It's a dark time to be a Harry Potter fan. The book series has drawn to a close, the next big-screen installment of the hit fantasy series has been unceremoniously delayed, and scientists have announced they're getting close to a real-life invisibility cloak--hence sucking just a little bit of the Potter magic out of it.
OK, maybe that was a little melodramatic. But in case you don't have enough Harry Potter in your life, U.S. publisher Scholastic wants to help that...with an all-day read-a-thon.
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the release of the original Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Scholastic has organized a cover-to-cover reading of the book to take place at its headquarters in New York. Fans can show up and participate, or can watch a live Webcast if they don't happen to be in New York.
Getting to read a paragraph of Harry Potter for a live Web broadcast doesn't strike me as the sort of thing I'd be willing to wait in line for, but hey, those Potter fans are really dedicated. And here's a bonus for them: they would get to sit in the same "throne" that author J.K. Rowling sat in during readings at New York's Radio City Music Hall and Carnegie Hall.
It starts on September 23 at 8:00 in the morning, Eastern time. Show up early, and you'll get a free copy of the 10th-anniversary edition of Sorcerer's Stone. Oh, Harry--still a marketing wizard.
In an appeal to the coveted youth vote in the upcoming presidential elections, MySpace and MTV announced Thursday that they have joined forces for a series of "one-on-one dialogues" with all the major candidates from both political parties--televised and Webcast events in which presidential hopefuls will answer questions from MySpace members and MTV watchers. Formally, it's a collaboration between MySpace's "Impact" political channel and MTV's "Choose or Lose" election effort (which it has been operating since the dinosaur days of the 1992 election), and it's the first collaboration that the News Corp.-owned social networking site has had with the Viacom-owned pop culture conglomerate.
The conversations with individual presidential candidates will be held town-hall style on college campuses, webcast live on the MySpaceTV video platform (previous coverage here) and MTV.com, and broadcast later that evening on MTV as well as the MTVU college campus television network.
"These dialogues are not going to be a debate," Ian Rowe, MTV's vice president of strategic partnerships, said in an interview with CNET News.com. "They're going to be one-on-one, unfiltered conversations between a group of young people who are sitting inside a college campus auditorium (and) an audience online (that) will have the ability to submit questions in real-time." Rowe added that this will be a totally interactive experience. "They'll be able to literally respond to what the candidate is actually saying during the conversation. Even if you don't have the opportunity to physically be in the room, you can participate tangibly in the conversation."
MySpace had initially announced its plans to hold presidential town hall events in May, but no further developments were provided at the time. The social network also plans to hold a mock election early in 2008.
The first of the MTV-MySpace dialogues has been confirmed for September 27, with Democratic candidate John Edwards in the key primary state of New Hampshire. Future events will individually involve Democrats Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Christopher Dodd, and Bill Richardson; and Republicans Rudy Giuliani, Duncan Hunter, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, John McCain, and Sam Brownback. The only missing candidate of note is arguably former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican whose surprising second-place finish in the Iowa straw polls suddenly catapulted him into the label of "dark horse."
If the prominence of blogs in the political process was the major digital media development of the 2004 presidential election and the "paper trail" of YouTube videos was what marked the 2006 midterms (recall former Sen. George Allen's "macaca moment"), it appears that "interactive" conversations with presidential candidates, thanks to new media platforms, are coming to define the '08 campaign. Earlier this summer, CNN and YouTube collaborated on a formal Democratic debate in which YouTube users could submit video questions in advance of the event. In the MTV-MySpace "dialogues," these questions may be submitted live--through either the MySpaceIM instant messaging platform, e-mail, or text messaging.
"We're offering participation through all the tools of new media," said Jeff Berman, MySpace's general manager of video operations. Representatives from both companies hinted that further details will become available throughout the next few weeks.
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