February 16, 2016 · 11:05 am

93 Out Of 100

Every year, the folks at Nielsen put out a review of the previous year in sports media. This year’s report is out, and one statistic jumped out at me. In 2005, 14 of the top 100 programs watched live plus same day were in the sports category. Ten years later, 93 of the top 100 were sports. That’s right: despite all of the fragmentation that’s managed to kill most other forms of programming, nearly all of the most-viewed programs watched live or same day were sports. Is it any wonder that demand for sports inventory is so high when it’s the only form of programming that is both widely viewed and watched in real time?

One would think, therefore, that being a sports programming distributor would put one, as Red Barber used to say, in the catbird seat. Looking, however, at the recent negative reports on ESPN’s financial future in the above context might cause some head-scratching (disclosure – I’m a Disney stockholder as well as a former employee). The issues, I think, are several things. First, sports, like any other form of media, is fragmented. You might never miss a NASCAR race but I couldn’t pay you to watch golf. Sure, you’re a college football fan, but turn on the tube any Saturday afternoon and you can choose from dozens of games airing live. That’s fragmentation, and what’s happened is that the rights fees paid to acquire that programming by the distributors bear little resemblance to the audiences and, therefore, the advertising.

Not a problem, you say. There are affiliate fees. That’s true, and in the case of some sports rights deal, such as the NHL and NBC, the rights fee is paid on the come. After all, if NBC can raise what they get from distributors for NBCSN from 10 cents to a quarter (as an example – those aren’t real numbers), their affiliate fees more than double. Hopefully, the demand for NHL or any other brand of sports programming can make that happen.

All well and good until “skinny bundles” show up. Suddenly, people who never watch sports (yes, there are more of them than you think) have the option of reducing their cable bill by not paying $7 a month or more for sports shows they don’t watch. This is what is causing the negative predictions about ESPN. Smalle income from affiliates based on fewer subscribers to sports channels means smaller rights fees available for the leagues and other rightsholders. Smaller TV deals mean…higher ticket prices? More expensive concessions? Smaller player contracts? Labor strife?

93 out of 100 gets an A in most classes. It’s nice that sports is “bulletproof”. So was Superman, but he, and sports, have their weak spot. It will be interesting to see where this goes, don’t you think?

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February 15, 2016 · 11:00 am

Back To The Garden?

Over the weekend, I was thinking about how much the web has changed since I first started using it 20 or so years ago. Putting aside the tremendous improvement in speed (you haven’t lived until you’ve tried to load pages at 28.8kps), almost everything about the web is better. Graphics back then were minimal, video was non-existent. One thing that is the same, however, is that it is open. I think that it was that openness that let the web, accessed via a web browser, become the norm as opposed to the walled gardens such as AOL that were perhaps even more prevalent at the time.

Why am I mentioning this today? I think we are approaching a “back to the future” moment. You see it in what Google and Facebook and others are doing with their versions of a private internet, which I interpret to be a new walled garden. Ostensibly, this is to help users see the web much more quickly. After all, one of the main reasons people use ad blockers is because publishers overload their sites with beacons, graphics, autoplay videos, and the like.  The big guys are asking that pages be cached on their servers, in theory to provide greater speed and less incentive to block the ads.  Maybe it even allows them to substitute ads that they sell in case you can’t fully move your inventory.

The problem with this is the potential for a return to the walled garden.  If you don’t think that could happen, have a look at what happened to Facebook in India.  the company was forbidden to fully launch its internet.org initiative, which was meant to provide free internet access to million who don’t have it.  The problem is that it wasn’t access to the full, open internet at all; only to a series of sites which Facebook permitted.  That, my friends, is exactly what a walled garden looks like.As marketers and publishers, we desperately need a good solution to ad blocking.

As marketers and publishers, we desperately need a good solution to ad blocking.  From my perspective, a return to the era of walled gardens isn’t it.  How about in yours?

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February 12, 2016 · 11:37 am

Delivering

This Foodie Friday, we’ll return to the land of Top Chef.  Not only is it my favorite show on TV (House of Cards isn’t really TV now, is it?), but it almost always inspires broader thinking about business for me.  Last night was the conclusion of the annual restaurant wars competition in which two teams of contestants have 24 hours to conceive and execute a restaurant.  The losing team (and they really did deserve to lose) made some key errors, from which I think we can all learn a couple of things. 

First, their menu had no focus. Some of it was Asian inspired, some of it was Italian, some of it was influenced by the chef’s ego and nothing else.  There was no cohesiveness to the meal.  Any restaurant – and any brand – makes a promise.  I like this explanation:

A strong brand promise is one that connects your purpose, your positioning, your strategy, your people and your customer experience. It enables you to deliver your brand in a way that connects emotionally with your customers and differentiates your brand.

With no focus to the items being served, there was no connection – emotional or otherwise – to the diners. The next issue was execution. As incoherent as the menu was, had the dishes been prepared extremely well and had the service been spectacular, the dining experience might have been saved. Unfortunately, most of the dishes the losing team served were awful, led by a salad of strawberries, pickled cucumber, roasted beets, and arugula with a strawberry champagne gazpacho. The gloppy “gazpacho” was more like a desert sauce and the judges hated this dish. There was a pork belly served in a consomme that apparently was almost all vinegar. You know there is a problem when every shot of someone tasting it shows them looking like they’d just bitten into a lemon.

Great execution can make up for many flaws.  That too is part of delivering on the brand promise.  I’ve certainly been to restaurants where the food was just ok but excellent, personable service and reasonable prices made it someplace to which I’d return.

It’s one thing to make a promise.  It’s quite another to deliver.  Are you doing that?

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