

While media idols like Mel Karmazin battle it out with the FCC to try and convince the committee that the satellite brothers complete with terrestrial radio, customers are more concerned about whether or not their subscription fees are going to go up. Not whether or not we’re going to loose Oprah & Friends in the deal.

Unfortunately the advertorial team at XM didn’t think it was worth mentioning or committing to in this bit of information in the piece. That’s okay, later in the Times was an editorial piece that touched on just that.

As far as price is concerned, Mr. Karmazin made it plain to the House committee that he would be willing to agree to a price cap for the combined service to seal the deal. The pitch is that raising prices isn’t really feasible anyway because most of what satellite radio is competing with out there is free — particularly on the radio.

ONCE more, this seems slightly at odds with statements that Mr. Karmazin made only a few months ago, Jonathan A. Jacoby, a Banc of America Securities analyst, wrote last week in a report. At an investor conference in December, Mr. Jacoby said, Mr. Karmazin talked up the potential for raising prices beyond the $12.95 a month most people pay now.

A click over to Sirius shows that they’re more interested in helping customers understand that their current radio will not become obsolete when and if the merger goes through.

While this is more-or-less an advertorial and Web communications example, the same holds true for pure editorials produced as a result of media relations.

Keep an eye out for what’s not there – it’s often the most important part of the story.

We got a kick out of Jon Fine’s recent piece.

In the piece about citizen ads, he lauds several clichés and we thought we’d repost in agreement.

To start, he shortens “‘consumer-generated advertising’ and ‘consumer-generated marketing,’ down to ‘citizen advertising’ and ‘citizen marketing.’”

Then there’s:

• engagement, interacting with the brand
• community
• authentic
• breaking through the clutter

We’ll add Web 2.0, social-based, and viral to the list.

Sometimes it’s hard to hold back on when you’re surrounded by nightschoolin’ MBA candidates who cite Peter Drucker in meetings to not try and squeak in the latest term to explain an idea. After all, you’re trying to stay on the cutting edge, right?

With experience comes wisdom, but in its absence, hold back. Or find and use tools like Jargon Finder to help you keep your feet on the ground.

This just in:

XM Satellite Radio (NASDAQ: XMSR) and SIRIUS Satellite Radio (NASDAQ: SIRI) today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement, under which the companies will be combined in a tax-free, all-stock merger of equals with a combined enterprise value of approximately $13 billion, which includes net debt of approximately $1.6 billion.

…

The combination creates a nationwide audio entertainment provider with combined 2006 revenues of approximately $1.5 billion based on analysts’ consensus estimates. Today the companies have approximately 14 million combined subscribers.

Source: XM Radio

What does this mean to all of us satellite radio subscribers? Howard just got a whole lot richer.

Thanks for the tip, Jess!

It was a day to sit back and cozy up on a snowy Valentine’s day to watch reporters on your local news station make fools of themselves. There was the report from the manager at highway department, audio chat with the state police to check in on accidents, interviews with motorists brave enough to venture out to the gas station, the live spot from the snow bank, and full team coverage analyzing the molecular structure of each and every snowflake to make its way to the ground. Overly predicable and reason enough to want to perform a lobotomy on yourself.

In all this, however, there was a moment of realization that times have changed and some communications have improved. We used to wake up at 6 in the morning to dial-in to the a.m. radio listening intently to the roll-call that turns a day of misery into a day of joy for school kids. After the radio, we turned to the TV where stations started to publish closings on lower thirds. Then they started doing them three-a-time, speeding up the transition rate as more and more piled-on. Now, we head straight to the Internet to get the information we need instantaneously. Click on the big red link for school closings and delays, click on the first letter of your school, and voila!

What’s next? We’ll place our bets on text messaging notifications arriving into students’ cell phones so that they know immediately when a closing/late opening decision has been made.

Oops! Too late.

Then maybe it’s a video podcast from the superintendent. Whatever it is, it’s still the same message delivered in a different, better way.