Tuesday, January 22, 2008

January 2008

It’s a new year – new offices, new clients and lots of new babies in the extended CTB family. Congratulations to Eric Logan, Jesse Mann, Mindy Thomas and their (slightly bigger) families. CTB closed out 2007 in style with a matched set of bi-coastal holiday dinners. Good food, company and maybe a drop or two of the holiday spirits. But after a much-needed holiday back, we’re off and running in 2008.

Kimmel is back on the air. We appreciate and echo Jimmy’s statement on the situation, and so now on with the show. In light of all this, Jimmy and Jay Leno decided to mix things up a little and trade appearances on each other's shows - here's Jay on the other side of the desk.

Update:
You have to check out Sarah Silverman's new video for Jimmy, I think she's trying to tell him something...

The Yahoo gang helped christen the new New York office with a festive holiday meal of Chinese food. Penn Gillette and Cloverfield’s Michael Stahl-David and Odette Yustman came through The 9 for some great segments. Watch here.

Speaking of Cloverfield, Roland and O&A gang trucked out a screening to get ready for the cast’s visit – clips here – before the film went on to set a box office record for MLK weekend. Other recent highlights over at O&A include Sylvester Stallone, Bret Michaels and the one and only Chris Rock. In case you haven’t heard, XM has been podcasting, offering up free highlights from O&A, Bob Edwards, Unmasked and more. See for yourself. Before we forget, way back in November, Bob Edwards came up to NY to be honored with the Gaudium Award from the Breukelein Institute. CTB’s own Celia Converse helped set it up and was on hand for the event along with Bob producer Ariana Pekary.

The writer’s strike has certainly had an impact on the awards season and the People’s Choice Awards was one of the first to tackle the issue. Everyone pulled together and put on a great show in spite of the circumstances, and the format allowed the winners to appear via taped acceptance speeches, so there were some great guests. Thanks for everybody’s hard work.

Starz has some great stuff in the pipeline including an evening with the hilarious Jamie Kennedy, which promises to be anything but predictable.

The big news in Oprah-land is OWN – the Oprah Winfrey Network – and it is big news indeed. Things are rolling along over at O at Home, in February’s issue you will find Bette Midler’s Aha! Moment and Kate Winslet’s favorite books. Bette’s new show goes up in Las Vegas in Feb and Kate is the new ambassador for Lancome’s Tresor. And we’d be remiss in not saying how wonderful it is to be working with new O at Home editor-in-chief, Sarah Gray Miller.

We’ll let you in on a secret: The Huffington Post is one of the smartest and coolest sites on the web, with some of the best news and media commentary out there. Okay, it’s not much of a secret, as there are millions of folks out there who read it every day, but we are thrilled to have the first set of blog bookings up with Ashleigh Banfield, Margaret Cho and Steven Zaillian.

Another site you should really check out is Black20. There are hilarious, original new videos up every day. Repeat: every day. There’s a daily news show, an episodic comedy series, a while bunch of spoofs and much more. We’re not suggesting that anyone is looking for new ways to kill time at work…but if you happen to find yourself with a minute to spare, do yourself a favor and take a look.

The voting is closed for this year’s BR!CK Awards and we’re looking forward to getting started on the show itself. Mark your calendars for Do Something’s 15th annual charity dinner on March 6th, which promises to be an amazing night. Previous hosts include Susan Sarandon, Tina Fey, Jimmy Fallon, Mandy Moore…

In case you missed it, People magazine talked about the Listen Campaign and had great pictures of Natalie Portman and Brooke Shields. The CBS special will air in June, check out the videos here.

Also, new videos up on epicurious.com and men.style.com from Debie Mazar and Fabio.

That’s it for now, plenty of stuff in the pipe – Bravo’s A-List Awards, VH1’s Best Week Ever, the breathtaking Absolut campaign, the wonderful CFDA’s in June and make sure to tune into Free Radio on VH1 starting February 8th, check out the trailer: