The Front Page: August 21, 2008

By Randee Dawn

So there's this thing called the Olympics, right? You may have heard of it. Going on in China, Beijing, I think -- and there's approximately eleventy-billion hours of it on NBC, another thing you might have heard of.

Cable viewers couldn't care less: They've got "Monk." And "The Closer." And "Burn Notice." This, according to Kimberly Nordyke, who notes that despite everything, "Summer 2008 may have generated as many ratings headlines for cable as last year, when  Disney Channel's 'High School Musical 2' blew away viewership records. TNT's "The Closer" even has numbers -- a 7.3 share -- that some broadcast shows can't approximate. NBC may be getting all of the headlines, but that little box atop your TV set is starting to command some serious attention.

Not that NBC's hurting; despite Michael Phelps being finished for this years Olympics, NBCOlympics.com on MSN "has set records for uniques, page views and streams" and "attracts an average of more than 6 million users daily, who spend nearly 15 minutes per visit and spend 20 minutes when consuming video, according to NBC," writes Barry Janoff. The official Olympic site -- Beijing2008.cn, by comparison, is getting 930,000 visits per day. Between cable and the internet, broadcast just can't seem to catch a break.

Not that they needed it, but the Jonas brothers have caught a break, earning their first No. 1 album, "A Little Bit Longer," according to Erik Pedersen. Hello, generation gap, someone's knocking! Writes Pedersen, 38% of the sales for "Longer" came on its first day, while the band's self-titled second album remains on the chart -- and even moves up to No. 10 after 54 weeks. (Must have been a twofer offer at some stores.) "The last collective to pull that off?" asks Pedersen. "'N Sync in January 1999. But one of those albums was a holiday collection; you have to go back to February 1998 for a group placing two studio (albums) in the top tier." Who was that?

The Spice Girls.

There is one bright spot. The one good thing about, um, stuff like Jonas Brothers, Spice Girls and N'Sync holding records is that eventually, we'll be rewarded for our patience with another musical revolution like, say, punk. Or rap (if that's your thing). Or even a new form of rock and roll. Because once the tweeners and the twee own the music on the charts, it's time for a change.