Hertzberg crunches the numbers on the Obama-mercial and reveals some financial savvy... ... according to TVweek.com, the Obama campaign spent $775,000 for the half hour on NBC and $961,000 for the half hour on CBS. That makes a total for those two networks of $1,736,000. Obama’s half hour was the equivalent of sixty thirty-second commercials. The average price of a thirty-second prime-time ad on NBC is $102,928. On CBS it’s $116,729. Therefore, to buy a half hour in thirty-second increments—the usual procedure, at which no one bats an eye—on both networks would cost…let’s see…$13,179,420.

No one does serious like Harrison Ford ...

You'd expect better than this from the BBC. In the penultimate paragraph of an article about the tragic death of the mother and brother of Jennifer Hudson: Hudson, 27, a singer-turned-actress who shot to fame on American Idol in 2005, won an Oscar for best supporting actress in the hit-film Dreamgirls in 2006 and starred in the film Sex and the City. Full article ...