as if a sign...Pokemon is the cover story in the U.S. TV Guide --- you have 
your choice of four covers each with a different character.

Norma

Norma Pecora
School of Telecommunications
Ohio University
Athens OHIO  US
At 11:44 AM 10/29/99 +0000, you wrote:
>Ruth again.....
>I recently attended a commercial seminar in New Zealand targeting
>those marketing  to children and youth ('CAPTURING KIDS' run by
>the IIR and costing $1600....thus excluding most of us.....I got a
>freebie via someone administers New Zealand ANZA -
>Australia New Zealand Advertisers).
>
>The thing that struck me again and again was the difficulty of
>studying these dizzyingly fast moving phenomina. It is hard enough
>for those wanting to latch their merchandise or channel ratings onto
>them....let alone academics wishing to spend TIME contemplating them.
>There was much debate over whether Pokemon, which had shifted free to
>air channels in New Zealand, would drag children away from local
>offerings and thus hurt them......a rep from the 'old channel' opined
>that it would sag after Christmas.... unless the film was a
>hit....but there was much cynicism after the 'Starwars'
>flop....chips, drinks and other products had been burned as a result.
>
>Market researchers and ad agencies observed that the range of
>ages of children were picking up and discarding new fads in
>increasingly rapid cycles....The marketers themselves identified kids
>as 'dangerous terratory' in the title of the conference  'Capturing
>kids'.
>
>And, in terms of my own research:  I was going to write something
>on Telletubbies.....who is interested in reading about that  NOW in
>1999?
>
>Ruth Zanker
>New Zealand Broadcasting School



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