Who will get your attention today -- Anderson Cooper and Angelina Jolie, or Pfc Kristian Menchaca and Pfc Thomas Tucker? (click on title for article)
Today's New York Times and Los Angeles Times, plus who knows what other papers, carry half-page ads from CNN promoting Cooper's great get: his TELEVISION EXCLUSIVE interview with "Jolie - just back from Africa - on motherhood and her passionate fight for refugee relief." In politics, and in the entertainment business, these ads are known as "paid media." CNN is spending substantially in order to attract eyeballs to Cooper's show, whose ratings turn out not to be as high as Aaron Brown's, whom he replaced, despite Cooper's appearance in feature stories and on magazine covers ("free media") promoting his new book. Jolie is using her celebrity to get free media for refugees (and herself), just as the UN is using its prestige to get free media by declaring today World Refugee Day. CNN, in turn, is using Jolie's susperstar eye-candy in order to demonstrate to advertisers that it can pull decent enough Nielsens to justify paid media by HeadOn, ditech.com, the Schwarzenegger campaign and anyone else competing for your neurons.
