Nickelodeon & politics (TV)

Nickelodeon TV, the children’s’ network, is getting ready to cover its first presidential inauguration.

Young reporters Lily Collins, rocker Phil Collins’ daughter, and J.J. (Nick would not release his last name) will be in Washington Jan. 20 to show Barack Obama’s inauguration from a pint-sized perspective.

Throughout the presidential campaign, Nickelodeon found that interest among its young viewers matched that of the adults. Nick’s own online “election” had 2.2 million children voting, with kids supporting Obama over John McCain (51 percent to 49 percent) in a closer margin than the real election.

The coverage will show up during commercial breaks and, most prominently, during the periods between regular shows in prime-time. Nick will offer a retrospective of past presidents taking the oath of office and interviews with young people about Obama’s election and his inaugural address.

Nick won’t cover the speech live but will take excerpts shortly after it is done from coverage on a news network and package it for its viewers.

“We can’t go live in the same way the networks are going live, but it will feel the same way to kids,” says Marva Smalls, executive vice president of public affairs at Nickelodeon.

The station’s young viewers are particularly interested in the process because Barack and Michelle Obama’s daughters, Malia and Sasha, are squarely in Nick’s demographic, she says.

‘The Clash’ (Books)

Despite its influence, the Clash has inspired only a handful of books. There’s Marcus Gray’s group history “Return of the Last Gang in Town,” tour manager Johnny Green’s memoir “A Riot of Our Own,” Pat Gilbert’s “Passion Is a Fashion” and Chris Salewicz’s biography of Joe Strummer, “Redemption Song.” It’s a pretty thin shelf for the group that billed itself as “the only band that matters” and that, in the five-year whirlwind of its prime, produced three of the most monumental albums of the punk era, one of which (“London Calling”) belongs on anybody’s shortlist of the greatest rock records of all time.

And yet, as “The Clash” makes clear, the band’s true legacy might be that it couldn’t be encapsulated, that the stridency of its politics and the power of its performances had to be experienced on their own terms. Certainly, that’s the idea behind this book, which comes credited to the group’s four main members (Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, Topper Headon), although Strummer died in 2002.

A mash-up of interviews and commentary, lavishly illustrated with tour and studio photos, promotional fliers, album covers and even a French comic strip, this is more scrapbook than exegesis, a collage spanning the years from 1976, when the Clash was formed, to 1983, when Strummer fired Jones and effectively ended the group’s supernova run.

‘Fall Out Boy’ (Music)

If you’re wondering how Pete Wentz feels about becoming a dad or looking for insight into his recent marriage to Ashlee Simpson, don’t expect to find any details by listening to Fall Out Boy’s new CD, “Folie A Deux.”

Even though the bassist is the chief lyricist and the band’s tabloid-centric spokesman, for “Folie A Deux,” Wentz shifted the focus away from himself and turned it outward onto the world.

Lead singer Patrick Stump calls “Folie A Deux” the band’s “statement record.”

“(It’s) dissecting how self-motivated our culture is,” Stump says in a recent interview. “Pete on this record wrote from a very different perspective than he did on previous records.”

“Folie A Deux,” French for “shared madness of two,” was released earlier this month. It’s the third major-label CD for the emo-rockers, who became a multiplatinum success story with the release of their 2005 album, “From Under the Cork Tree,” which included the top single “Sugar, We’re Goin Down.”

While Stump’s melodious falsetto anchors the band’s sound, it’s Wentz who provides the band’s emotional content (the group’s other members are guitarist Joe Trohman and drummer Andy Hurley). In the past, Wentz has worn his heart on the Fall Out Boy’s lyrical sleeve, with songs about relationship dramas and painful splits.