In an ad that aired on CBS Sunday night, right after the opening credits for “Touched by an Angel,” the network gave away $1 million to a single person. That person didn’t have the fastest fingers, ` la ABC’s “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”; nor did she stab a teammate in the back in a display of Fox’s “Greed.” She didn’t even scratch off a ticket or enter a magazine sweepstakes.
Kimberly Lamagno of Running Springs, Calif., was awarded the money for simply using a month-old, CBS-backed Web portal, which is aptly named iWon.com. The 60-second spot on Sunday (part of a $40 million ad campaign) boasted that iWon.com gives you “a chance to win cash just for doing what you do anyway.” Every day, one user of the search site is randomly selected to win $10,000; every month, another user wins $1 million. And on April 15, the portal will be giving away $10 million to a single winner.
How do you enter the sweepstakes for iWon.com’s daily, monthly, and annual drawings? You surf. And if it’s prize money you’re after, you surf the categories iWon.com encourages you to visit. Once you register, iWon.com quantifies your entire experience on the site. Virtually every link on iWon.com’s pages is preceded by a value representing the number of sweepstakes entries you’ll get for clicking it. Want to know the weather forecast? That’ll get you five entries — plus one more for clicking over to the Weather Channel’s site for the extended forecast. But wait! You’ll get seven entries for visiting the news page. The weather can wait!
Predictably, the links with the highest values include the “shopping” section and the site’s ads. After all, the giveaway money comes from advertisers and shoppers.
So can you just shop and read news endlessly to earn entries? Not exactly. After you reach the daily cap of 100 entries, the little red numbers mean nothing.
That might be the only downside to making the site entirely entry-oriented: Why stay, once you’ve maxed out on entries for that day? Of course, iWon.com is a fully functional portal site, with free e-mail, stock quotes and horoscopes, so the site is expecting that once the chance at riches lures you in, you may just stick around.
But if the site’s so great, why give away all that cash? “We think it’s a great way of differentiating ourselves,” says Jon Brod, iWon.com’s vice president of marketing. “The portal space is pretty competitive, and by offering world-class [features]” along with a giveaway, “we’ve got an incredibly compelling consumer proposition.” You’ve got to believe that newly minted millionaire Lamagno agrees.
“A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney” debuted on “60 Minutes” in 1978, and in the 33 subsequent years, the segment’s namesake gained a reputation for being television’s most curmudgeonly broadcaster. But in his final scheduled on-air comment Sunday evening, Rooney betrayed the sentimentality of someone less surly than he’s been reputed to be: ”I’ve done a lot of complaining here, but of all the things I’ve complained about, I can’t complain about my life. [...] All this time, I’ve been paid to say what’s on my mind on television. You don’t get any lucker than that.”
Apparently it’s going to take more than the threat of assassination to wipe the smile from of Dave Letterman’s face.
The “Late Show” host returned to work Monday night. It was his first broadcast since the news surfaced last week that a would-be jihadi had called for his death on an Internet message board. No stranger to controversy, Letterman seemed nonplussed by the threat. The comedian deftly illustrated that point by enumerating all the individuals and parties who openly hate him — a list that includes most humans and animals.
As if CBS’ new “Two and a Half Men” naked promo wasn’t enough to convince audiences that next season is going to be for adults only (“No kids allowed! Sorry, Angus T. Jones!”), today’s plot leak regarding a certain character’s certain demise in a certain type of “meat explosion” should do the trick. (Sorry, I didn’t want anyone to get upset over spoilers.)
Here’s the spoiler alert: CBS went all out in its fantasy killing of Charlie Sheen’s dopplegänger, Charlie Harper.
According to TMZ’s taping attendee, the plot lays out how Rose (played by Melanie Lynskey) — the neighbor who had been doggedly pursuing Harper, and whom Harper brought to Paris last season — married Harper while in the City of Lights, but later caught him cheating on her in the shower.
According to TMZ’s, Rose speaks at Charlie’s funeral, telling everyone that while she and her spouse were waiting in a Paris subway station the day after the shower incident, Charlie “slipped” onto the tracks, in front of an oncoming train, resulting in a “meat explosion.”
I’m guessing this is the result of some contest over at Warner Bros. to see who could come up with literally the grossest way to kill off a character played by a guy who is suing them. I’m almost surprised that these other suggestions didn’t make the cut for appropriately described death scenes for the family sitcom.
1. Charlie Harper visits Universal Studios on a whim, where a comedy of errors has him entering what he believes to be Eli Roth’s “Hostel”-themed amusement park maze, but in reality turns out to be an actual torture dungeon belonging to a rich, Slovakian sadist.
2. Death by autoerotic asphyxiation while simultaneously looking at child pornography and kicking a sad orphan puppy.
3. Jon Cryer finally snaps after one too many gay jokes and beats Charlie to death with his own well-polished shoe.
In this photo provided by CBS News, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner talks about the debt crisis on CBS's "Face the Nation" in Washington Sunday, July 10, 2011. Geithner said Sunday that the Obama administration wants to seek "the biggest deal possible" on debt reduction. His comments followed word from GOP congressional leaders Sunday that the White House's $4 trillion package was off the table. (AP Photo/CBS News, Chris Usher) (Credit: AP)
Appearing on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner spoke out against lawmakers like Michele Bachmann who have claimed the administration is using scare tactics to over-hype the debt crisis.
“On Aug. 2., we’re left running on fumes,” Geithner told host Bob Schieffer. “We have no capacity to borrow… We have to act; Congress has to act ahead of that point. If they don’t act, then we face catastrophic damage to the American economy.”
Geithner expressed confidence that a deal would be reached ahead of the Aug. 2. deadline, but noted that whether or not the deal would be good for the economy was a different matter. He told Schieffer that the Obama administration faced a difficult task in trying to broker the “biggest deal possible.”
1. PETA pets of the day: Kristen Wiig and Russell Brand were named Sexiest Vegetarians of 2011 by the animal activist group. Now how long until they try to convince the stars to pose naked?
5. Sitcom death of the day: How are the writers planning to get rid of Charlie Sheen’s character on “Two and a Half Men”? Here’s a hint: It involves Chuck Lorre’s fantasy scenario.
The (Condensed) Grammy Award Broadcast 
Farewell to Record Stores 
Interview With My Bully: When I confronted my bully about racism 
Iran’s Greens aim to rise again 
The prettiest boy in the world 
Should I donate a kidney to my friend? 
America’s billionaire-run democracy 
The bishops go off the deep end 
No, Newt, don’t quit to make room for Santorum 
Whose Wisconsin recall is it? 
Can Greece thwart a complete meltdown? 
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s alternative abortion history 
