Anna Nicole's death sparks media frenzy
(See editor's note at end of article)
Hours after her death, people across the globe tried to cash in on her celebrity by listing for sale items such as bobblehead dolls and poker chips bearing her image.
But positioned to benefit the most are media outlets that tried to feed the enormous appetite of its audiences. The frenzy promised to continue into the weekend with Saturday night's iring of "Death of a Centerfold" on NBC's "Dateline," to be followed by Fox News' hour-long special "Anna Nicole: Tragic Beauty."
"This is just a real feast for some people out there, and particularly on the Internet," said Larry Pryor, a professor of journalism at the University of Southern California's Anneberg School for Communication. "For every person in public life, there is a blogger, or in this case, many bloggers behind them."
The mysterious death in a Florida hotel room that saddened friends and set off a paternity fight over Smith's 5-month-old daughter also produced some odd and opportunistic commerce.
Less than half an hour after Anna Nicole Smith's death became public Thursday, memorabilia from her short life began to roll out on eBay. By Friday afternoon, nearly 2,700 items — from Anna Nicole bobblehead dolls to Anna Nicole poker chips ($122.86 for the complete set) — had been listed by the online auction site.
Another web operator offered nearly 20 different T-shirts bidding farewell (after a fashion) to the supermodel, television personality and professional vamp. They ranged from the restrained, "Anna Nicole R.I.P." to the provocative, "I fathered Anna Nicole's baby and all I got was this stupid T-shirt."
With legal expert Greta van Susteren leading the charge, Fox's prime time viewership on the night of Smith's death jumped to 2.225 million, an increase of at least 400,000 over a typical weeknight, the cable station said. Traffic on entertainment and personality Web sites leapt 54 percent, compared to the day before Smith's death became public, said Matt Tatham of Hitwise, a firm that tracks Web traffic. More than 14,000 blogs posted information, opinions and rants about the death on Thursday, said another tracking service, Technorati.com.
While the story may have been stirring up an audience, mainstream news organizations demonstrated varying degrees of comfort with the story of Smith, notorious for her nude modeling, sybaritic lifestyle and, particularly, her brief marriage to Texas oil billionaire J. Howard Marshall II, who was more than 60 years her senior.
The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post played the story on their front pages Friday morning, and the Times continued to feature the story on the paper's Web site throughout the day, with a photo at the top of the homepage for latimes.com and links to several related features. The Post took a similar approach on washingtonpost.com, with somewhat less prominent display for the story.
The New York Times ran the story on page 12 of its main news section and, by day's end Friday, did not even feature Smith on the home page for nytimes.com. While the paper did not overtly draw attention to the story with splashy coverage, it increased web readership by purchasing a "sponsored link" to "Anna Nicole Smith" on Google. That meant anyone perusing the search engine for the supermodel's name would see a link to nytimes.com most of the day Friday, which helped make it the single most read item during the day on nytimes.com.
"That means they can have it both ways, in effect," said USC's Pryor. "They can draw traffic to a sensational story on their web site, but, on the face of it, they don't appear sensational."
Industry observers said it is becoming increasingly common for news organizations to buy search result positions on sites such as Google and Yahoo. The vast majority of visitors to news sites now come through search engines and alternative portals, rather than the outlet's own home page.
On both television and the Internet, media executives said the payoff from a surge in viewership is delayed. Current ad spots, for the most part, have already been sold. But future ad rates could increase because of the kind of traffic built by provocative stories like the one about Smith's demise.
Hani Durzy, a spokesman for eBay, said it would be "disrespectful" for the auction firm to track commerce following someone's death. He called the large increase in Anna Nicole listings this week "a mirror on pop culture. ... It shows that people have different figures that they love, respect, admire and want to remember."
Jeffrey Shore, creator of "The Anna Nicole Show," featuring Smith on E Television, from 2002 to 2004, said he understood the frenzy but was saddened by it.
"At the end of the day, she was a very nice person. Simple, but nice," Shore said. "She had this Southern upbringing and this nice way about her, and very little of that ever comes out, because of the way she portrayed herself on camera and some of the things that she did. When you see some of the things that are happening, it's kind of ghoulish and just too bad."
One Web site noticeably failed to capitalize on the story. Annanicole.com featured a black home page, empty but for the name of the one-time stripper and model and the years of her birth and death, 1967 and 2007.
Editor's note: The Tidings has not ignored the Anna Nicole craze, but has opted to make it a lower profile on our site. For those who crave Anna Nicole Smith photos, stories and memories, check the story we ran on Feb. 8 (http://www.dailytidings.com/2007/0208/stories/0208_anna_nicole.php) for information on her death, photos from her past and a link to a forum for discussion.
