LONDON – “That’s Spandau Ballet, Man!” Or so said the guy on the Chevy Malibu commercial, part of the long pop legacy of that quintessentially 1980s band Spandau Ballet. This month, the British band launched a “Fan Archive Appeal” to dig into attics and closets for historic audio and visualMORE HERE

LONDON – The recent Diamond Jubilee has given the venerable recording brand Decca a figurative Royal Warrant through the Andrew Lloyd Webber single “Sing” by Gary Barlow and the Commonwealth Band featuring Military Wives. In the last two decades, record brands have been largely ignored by recording companies. Oh, theyMORE HERE

NEW YORK – Does anyone else think it odd that 60 Minutes, the flagship, iconic banner of CBS News, would be seen on CNBC, even in reruns? Here is the description on the CNBC site: ABOUT THE SHOW: “60 Minutes on CNBC” takes you a step further into hard hittingMORE HERE

There are many well-known religious publishing brands, both denominational and for-profit. Thomas Nelson and Zondervan are some of the best-known among the for-profits. Zondervan’s sister imprint HarperOne continues a long tradition of religious publishing at the old Harper & Row. Of the strong denominational publishing brands are Abingdon Press andMORE HERE

Portsmouth, N.H. – The Pan Am brand is making a new push at a comeback, with a new TV show from ABC and a revived fashion line. The airline Pan Am died years ago after two successive efforts to revive the airline. Today, it lives on companies as varied asMORE HERE

We ran across a recent post on the future of AM radio that set out some ideas on keeping the format viable. While the idea of AM radio still lives, and is relied upon by millions each day, the audience is increasingly aging. Furthermore, the band has seen more interferenceMORE HERE

HONOLULU – Bringing back something as iconic as Hawaii Five-O is a major challenge. There is enormous love for the old, so you don’t want to change it up too much. But you don’t want to mimic the old too closely, which would desecrate the original, and obviate the reasonMORE HERE

Kathryn Stockett’s 2009 novel The Help has been a sensation of a bestseller. It broke through one major literary taboo, namely a white author writing in dialect. Somewhere after 1960, dialect, except by African-Americans, became pretty much off limits, except in special circumstances. But that’s a separate literary discussion. OneMORE HERE

HAMPTON, Virginia – What do Betty White and Lena Horne have in common? I will answer the question, but please let me tell you a story first. At the entrance to the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel between Hampton and Norfolk was a motel called Strawberry Banks. Though it was aMORE HERE