You're going to need a score card to keep up with all the conglomerating up this month, so check the Corp. Art list on the home page. This weeks installment: Corp. Art goes online: Articles culled by Musea & Alden Scott Crow.

• CBS BUYS EVERYTHING and a TRICK ENDING: CBS is sore. It wants to buy NBC TV from GE and is calling for the feds to change their regulation that none of the 4 networks can own the other. Why NBC? CBS CEO Mel Karmazin says his favorite candidate is NBC because, "I don't believe that Rupert Murdoch (News Corp./Fox) ever sells anything... Disney (owner of ABC) probably believes that ABC is strategic for them, so it sort of gets down to one network that... maybe is not as critical to GE's turbine engine business. But if in fact we were allowed, I would love to be able to buy NBC." (He also whines that the feds should allow CBS to own enough local TV stations to cover 50% of the country, instead of the 35% allowed now)
• CBS BUYS OPRAH & THE WHEEL: CBS did buy KING WORLD the TV distributor of Oprah, The Wheel of Fortune and a number of other hot TV Properties. CBS BUYS ON LINE: CBS buys the bulk of HOLLYWOOD.COM , a website about movies and the motion pix biz, and STORERUNNER.COM, an online mall. CBS ALSO BUYS local Channel 11 for $485 million. TRICK ENDING: Online giant AOL wants to buy CBS! Tech gossip columnist Chris Nolan cited an unnamed source familiar with the talks that CBS and AOL have been conducting for the past year. AOL's stock is at that tulip bubble level of $160 billion, while CBS is only a measly $30 billion. If the deal goes thru CBS is expected to showcase AOL on Face The Nation, 60 Minutes, and 48 Hours. (Yahoo News)
• YAHOO BUYS LOCAL DEEP ELLUM CO, BROADCAST. COM: Broadcast.Com would bring audio to the mostly text Yahoo, the leading Search Engine on the net. Deal is for 4.4 Billion. (Yahoo)
• CHUMPS OF THE MONTH: CHUMP #1 Time Magazine puts Bill Gates on the cover 3/22/99, to spotlight his new book Business & The Speed of Thought. What Time didn't tell its readers was that the book is published by Warner Books. and Corp. Art Warners owns BOTH Time Magazine and Warner Books. A rival weekly said "This is not news, this is an infocommercial." (Matt Drudge)
• CHUMP #2 Kate comes clean and CK washes their hands of her. Kate Moss admitted that she was walking the runway under the influence of drugs and alcohol. A week later Calvin Klein announced her contract with them would not be renewed. CK spokesman Robert Triefus lies with a straight face and says, "This is totally unconnected with her recent revelations." Puleeeze! (Arlene Vigoda)
• CHUMP #3 The college kids at Notre Dame are reasonably concerned that their college sweaters may be made in sweatshops. The University says it'll start independent random checks of the factories (so far so good) but factory addresses will remain a secret. A Big Activist On Campus says the obvious: "If it's done secretly we won't believe it." Neither do we. Come clean administration! (Newsweek)
• DISNEYLAND KILLS BUT WON'T TAKE RESPONSIBILITY: California state investigators fined Disneyland a paltry $12,500 and cited them for 2 safety violations for an accident on the ride The Sailing Ship Columbia on Dec. 24, '98 that killed park visitor Luan Dawson, 33, and caused serious head and face injuries to his wife Lieu Thuy Vuon, 43. Park employee Christine Carpenter (who suffered a broken ankle in the accident) had trouble lashing the ride to the dock. She was substituting for another employee. State investigators say she was not trained enough. While Carpenter was trying to dock the ride a 9 pound metal cleat flew into the crowd, hitting Dawson in the face and neck. He died 2 days later of a brain hemorrhage. We think Disney needs to take responsibility and quit trying to hide behind their lawyers. (Yahoo News) P.S. And why wasn't this reported in the mainstream news?
• THE BIG 5 GO ONLINE: As you know 5 companies own all the music. So now they want to own all the music on the net, too. Four of the 5, (little EMI./Thorn is barely a player anymore) have split into 2 groups. First WARNER and SONY joined together in a (what we think is an illegal because it's a monopoly) move to operate a joint online music store called TOTAL E. (E stands for Euuwww!) This month the other 2 (and the 2 largest music co's) BMG and Seagram (Universal) have joined forces to start their online music store, GET MUSIC.COM . Both of these moves are to put Amazon.Com (the largest online music seller) CD Now, and other Indies out of business.
• NOW ONE FOR OUR SIDE: The semi hip Utne Reader has announced an online partnership with Portland's mega bookstore Powell Books. URL ? Maybe Utne on line? (Publishing Weekly)
• UPDATE: Last month Musea's lead story was based on Diet Cokes dastardly plot to sneak Corp. Art Novels into our homes. Publishers Weekly said they snuck those booklet into 45-50 million 6 and 12 packs. That's 8 million of each title. Scary!
• THE MEDIA GAME: Lucy holds the football and Charlie... well you know the story. And each year the oil companies raise gas prices just before vacation time, and each year the media asks them why, and each year they come up with a new reason (This year, someone sneezed in Venezuela) and the media buys it. If I didn't have to pay for it it'd be a fun annual ritual. But we do, don't we!

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