
Christmas is for kids – and TV:
Nielsen Media Research
Forget about all that knee-sitting stuff. Santa just has to sit back in his easy chair, TV remote in hand, to see what kids want for Christmas. A whopping 93.1% of total media spending in the toy, games and craft category goes into TV. And total spending has skyrocketed over the past four years, thanks to the big spenders – companies selling digital and video games and all the necessary hardware to go with them.

ZenithOptimedia US ops splitting;
Canadian office might follow suit
Whatever changes may be made by ZO’s Canadian counterpart ‘won’t be quite as radical’ as yesterday’s announcement of the impending divorce between Zenith and Optimedia down south, Sunni Boot tells MiC. But, she adds, ‘best practice’ nowadays for media biggies, such as the one she heads up, is to form two distinct brands.

Wanted: Sex, drugs and espionage in 60 seconds or less
CBC is reaching out to the techy crowd and enlisting their aid to draw even more cyber eyeballs to its Intelligence series, via a promo that encourages wannabe directors to re-mix scenes and music into online trailers for the show. The lure for contestants? A chance to win pro video-editing gear.

Can a YouTube contest get you pumped for Fashion Cares?
It’s a classic idea: run a contest, sign on a few celebrities, all in the name of a good cause. But can the largest HIV/AIDS fundraiser in Canada get people interested in sharing their stories on YouTube? With months before the media campaign begins, this PR component aims to create a catalogue of user-generated content in time for the gala.

Discovery rings in New Year with magic and cringe factors
The net’s new offerings will include a popular magician filling late night Saturdays and a couple of nearly-newlyweds pushing the limits of pain – a great bet for the most unpopular day of the week, Mondays.

Department stores hit accelerator: Media Monitors Spot 10
Sears was #1 among the top 10 radio advertisers last week, while The Bay climbed from #13 to #5. But that was nothing compared with Omni JewelCrafters, which zoomed from #236 to #8. Meanwhile, Rogers Personal TV also hit the gas, rising from #39 to #10.

‘Vous-Tube’ hits Quebec market
Now les Québécois, as well as other French-speaking show-offs, have their own sites for posting le bon, le brute and … l’ugly – and advertisers are already along for the ride.

Taxi confounds complacency
with guerilla campaign for Covenant House
To make the message hit home about what might befall ‘nice’ neighbourhoods if Canada’s largest shelter for homeless youth didn’t exist, the agency posted official-looking public notices in downtown Toronto yesterday.

Radio ad spend up,
ratings sizzling hot
With the race for ratings hotter than ever, as demonstrated by the new BBM radio survey findings released yesterday, it’s no wonder advertisers are boosting their budgets.

Canadian Primedia opens sales office in Vancouver
Canada’s largest independent ad sales agency for daily newspapers, which represents over 40 newspapers and 16 Canadian consumer magazines, has formed a new entity to handle sales and marketing in western Canada and the northwest US.

A fair bit of churn last week:
Campbell Soup evidently anticipated the colder weather, turning up on the Top 15 list after quite an absence. Meanwhile, L’Oreal presumably started a push for pre-holiday primping by jumping from #11 to #4. But Ford, Ontario Lottery & Gambling and People The Diamond Store dropped off the list.

Pre-roll video ads debut on CBC.ca
CBC.ca is the latest media site to offer pre-roll video ads within its online program and news clips. And just one of the Ceeb’s shows has already racked up more than 400,000 hits in a single month.

Posting ads on AOL Radio reaches Canadians at work
Advertisers can now fine-tune their audience with commercial-free radio, thanks to the newly launched AOL Radio (aol.ca/radio), a no-charge music service featuring 170 different stations.

Rent-A-Goalie ordered for second runs
Canadian content – at least on the comedy side – is not dead. Even apart from CTV’s hit Corner Gas series, which is soon to go international, try zooming in on Showcase. The net’s original comedy series Rent-A-Goalie completed its first season amid heaps of praise, and now product placements for year two abound.

Who’s Top 5 is this? CTV’s – almost.
BBM/NMR Top 30 – Nov. 20-26, 2006
CTV’s CSI ruled the BBM/NMR’s Top 30 list for Nov. 20-26, while the net’s Desperate Housewives took back its lead on Global’s House, which now sits at #5. CTV’s ER rose from #8 to #6 and could push Global’s best-ranking AMA down farther gaining on House. Global’s only other challenger to CTV’s relative domination of the top 10 is Survivor: Cook Islands, which nudged itself into #9 from 10th place – even though there were fewer people watching at the peak.