Let's Watch a Magazine

This doesn't have much to do with traveling, but it does have to do with publishing. And it's something I want to complain about. This was posted in the Wall Street Journal Tech section today.

CBS Ad Puts Video Inside a Magazine

BY SAM SCHECHNER AND SHIRA OVIDE

Video is invading a new medium: print.

In a marketing stunt to promote its fall TV series, CBS Corp. is inserting thousands of tiny screens in copies of the Time Warner Inc. publication Entertainment Weekly.

The screens measure two and a quarter inches diagonally and play about 40 minutes of clips from new and old CBS shows.

The video begins with a cheeky intro to the "video-in-print" technology, starring characters from the show "The Big Bang Theory."

After that, the reader/viewer can push a spot on the cardboard ...

The ugly truth is I bet this is actually going to work. If the actual advertising isn't effective, the fact that there are tiny screens embedded in magazines will, I'm sure, cause quite a stir as "the latest in print technology" - which actually has nothing to do with print at all. I'm a fan of keeping video to video and print to print. Thoughts?