Last month, Bones, a punk band out of Baton Rouge received official notice from myspace.com that their url had been changed from http://myspace.com/bones to www.myspace.com/7483383. Apparently, the address was needed to promote the television drama Bones of the Fox network. Strangely enough, Fox is owned by News Corp., who last July purchased myspace for $580 million. Saucy forensic anthropologist Bones beats nerdy jazz punk Bones every time in the media synergy game. No surprises here.
Less than 24 hours after notification of the change, the band received this correspondence from Tom Anderson, co-creator and president of myspace. From the bands myspace blog:
“i heard about what happened with your URL. i gave it back to ya.. sorry about that! as we grow in size, sometimes people make decisions i don’t know about. this was obviously the wrong decision. the bones URL is yours once again.”
Even if this was an act of damage control, it reveals that for the time being, Anderson respects the independent net presences that helped him cash in. As of this inaugural post, Anderson has 140,515,252 user profiles listed as friends on his own myspace account. Among them remains Bones, punk band from Baton Rouge.
Tip: Cool’Eh editorial Vol.2, Issue 6.
test comment. high five!
Comment by crain — December 19, 2006 @ 2:50 pm
I must admit I am surprised that he was given his URL back. The “little guy” wins out over a media empire?!?! Has hell frozen over yet…and especially since this was the Fox News, well News Corp. I give them credit but I find it interesting that Fox and Myspace are owned by the same company. In 100 years a handful of companies will own everything…thank goodness I will be dead.
Comment by David T. — January 19, 2007 @ 4:34 pm
My comment is in reaction to the impact media synergy is having on the advertising world. I agree with David T. that big companies are trying to get as many smaller companies as they can under their umbrellas to maximize advertising and synergistic opportunities. In turn, creating a few companies that monopolize media space. Then these companies will always be using one of their “products” to sell another.
Examples of Disney synergy at work:
Recently there was this guy, we’ll call him…Doug, and he was forced to watch “All My Children” with his wife before they went to bed. One night, Doug noticed that one of the children on the show was carrying around a stuffed animal from the movie “The Little Mermaid”. Doug thought about two things: 1.) He realized he will probably never fully regain his masculinity, and 2.) Why would they give so much camera time to a stuffed animal when this story has such an interesting plot-line? After following the line of ownership of the companies at work, Doug realized that “All My Children” is on ABC–which is owned by Disney–which was re-releasing the collector’s edition of “The Little Mermaid” on DVD. Also the first commercial break featured a McDonald’s (a partner of the Disney Corp.) (check out this article: http://www.commercialexploitation.org/news/mcdanddisneyfat.htm) commercial promoting its free “Little Mermaid” toy with the purchase of a Happy Meal. Each entity promotes itself WITHIN itself and one company owns them all.
Doug admitted that this advertising tactic was pretty sly on Disney’s part. They are targeting housewives who watch soaps and are more possibly home with their young children or babysitting. The children are interested in the kid’s stuffed “Flounder” in the show and the moms might not notice anything until the commercial for McDonald’s when the kids get excited again and the mom decides a fast cheap lunch at McDs isn’t such a bad idea after all.
Like my friend Doug, I have also noticed examples of Disney synergy at work. But in my case, they got a little sloppy.
I was watching Sportscenter over the summer when they started to highlight a rare Pittsburg Pirates winning streak. That’s not the weird part. Then the anchor said something like, “The pirate’s courageous and cunning play to avoid the enemy reminds me of another witty pirate: Captain Jack Sparrow from “Pirates of the Caribbean”. They showed a full trailer for the movie in the middle of Sportscenter. Yes, Disney also owns ESPN. Bad form.
I think companies would rather the public not know who owns what so it makes the product seem more reputable, like a real endorsement.
Comment by dub — January 20, 2007 @ 12:18 pm
A few great examples of why folks call Disney the master of synergy. I guess the follow-up question is “what impact do these sort of synergies have on consumers/citizens?” You could possibly argue that showing a movie trailor during a sports highlight show degrades the content, but the larger concern is the overall lack of transparency among media corporations and, as you both said, that a handful of companies are monopolizing the media space…
Someone must be doing this, but it would be a great idea to publicly track these kinds of covert ads.
Comment by crain — January 22, 2007 @ 3:26 pm
My name at myspace used to be http://myspace.com/prisonbreak. I’ll let you guess what happened.
Comment by Keith — January 30, 2007 @ 10:48 am