You may have seen parts of this saga, but just in case you didn’t follow it all the way through.

So FIRST, watch the new Huntsville Alabama clip that got the whole thing started…

Chilling, no?.

THEN watch what a few clever kids did to it..

It doesn’t end there..

The Huntsville TV crew goes to work, and does a follow up story..

And you know what’s coming, right. .

Antoine Dodson is basically now the new Old Spice Man…With an Ed Hardy T-Shirt no less…Go see http://www.antoine-dodson.com/. A lesson to Snookie and anyone else negotiating for reality TV duckets – characters are everywhere.

Not many people under the age of 55 would disagree with the idea that local news needs to be reworked.  In previous times, the local anchor was one of a few links between the scary, confusing news story and the viewer who needed it explained.  

But over time, that bond has eroded.  Some would argue the anchor did not evolve with the rest of the news gathering process.  Most of us are more than comfortable being our own editor.  We navigate from website to website, focusing on topics we self-select in filters and rss readers.  

So what role does the news anchor play now? Down in Houston, KIAH is going to see if that answer is, “They don’t have a role.”

Word is that KIAH will try an anchorless newscast.  The concept is still a work in progress, so no other insight is available.  But an anchorless newscast enables a wide range of sweeping changes in the local news.  At the very least, the 4 talking heads could be consolidated into a single one, news magazine and national newscast style.  And managing editors could be guided by popular opinion or some form of viewer input.

Will people watch a TV screen that has no differentiation from a YouTube channel or web site?  Either way, it will be an interesting to story to follow.

Well the U.S. World Cup team is out.  Sad day last Saturday.  

But thankfully, a combination of high drama, strong ESPN/ABC coverage and a Saturday afternoon match provides a nice segue from soccer stories back into the world of marketing.

According to TVBytheNumbers.com:

The 2010 NBA Playoffs averaged a 3.6 U.S. rating and 5.7 million viewers across ABC, ESPN/ESPN2 and TNT, up 3% in ratings and 5% in viewership from last year (3.5, 5.4 mil), and up 9% and 16%, respectively, from 2008 (3.3, 4.9 mil).  A seven-game NBA Finals more than made up for several sweeps in the second round and consistent declines in the Conference Finals.  

Given those numbers, I was interested to find out how many more people would watch the NBA playoffs than a World Cup soccer game.  Well, according to ESPN:

Saturday’s game, which began at 2:30 p.m. EDT on ABC, received an 8.2 fast national rating, ESPN said Sunday. It was seen in 9,455,000 households and by 14,863,000 viewers. Only the 1999 Women’s World Cup final, featuring the United States and China at the Rose Bowl, averaged more households (11,307,000) and viewers (17,975,000) for a soccer game. An additional 4.5 million people watched Sunday on the Spanish-language Univision.

Wow.  To put those numbers side by side:

• US vs Ghana Soccer Game: 8.2 rating, 14.9 Million viewers (ABC), 19.4 Million viewers total (ABC+Univision).
• NBA Playoff average: 3.6 rating, 5.7 Million viewers

Now I know it’s not a fair comparison, since the NBA playoffs also included cities like Oklahoma City where only 3,500 of the 10,000 people with electricity actually know how to work their remote control.  So to be fair, here’s data from the most watched basketball games of the year:

• Game 7, NBA Finals: 15.6 rating, 28.2 Million viewers
• Game 6, NBA Finals: 10.4 rating, 18.0 Million viewers.
• Game 5, NBA Finals: 10.8 rating, 18.7 Million viewers.
• Game 4, NBA Finals: 9.9 rating, 16.4 Million viewers.
• Game 3, NBA Finals: 9.6 rating, 16.0 Million viewers.
• Game 2, NBA Finals: 9.2 rating, 15.7 Million viewers.
• Game 1, NBA Finals: 8.6 rating, 14.1 Million viewers.

So the U.S. vs Ghana game comes in just under Game 1 of the NBA finals.  I expect that’s much more than ABC expected.

What does this have to do with social media? Craig Ferguson, host of the Late Late Show on CBS, has a real conversation with his audience in TV land, without the hyped up studio audience in the way. Interesting 4:00 of TV