ABC show looking for local families in need of home makeover

The ABC television show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is searching for a deserving family from Fort Myers.

The show’s producers say they are looking for families whose homes are in desperate need of being rebuilt.

“We really want to help families whose homes present major problems for the family, those big issues that affect the family’s quality of life on a daily basis,” said casting supervisor Morgan Fahey. “We want to find deserving people who just don’t have the resources, ability or time to fix those serious issues without our help.”

Each episode involves a race against time to complete a project that would ordinarily take at least four months, involving a team of designers, contractors and several hundred workers who have just seven days to totally rebuild an entire property: every room of the house, plus the exterior and landscaping.

Fahey said they are looking for people who have made an impact on the community.
Interested families should e-mail a short description of their family story to: castingssouthflorida@gmail.com. Nominations can be submitted by the family or a member of the community. Each nomination must include the names and ages of everyone in the household and contact information.

To be eligible, the family must own their single family home, and be able to show how a makeover will make a big difference in their lives.

“Anyone submitting a nomination should be sure to explain why the nominated family is deserving, heroic and/or a great role model for their community,” Fahey said.

The deadline for submission is Oct. 16.

Learn more at http://abc.go.com/primetime/xtremehome/index?pn=apply.
If possible, producers are asking for a recent family photo.

Captive audience: Florida jail is latest to sell ad space

Reaching a captive audience has long been a top priority for advertisers. After all, what better way is there to promote a product than right before a movie, when ticket buyers are settling in for two hours, or on a subway placard facing seat-bound commuters? Yet, a recent plan to sell advertising space on visitation video monitors at a Florida jail has some wondering whether such marketing efforts have gone too far.

The Charlotte County, Fla. Sheriff's Office hopes to bring in about $77,000 a year by selling ad space to the likes of attorneys or other companies providing services that might appeal to inmates or their visitors, making it perhaps the first jailhouse advertising program in the U.S., according to WINKnews.com, a web site for the television channel WINK in Southwest Florida. The reason for plan? Lt. Norm Wilson was facing a tighter budget and wanted to come up with ways to fund prisoner programs, the news site says. Wilson didn't return Daily Finance's call seeking comment.

Like the Charlotte County Sheriff's office, cash-strapped public schools are also resorting to similar advertising programs, says Josh Golin, associate director of the Boston-based Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. Some schools are offering naming rights or advertising space on school buses, he says.

"There is an ethical issue with advertising to anybody -- whether it's a child or an adult -- when there's no way to opt out of it," Golin says. "Our primary defense against advertising is our ability to turn it off, and that's really being lost."

Golin believes marketers are exploiting the fact that entities like schools are facing such tight budget constraints and are desperate for new sources of funding.

Take a company called MilkMedia. The company sells advertisements for toys and action characters on the side of milk cartons to elementary through high school students. According to its Website, the program reaches more than 40 million students each day through 98,000 schools.

And then there are school buses. The Paradise Valley School Bus Advertising Program sells ads on 130 buses in the North Scottsdale and North East Phoenix areas of Arizona, according to its web site. The pitch to advertisers? Buying an ad on one bus creates 52,000 daily impressions while helping to fund local public schools.

While assisting public school systems is a noble goal, they aren't appropriate places for marketers, says CCFC's Golin.

"Schools are supposed to be a place where everything they're exposed to is in their best interest, not for someone else's best interest," he adds. "Freedom from advertising is something that people have a right to."

Michael Jackson's 'This Is It' Unveiled

It's been more than three months since his sudden and tragic passing, and now Michael Jackson fans are getting a chance to hear the late King of Pop once more thanks to his new song, 'This Is It.' The tune premiered on MichaelJackson.com with the touching line "This is it, here I stand. I'm the light of the world, I feel grand." 'This Is It' is the the first from the documentary on the troubled superstar with the same title.

"This is It" premiered on Jackson's official Web site www.MichaelJackson.com at midnight EDT (0400 GMT Monday). The mid-tempo number features Jackson's trademark vocal style,background vocals from his brothers and some orchestral backing.

A documentary on Jackson also called "This is It" opens Oct. 28 for a limited two-week run. It shows footage of the singer rehearsing for his planned London concerts, which never happened because of his sudden death on June 25.

The song appears in the documentary's closing sequences and will be included in the two-disc CD set that accompanies the movie.