The Breakfast Meeting: Kimmel, Fox and \'Call Me Maybe\' Make Waves

By THE EDITORS

This year's ubiquitous summer hit, “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Jepsen, signals a bigger change than just the weather for the media business, writes Ben Sisario. Even last year, the big hits were all produced by old-style music companies pushing for radio play but this year songs like “Call Me Maybe” and Gotye's “Somebody That I Used to Know” got their initial push through social media before ending up on Top 40 radio.

In Ms. Jepsen's case, a storm of YouTube tributes, including several by Olympic athletes and even one featuring President Obama that he even liked, propelled her song to summer hit status. We've gathered many of the best tribute clips here.

ABC is taking a big risk moving Jimmy Kimmel to 11:35 to take Jay Leno and David Letterman head-on, writes Bill Carter. The network is moving the most popular show in that slot, “Nightline,” in the belief that Mr. Kimmel can capture a younger audience than t he two aging lions of late night and that will result in bigger ad dollars. The last time a network tried that strategy? Oh yeah: it was NBC with Conan O'Brien.

On Monday night, Jay Leno took a shot at Comcast over cuts made to the staff of “The Tonight Show” and to Mr. Leno's own compensation. “As you may have heard, our parent company has downsized ‘The Tonight Show.' And we've consistently been No. 1 in the ratings. And if you know anything about our network, that kind of thing is frowned upon.”

When NBC executives met with Michael J. Fox over his proposed new show, they were surprised by how well he was able to keep the symptoms of his Parkinson's disease under control, writes Brian Stelter. On Monday, the network announced that it had won the bidding for Mr. Fox's new show and made an unusually strong commitment to 22 episodes in the first year. Mr. Fox, who already has two hit shows under his belt, “Family Ties” and “Spin City,” now takes a combination of drugs that he believes will allow him to maintain a rigorous filming schedule.

Yes, Virginia, there is branded entertainment. Macy's has decided to get into the high school musical business by developing a play based its “Yes, Virginia” animated TV special that schools can perform free. The giant retailer is even making grants of $1,000 for schools to perform the musical, underscoring just how important branded entertainment has become, especially for companies targeting younger consumers.

Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp has made a bid of about $300 million for the About group, the owner of About.com, that The New York Times Company put up for sale earlier this year. That offer trumps the bid of $270 million made by Answers.com, creating an unlikely competition for About.com, which has struggled in recent years.

Was that heavy breathing on an earnings call? Barnes & Noble announced a loss of $41 million, or 78 cents a share, for the last quarter in which sales of its popular Nook device were essentially flat. So what was working? Sales of the erotic trilogy “Fifty Shades of Grey” helped raise comparable store sales by 4.6 percent, a remarkable performance by any book without the words “Harry” and “Potter” in the title.

Finally, a coalition of interest groups is charging that companies including McDonald's and General Mills have violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act by enticing children hand over personal data without the seeking prior parental consent.