[The Hut, via One Fast Buffalo]

For Immediate Release Fridays, PRNewser's original weekly series of posts has fallen by the wayside latey. Its a look at the bad news uploaded late Fridays to minimize coverage.

So when I saw a press release uploaded 10 minutes to midnight assuring customers that Pizza Hut will in fact, not change its name to "The Hut" I did some digging. Like BigK, Dunkin's new DD (double D, really?) and BK it's not always clear to the consumer if the new names are an attempt to skew younger, or a full corporate name changes.

The Yum! Brands (NYSE: YUM) chain may have bobbled a trade pitch, or the reporter misunderstood it, according to what I found on Google.

The name-change stories have been going on for a couple of weeks, culminating in a hilarious one from Consumerist to the delight of Star Wars fans everywhere (The Hut = The Hutt).

It appears the confusion stems from a Mediaweek story on June 7 about the use of The Hut for its marketing initiatives including in-store Hut TV.

Google tracks show that the first line of Mediaweek's piece on June 7th, which appears to have been corrected. Found on a scraping site, the first line was "As Pizza Hut moves toward rebranding its locations as The Hut, an integral part of the effort is an in-store digital video network designed to engage customers". Within Mediaweek.com, the first line is: "As Pizza Hut explores the use of The Hut in marketing its brand..." The original text spurred the flurry of stories.

Big difference in PR and Yum! land, not so big to eater.

Here is the text of the press release in its entirety:

"Pizza Hut is not changing its name. We are proud of our name and heritage and will continue to be Pizza Hut. We do use 'The Hut' in some of our marketing efforts," said Brian Niccol, CMO, Pizza Hut, Inc.

"To the loyal fans of Pizza Hut and pizza lovers around the world, we're happy to tell you that nothing is changing, we're still Pizza Hut, America's Favorite Pizza."