http://www.washingtonpost...Apr26.html

For the May Sweeps, Double-Wide Movie Trailers

By Lisa de Moraes
Tuesday, April 27, 2004; Page C07


...In related news, tomorrow night, the night before the launch of the May sweeps, MTV, MTV2, BET, VH1 and VH1 Classic will simulcast an infomercial for the new album "Musicology," from the Artist Once Again Known as Prince.

The "concert," recorded last week at New York's Webster Hall in front of friends and local members of Prince's online music club, includes material from the album plus some of his classics, and "interviews" with Prince, with certain segments doled out to each of the five cable networks, the Associated Press gushed.

"The networks have never done this before," Will Botwin, president of Prince's record label, gushed right back at the AP, which forgot to mention that all of the above-mentioned networks are owned by Viacom.

(Prince's record label is Columbia Records, owned by Japanese-based Sony, which does not own a broadcast TV network on which to run its advertainment specials, because foreigners cannot run U.S. network-owned TV stations unless they're sly as a fox.)

"We wanted to do something unprecedented," MTV Networks Group President Judy McGrath effused to the AP.

Of course, she'll have a hard time topping MTVs unprecedented Super Bowl halftime show.