ONE YEAR SPECIAL ANNIVERSARY EDITION OF

THE USIM GAZETTE®

A common idiom holds that “time flies when you are having fun.” In May 2009, U.S. International Media marks one year of producing The USIM Gazette® bi-monthly on its website. Guiding the newsletter on its successful journey has been tremendously pleasurable. The Gazette has grown in size and popularity. The first edition in May 2008 featured four articles, encompassing the following production statistics: word count = 2,650; line count = 294; column inches = 53. Comparatively, the most recent regular edition (April 2009), comprised eight articles, generating the following production data: word count = 6,342; line count = 735; column inches = 107. See table below for a more visual comparison:

1^st Edition (May 2008)                                   Current Regular Edition (April 2009)

Word Count                 2,650                           Word Count                 6,342

Line Count                      294                            Line Count                      735

Column Inches                  53                            Column Inches                107

As you may observe, word count for the current regular edition versus the inaugural edition increased by 240 percent, line count rose in excess of 250 percent and column inches advanced over 200 percent. We expect to generate even higher measurements during our second year, adding more of the content readers have asked to see, such as media related product reviews and employee biographies. We also intend to include more statistical reports, courtesy of Nielsen Online, Media Research and others, and more popular content, hopefully available from such novel sources as printcasting.

It would be meaningless if we had grown in size since our first edition but not in content depth. Fortunately, this is not the case, as subsequent articles explored a diversity of media and advertising related topics, including network integration fees, new media technologies, auto industry advertising spending reductions, book reviews, guerilla advertising, the troubled newspaper industry, media convergence, executive biographies and consumer engagement, to name a few.

Along the way, your Gazette has become more popular with employees, the media, advertisers, vendors, suppliers, ad agencies, et al. We have also received excellent feedback on the existing content format and useful suggestions for adding content that readers would like to see covered. We thank everyone who has contributed both directly and indirectly to the success of the Gazette—you made the first year of production so rewarding.

The Gazette’s progress has not transpired in a vacuum. The advertising and media industries have experienced unprecedented declines during 2008, as the national and global economies have teetered on the brink of collapse. U.S. International media has struggled, like all other media management companies, to find the optimal path through the economic maelstrom. The Gazette has not shied away from honestly discussing media/advertising industry troubles and we have highlighted the “emerald shoots” of opportunity wherever they could be found growing.

This year, U.S. International Media celebrates its fifth year of operation, and expects to enjoy many, many more. Despite the tough economic conditions, the company has focused on helping clients stretch their advertising budgets and has adopted new ways to remain competitive. The company will not abandon the value set that has enabled it to stand apart from the crowd, such as employing experienced media professionals, developing media strategies and plans without predisposition towards any particular media type, remaining innovative and open to creative solutions, obtaining the best rates and highly productive value-added programs for our clients and managing the buy from alpha to zeta, and all points in between.

This special one year anniversary edition of the Gazette delivers some good reads for your edification, including detailed analyses of some of the advertising industry’s leading and lagging indicators, national average web usage statistics, the futuristic use of technologies to transform skyscrapers into gigantic digital billboards and a timely discussion on the relevance of television as the primary information dissemination “institution” in our society.

So much of what Americans know about the world, and ourselves, is shaped by what we see and hear on television. The development of cable and satellite television in the 1970s enabled broadcasters to distribute content across more channels and the advent of subscription television channels, such as Home Box Office and Showtime, to name but a few, allowed viewers to customize their programming choices. Next month (June 2009), the legislatively mandated digitization of the U.S. broadcast spectra takes full effect, becoming one of the most revolutionary events in TV’s storied history since the invention of color television.

What makes television so special is that television foments a global public, experienced through the senses. It is a perception relay apparatus, an enabler of shared awareness and community on a mass scale. It embodies the immediacy of the Internet/World Wide Web, and the authority of the newspaper industry. It can also yield a plethora of frivolous content, and an inspiring anthology of unforgettable events, like the Apollo 11 spaceflight mission which culminated in landing a man on the moon, or the Roots TV miniseries which engaged an entire nation for eight consecutive nights by revealing one family’s amazing triumph.

If television is the cake, then advertising is the icing. Or, as the eminent media theorist Marshall McLuhan so fittingly put it: Advertising is the greatest art form of the twentieth century. The only thing that has changed since McLuhan’s prescient remark is that the millennium can be updated to the twenty-first century, instead of twentieth. The 3^rd millennium began on January 1, 2001, and TV has documented the world’s seminal events like no other medium could before that date and will likely have few rivals far into the future.

The staff of the Gazette thanks you for your continued enthusiastic support, and extends special thanks to Dennis Holt (Founder and Chief Executive Office – US International Media) and Jack Silver (Executive Vice President, Client Services – US International Media) for their vision and leadership.

Darrell Woody

Editor-Digital Communications