Thursday Wake-Up Call: A brouhaha about the Oscars. Plus, will Tronc sell its newspapers? | Advertising
Welcome to Ad Age’s Wake-Up Call, our daily roundup of advertising, marketing, media and digital news. You can get an audio version of this briefing on your Alexa device. Search for “Ad Age” under “Skills” in the Alexa app. What people are talking about today: The Chicago Tribune has a scoop about the Chicago Tribune (and about its sister publications, including the New York Daily News.) “Tronc is weighing an offer to sell the Chicago Tribune and the rest of its newspaper holdings to a private equity firm,” the newspaper reports. The publishing company just sold the Los Angeles Times to biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong. What’s left at Tronc? Papers including the Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sentinel and the New York Daily News, which recently had massive layoffs. The possible deal could be worth upwards of $700 million, the Tribune says. The report sent Tronc’s stock soaring, as Bloomberg News writes. To be continued.
Not so popular
TV ratings for the Academy Awards hit a record low this year, and now the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has a plan to make the event a little sexier by adding a category for “popular” film. Twitter erupted in snark. Writer-director Adam McKay tweeted suggestions for other new categories: “Best movie where shit blowed up good. Hottest female alien. Best back flip to avoid a thrown knife. Best knife throw. Best ‘you thought he was dead but now he’s back and REALLY kicking ass.’” There were serious questions too, like, what does this mean for mega-hit “Black Panther”? Is it being shunted into a consolation prize category? Variety says ABC, which airs the awards show, had pushed for the change. And by the way, ABC is owned by Disney, which happens to make “popular” movies, including ones by Lucasfilm, Pixar and Marvel. What are we to make of that? Ad Age touched briefly on the Oscars brouhaha in the Marketer’s Brief news roundup, which also includes an item about a Kickstarter campaign to make an action figure of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (really).
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