Via Roger Ebert, who Tweeted about this.

Today, our favorite job quitter is “Jenny”–”a girl” who left her job by sending co-workers a series of photos where she uses a whiteboard to insult her boss and expose his fondness for Farmville.

We know that the Steve Slater story is true. But what about Jenny’s story?

Almost certainly made up.

The story showed up this morning on theChive.com, a dude-centric site run by brothers John and Leo Resig, who own a series of photo/humor sites. (That’s Leo on the left.) Before that, the Resigs ran a site called Derober, which features doctored photos of celebrities in their underwear.

And Derober’s moment in the spotlight came back in December 2007, when it made up a story about Donald Trump leaving a $10,000 tip on a $82.27 bill. The story was convincing enough to fool Fox News and the New York Post (both of which are owned by News Corp., which also owns this site).

So Jenny is a fake, too. Right, Leo Resig?

No, Resig says over the phone. “Jenny’s very real.”

Really? Really, Resig says.

He says Jenny is with his brother John at this very moment, and that the three of them are trying to figure out the best way to identify her and tell her story.

Jay Leno wants Jenny on his show, Leo Resig says. “Good Morning America” wants her, too. He’s not sure the best way to proceed, because “we’re trying to be respectful of that girl.”

But don’t worry, Leo says. The brothers plan on identifying Jenny “tomorrow morning around 10 am. We’re not exactly sure who or how we’re going to release it. Obviously it will be on thechive.com as well.”

Okay. But you’re the same guys who gave us the Donald Trump story, and that was fake. Is this one different?

Pause. “Good homework. That was a good time.”

Ah. So is Jenny’s story real, then? “This one is to be determined. People are kind of making up their own stories.”

We go on this vein for a bit. Since Leo won’t tell me the story is real, and the Trump story definitely wasn’t, I’ll assume that this one is make-believe, too. “If you want to assume that, you can. We have a track record.”

True!

Another thing about the Resigs that is true: Their site has a real audience.

The brothers claim their four related sites–theChive, theBerry, theBrigade and theThrottle–gather a monthly audience of 5.6 million uniques. And comscore (SCOR) says theChive, the only site big enough to register on its radar, has 1.3 million uniques. Given the vagaries of Internet measurement–the brothers say their data comes from Google (GOOG) Analytics–it’s possible that their numbers are at least truthy.

So good for the brothers, I guess, for proving yet again that people will believe anything they see on the Internet.

But Jay Leno’s bookers may want to hold off.

UPDATE: After I published my story, Leo Resig emailed this comment, which he says he wants attributed to both brothers (I double-checked with him before I published): “Although we like Jack Daniels whiskey, we prefer Jim Beam because bourbon is better.”

The Resig brothers also take credit for a more recent prank, this one published on TheChive itself in 2009. From the site’s “about” page:

theCHIVE is responsible for the Hoax that a teenage girl accidentally texted her dad she lost her virginity on the beach. The internet meme spread like wildfire on the internet and was discussed (as a true story) on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The View, The Today Show, Chelsea Lately, and Brietbart TV. See the clips here:

Mr. O’Brien’s yet-to-be titled show will debut in November, and run four nights a week at 11 p.m. Eastern time.

The new show is a costly gamble for TBS, a comedy network owned by Time Warner Inc.’s (TWX) Atlanta-based Turner Broadcasting.

Mr. O’Brien agreed to leave NBC in January after the network decided to abandon its low-rated experiment to put “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno in prime-time.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The golf star apologized Friday for his infidelity and the ensuing sex scandal, and according to Zeta Interactive, a New York digital-marketing firm that measures online reputations, that helped boost his ratings.

As of 2:30 p.m. ET, about three hours after his televised press conference, the positive rating for Mr. Woods had increased to 68 percent, up from 51 percent, Thursday morning.

His remarks, which included his admission that he cheated and an apology for “irresponsible and selfish behavior,” lifted him above other celebrities with positive ratings in the 50s, such as Michael Vick (55 percent) and Lindsay Lohan (52 percent). He’s now ahead of David Letterman (61 percent) and Jay Leno (57 percent).

Read the rest of this post on the original site

A little odd, given that a couple of days ago, the network was offering every single “Tonight Show” episode O’Brien had taped on NBC.com. But then again, everything about this story has been odd. NBC declined to comment.

NBC–at least, I’m assuming it’s NBC–has also been aggressive about taking down Conan episodes from Google’s (GOOG) YouTube. So here’s a legally sanctioned clip from CBS (CBS) employee David Letterman discussing the whole affair:

A minor UPDATE: A sharp-eyed commenter at Gawker notes that NBC hasn’t completely excised O’Brien from its site yet. It is still running a blog for the “Horny Manatee”, a long-running bit on the show. Note, in screenshot below, the reference to the now-defunct nbc.com/conan, the “official online home of all things Conan” (click image to enlarge):

Less surprising is news that O’Brien’s image has been scrubbed, Soviet-style, from NBC’s 30 Rock headquarters.

Especially with numbers like these: GE says NBCU’s Q4 revenue dropped four percent, to $4.3 billion, and operating profit declined 30 percent, to $602 million.

Were Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien’s ratings really that bad? Of course not.

NBC’s broadcast revenue was down 1.5 percent, but that was balanced by growth in the company’s cable properties, which were up eight percent. And not that I’m a Jeff Zucker apologist, but when pundits are castigating him for his late-night debacle, they really ought to point out that some parts of the company–the parts that Comcast wants, not coincidentally–have grown considerably during Zucker’s tenure.

In any case, GE blames this quarter’s decline on Hollywood: Its movie division has been low on box office hits, and its DVD group, like most other studios, has been sucking wind.

Here’s GE’s brief description of its business in charticle form (click to enlarge). Note the line about slow recovery in Web ads:

And here’s the best “screw you, NBC” clip I’ve seen from Conan this week. Which, as many Web commenters have noted, is not available on NBC’s Web site or via Hulu. But given that NBC has been fairly vigilant about pulling down unauthorized clips it doesn’t want on Google’s (GOOG) YouTube, the network can’t be that upset about this one, which you can find all over the site:

Anyway, here is the Craigslist ad that Conan O’Brien took out last night to put his “barely used talk show” up for sale. The ad keeps popping on and off of Craigslist, but here’s a screengrab (click to enlarge).

Meanwhile, here are the two best late-night video clips I’ve seen so far–again, neither of which I saw on TV:

Jimmy Kimmel making Jay Leno and his audience very uncomfortable (this gets good around the 2:40 mark, if you define “good” as “something that makes everybody a little bit queasy,” which I’m fine with).

And CBS’s (CBS) Craig Ferguson putting all of this in proper perspective:

Oh, it goes from bad to worse and to much, much funnier.

Here are a few new online videos about NBC’s best drama in years: The wrestling over its late-night lineup.

It looks like “The Tonight Show” host Conan O’Brien will be gone soon, chin-checked out by former host Jay Leno, whose 10 pm show on the GE (GE)–and soon to be Comcast (CMCSA)–broadcast television network bit.

But O’Brien is biting back harder, as you will see, along with “The Late Show” legend David Letterman on CBS (CBS), who is moving into viciously hysterical routines against Leno, whom he seems to dislike.

Here are some of their latest videos:

[Photo courtesy of Mike Mitchell]

The mess that NBC has created around its late-night talk shows continues to benefit comic online videos.

While Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien have been using their fight as joke fodder over at NBC–which is owned by GE (GE) but was just bought by Comcast (CMCSA)–I think the best stuff has been coming from David Letterman of “The Late Show.”

And, in fact, the CBS (CBS) late-night talk show legend’s analysis of the situation–“Here’s the deal. Anytime there’s a big stink like this, and, believe me, here hasn’t been a big stink like this in years, it’s money. Don’t kid yourselves, it’s all about money”–was spot on and funny too.

Broadcast television networks execs have always been a great foil for Letterman and this scandal is the gift that keeps on giving.

Here’s a bunch of clips online now:

TOP TEN

OPENING MONOLOGUE

ANALYSIS

LENO VICTIMS UNIT

So says JP Morgan’s (JPM) Imran Khan. He predicts that Jeff Zucker’s screwup is good news for Jeff Bewkes since Time Warner makes a lot of “scripted programming,” and that’s what NBC will need to replace Leno at 10 pm.

The whole point of moving Leno to 10 pm, recall, was to save money on “scripted programming”–what you and I call “shows that aren’t reality shows.”

But it’s not as if NBC stopped running scripted shows altogether, and at max, the network is going to need an additional five hours a week. Khan says this will represent “incremental spending” for Time Warner (TWX), but it’s not as if NBC’s pressure to save on programming costs is going to go away. And even if the network buys all of five of those hours from Time Warner, it’s hard to see how that does much for a company that generated revenue of $6.3 billion last quarter (not counting AOL).

Khan also thinks the same logic means bad news for Disney (DIS) and News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox because increased demand for nonreality shows “could result in higher talent and production costs.”

Again, this seems like a stretch: It seems like the lesson to draw from all this isn’t that expensive programming is good, but that bad programming is bad.

And as ad dollars inevitably leach out from TV to the Web, the pressure on all the networks will be to keep their viewers’ eyeballs while spending less on content. The real winners will be the ones who figure out how to make good stuff cheaply.

Yesterday, BoomTown posted on the mess created by NBC over its late-night talk show wrangling.

The fracas involves Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien and seemingly every dude who sits behind a desk and kisses up to celebrities for a living at the GE (GE) television network, which was just bought by Comcast (CMCSA).

As I noted: “I do love the roundelay of online videos this Tinseltown mess has created.”

And here are more, from Leno, who seems really irked by the meltdown that has tarnished his reputation, although NBC is also flacking the clip.

Also below Leno is daytime talk show queen Ellen DeGeneres, who mixed the NBC stew in with Simon Cowell announcing that he is leaving “American Idol” right before she arrives as a judge.

The laughter through the tears keeps on coming:

LENO

DEGENERES

But TV executives and advertisers haven’t caught up with you. Advertisers still pay less for a cable TV eyeball than for one watching something from a broadcaster. And programmers still cling to the belief that a broadcast TV viewer has different habits from someone watching cable.

Makes no sense, but there’s a lot about old media that doesn’t make sense and that takes a long time to change. Worth remembering as you watch ad dollars trickle ever so slowly to the Web.

Still, maybe this will help the industry figure it out. Look what happened when GE’s (GE) NBC replaced its 10 pm dramas with Jay Leno. For some reason, executives at CBS (CBS) and Disney’s (DIS) ABC figured viewers who liked to watch stuff like “ER” or even “Southland” would automatically move over to their offerings.

But as Pali Capital’s Rich Greenfield (registration required) points out, citing data from MediaLife, NBC’s viewers didn’t move to other broadcasters when they didn’t like what they saw at 10 pm. They went to the cable guys:

The cable network original programming push continues to gain momentum, with the notable increase in overall cable network ratings at 10 pm so far this TV season likely leading to even more significant programming investment in the year ahead–cannot be viewed positively for broadcast networks as higher quality original cable programming will drive continued viewer fragmentation.

While originally we expected networks such as TNT (TWX) and F/X (NWSA) to be the prime beneficiaries of the Leno move on NBC as they focus on 10pm dramas similar stylistically to what NBC used to air at 10pm, we believe the impact has been quite fragmented, helping a wide array of cable networks that air original programming at 10pm (including networks owned by DIS, DISCA, SNI, VIA/B).

And here, to underscore the point quite nicely, is broadcast’s Jay Leno interviewing the cast of cable’s “Jersey Shore,” the MTV show that, for better or worse, is one of this year’s big hits:

(Quasi-apology for making this the second “Jersey Shore” clip on All Things D today. But then again, The Situation is The Situation.)

Last night, onstage at Lincoln Center in Manhattan, my most excellent partner, Walt Mossberg, interviewed well-known techno musician Moby about music and entertainment in the digital age.

The wide-ranging talk was part of an ongoing cultural festival series organized by The Wall Street Journal, called Summer Scoops Live.

Here are three video clips from the event:

If you prefer to read, here is a live blog that Michelle Kung did of the event to enjoy:

7:30 p.m.–Out of the steaming heat and into the cool, air-conditioned confines of Lincoln Center’s Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse.

7:39 p.m.–The lights dim and Moby and Mossberg make their entrances. Moby slinks down in his chair (“Am I greasy, or is it the chair?”) just before WSJ culture editor Christopher John Farley introduces the pair.

7:43 p.m.–Mossberg plugs his son, who’s in a band, before asking Moby–whose real name is Richard Melville Hall–if he is really related to “Moby Dick” author Herman Melville. Moby replies that that is what his parents have always told him and explains the origins of his moniker: “When I was 11 minutes old, my parents looked at me and I was this little grub of a baby and my mother said, Richard Melville Hall is a very grown up name, and my father said jokingly, let’s call him ‘Moby.’ All these years later, I still have this name I’ve have from infancy.”

7:46 p.m.–Mossberg asks Moby, in between jokes about being both being bald-ish, about the difference between “Play” and his new album, “Wait for Me.” Moby begins by talking about how the success of “Play” completely surprised him, because he was considered a “has been” by the time the album was originally released in the early 1990s and that Rolling Stone refused to review the album. His success with the album also confused him, because he was unsure of his next step–was he supposed to listen to the label now? To the fans? To himself?

“Wait for Me,” his ninth studio album, was designed as a return to simplicity, and created with old instruments–many of which were purchased on eBay–in his bedroom in Manhattan. When Mossberg asks Moby to clarity what he means by “his bedroom,” the musicians lays out out his floorplan–he lives in a two-bedroom apartment on Mott Street and with a small space (“two people starts to feel claustrophobic”) set aside for his music work.

7:52 p.m.–Moby uses a Mossberg question as an excuse to slam Jay Leno, whom he calls the “least prepared interviewer.” He fakes a Leno voice, and mock interviews: “So Moby, you have a new record. Tell me about it.” Mossberg interjects, “So I have a low bar?” to the delight of the crowd.

7:53 p.m.–Mossberg asks Moby how he used technology in “Wait for Me.” Moby begins by explaining that while he loves technology, he don’t fetishize it like some of his friends. “I have an 18″ flat screen TV. A bigger screen doesn’t make TV any better. ‘Family Guy’ is still funny on a little TV. If it works and doesn’t cause me undue stress, I love it.’

7:55 p.m.–Moby launches into an explanation of what Pro Tools and plugins are, and how thanks to this nifty recording/mixing operating system, he can take prerecorded “notes” that have been recorded abroad, say, in places like Vienna, and then recreate a 60-piece orchestra on his keyboard.

7:59 p.m.–On to issues of intellectual property. Moby says: “I don’t mind when people pirate my music–if you want to steal my music, more power to you.” Mossberg immediately asks, “Why?” And he deadpans, “Deep-seated emotional issues.” He then goes on to explain that personally, he’s so honored that people want to listen to his music, he doesn’t want to restrict access to it. “I don’t have alimony, I don’t need insulin…I don’t have crystal meth problems.” Thus, he personally doesn’t mind, but he can only speak for himself. But to clarify, he does want you to buy his album so his friends at the label are happy.

8:04 p.m.–Mossberg and Moby discuss the RIAA’s decision to sue customers. Moby says that it’s never been cheaper to make music, videos, and promote albums. EMI, he thinks, broke even. So why are they alienating their customers?

8:06 p.m.–Blind item alert! Moby says that a few years ago, he was talking to a record label head, and when he asked the top honcho about their iTunes plan for their biggest star’s newest album, he was told, oh, we’re going to wait a couple months.

Moby then launches into philosophy mode and brings up the is/ought fallacy to illustrate his point, noting that the current music model “underpins the failure of major labels–they think, it used to be this way, so it ought to be this way.” Their ethos is, “Please go away. Make the future die.” Mossberg suggests he write a song/album with that title. Moby quips back with “Young People Suck” as a potential label-inspired tune.

8:12 p.m.–Moby adds a qualifier to his comments, touting Mute, his own record label. “Mute is wonderful, and they care about music–it’s the big major labels who have been egregiously bad stewards of music. It’s hard to feel bad for them when they’ve brought us some of the worst music ever created.” He then gets in a dig at Lars Ulrich of Metallica, saying that if he needs a “fur-lined walking humidor,” that’s him.

8:15 p.m.–Moby asks the audience if he can get pedantic for a moment. They cheer their assent. He then launches into a story about the early days of the Beatles, a band that got “lucky” because everything they did was in mono. “The first ‘Meet the Beatles’ was recorded in four hours. They played the songs and it was done.” He explains how this is not possible anymore.

8:18 p.m.–Yay! Moving on to a discussion about Auto-Tune, which “enables anyone to fake perfect pitch.” Moby declines to name names in his anecdotes, because he has enough feuds already, but singles out Cher’s “I Believe” as the first of the supremely auto-tuned songs, and mourns how kids can’t recognize real singing anymore. Next, a discussion of playback, aka the technology that failed Ashlee Simpson when she was reduced to her now infamous hoedown on “Saturday Night Live.”

8:23 p.m.–Memory lane for Mossberg. He recalls seeing the Supremes, and Simon & Garfunkel in the ’60s for $3/ticket in a gym, and how the concerts back then used to sound just like the album. But everything is much more complicated now.

8:25 p.m.–Moby talks about how he plays to bigger crowds in Europe, and how he can enjoy the concert experience. Playing in front of a big crowd, he says, with big production values, is the musician’s equivalent of playing the big penis card.

8:28 p.m.–Mossberg asks: When you make music, do you have to consider the fact that it’s going to be listened to on [Apple] iPods and [Microsoft] Zunes? Moby says sadly yes, and tells a story about how super-processed music works on the subway, because the noise of the L train doesn’t interfere with, say, a song by Rihanna, but the subtleties of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” will get lost.

8:32 p.m.–Mossberg moves on to playing a snippet of the song “Pale Horses” from “Wait for Me” because we’re running late, and Moby says he has to pee–”Syphilis is a demanding mistress.” Mossberg: “Bill Gates doesn’t say that to me…I can’t believe I’m defending Microsoft.” Moby: “I’m just saying the Zune is clumsy as hell.” [For those lacking the implied sarcasm, Moby clarifies later on that he does not, in fact, have syphilis.]

Moby on “Pale Horses” and many of his other songs: 80% of the work is done in a couple days, but it’s the finishing stuff that is what really takes a really long time. To get the job done, he holes himself with the music–”Hopefully, a more benign version of Ted Kaczynski during the creative process.”

8:40 p.m.–Audience Q&A time. Moby is asked about his licensing deals, and says he doesn’t license music anymore, because he’s sick of being the whipping boy for the process. Which is ironic, because everyone’s selling out now. He adds that he initially licensed the music for “Play,” because it allowed more people to hear the album.

8:46 p.m.–Moby interrupts a question-asker to comment on how he wishes the stage were against the left window like a previous panel he was on, so everyone could get a glimpse of the view. The questioner then proceeds to take out a Chilean flag and hold it up before asking Moby if there’s relationship between his music and the cosmos. The short answer? Yes.

8:51 p.m.–Mossberg sums up the evening and offers kudos to Moby for sharing his time and process.

8:52 p.m.–Moby plugs a new tour date in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. And good night everybody!

And, here is a rather unusual cartoon video of Moby being interviewed by a dog that the Journal did:

And, here is a video of Moby last week, talking about the digital impact of the music, in an interview on the Leonard Lopate radio show on WNYC:

Finally, here is a Q&A that Walt did with Flavorpill’s Caroline Stanley about a range of tech trends, as a preview to the event.

[Moby photo credit: AFP/Getty]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090811/mossberg-does-moby/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20090424/crunch-time-for-tv-upfront-sales-could-be-down-15/ http://allthingsd.com/20090424/crunch-time-for-tv-upfront-sales-could-be-down-15/#comments Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:09:18 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=6666 Broadcast TV’s “upfront” season–the odd tradition whereby the networks try to get advertisers to buy much of their inventory in advance for the coming year–doesn’t start till next month. But once it does, it’s likely to be grim.

That’s the prediction from Barclays Capital’s Anthony DiClemente, who says that a combination of factors–first and foremost, a lousy economy–will force the networks to sell less advertising, at lower prices, than they have for quite some time. Translation: DiClemente sees a 15 percent drop in upfront sales this year–the first double-digit drop for the networks since 2002.

CBS (CBS) will be in the least vulnerable position since it has the strongest ratings, DiClemente says, and will see revenue drop 10 percent. But GE’s (GE) NBC, the ratings laggard, will see dollars drop by nearly 20 percent; the fact that it’s stripping out five hours of network programming and replacing it with Jay Leno (who will presumably be OK after his hospitalization) doesn’t help. Here’s his network-by-network breakdown (click table to enlarge):

One impact for Web video sites like Hulu, the joint venture between NBC, News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox, and very soon, Disney’s (DIS) ABC: DiClemente figures that the networks will start throwing in Web ads as sweeteners for broadcast buys, which should push down ad rates for Web video in general.

The “buy”-a-“real”-ad-get-a-Web-ad-for-free sales pitch is one that media conglomerates have been moving away from in recent years, but all bets are off right now. Big Media will sacrifice Web pricing in order to shore up offline sales, which are still much more important.

The good news: The upfronts are increasingly less important to the networks’ health and even less so for their corporate parents (click table to enlarge):

And if you’re a very optimistic network executive, you can hold out hope that the economy rebounds later on this year and the ads you didn’t sell this spring become much more valuable in the fall. Could happen, right?

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090424/crunch-time-for-tv-upfront-sales-could-be-down-15/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20081217/why-youre-getting-jay-leno-in-prime-time-nbc-profits-shrank-by-1-billion-in-three-years/ http://allthingsd.com/20081217/why-youre-getting-jay-leno-in-prime-time-nbc-profits-shrank-by-1-billion-in-three-years/#comments Wed, 17 Dec 2008 11:00:49 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=2186 Want to know why NBC is giving up on five hours a week of prime-time programming and replacing it with Jay Leno? Take a look at this chart, pulled out of parent company GE’s investor presentation Tuesday.

To spell it out: Profits at NBC’s broadcast business–the NBC network along with revenue from local stations the network owns, and revenue from other stations that carry its programming–shrank from $1.4 billion in 2005 to $400 million this year.

That’s a billion dollars of profit that disappeared in three years (or a compound annual growth rate of negative 33 percent, if you like your stats served that way).

Bear in mind that GE (GE) is actually boasting here: It’s using the chart to pat itself on the back for making itself less dependent on broadcast advertising and revenue. Still, it’s always disconcerting to see a billion dollars disappear from the books, no matter how big and how well-positioned you are.

You can blame some of that loss on the fact that NBC has tumbled in the ratings and has never replaced the hits it had in the days of “Seinfeld,” and later, “Friends.”

But hits are cyclical: Wait around long enough, and you end up airing something that works. If NBC thought that hits would be enough to claw back some of that billion, CEO Jeff Zucker wouldn’t be conceding five valuable hours to Jay Leno, who costs less to air than the shows he’s replacing, but has less upside potential.

Instead, Zucker seems to be saying that broadcast TV is a big but shrinking business, and that he’s not going to fight that trend. Hard to argue with the numbers.

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