Tag Archives: Television

July 21, 2014 · 8:40 am

Following The Audience

One of the biggest things one can learn in the business world is how to adapt to changing environments.

English: American family watching TV (cropped)

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I suspect that a lot of executives believed they were good at it until they faced the challenges of the last decade.  It’s relatively easy when you’re in start-up mode to pivot the business from one model to the next.  Once you’re a mid-size enterprise or a public company (much harder since every move is public and scrutinized by analysts and shareholders).

The better media companies can and have done this.  For example, most of the traditional television networks have accepted that their role has changed.  They once were programmers who decided what the audience would watch based on time of day.  Audience flow created by content choreography was a big deal.  Today they are curators.  They have learned to buy or create programs and to present them in a channel-agnostic fashion.  Why?  To survive.  37 percent of U.S. consumers now own a tablet, a smartphone and a laptop, which is a whopping 42 percent increase year-over-year. Women comprised 35 percent of this group two years ago; now they account for 45 percent of the group.  Failing to address this change in consumer habits could have been fatal.

We live in an A.D.D. world.  Everyone’s brain is focusing on something for a few seconds and then it’s on to the next bit of information or device.  86 percent of U.S. consumers multitask while watching TV, yet only 22 percent of these activities relate to the program being watched.  If you’re a marketer, how can you become part of the conversation that’s occurring around the program, even if it’s only a quarter of the audience? If you’re the content provider, how do you grow the 22 percent? Binge viewing is another concept pretty much unheard of until recently.  What has this done to overnight or even weekly ratings and do they tell even half of the true audience story?

The media companies have learned to survive on smaller segments aggregated into massive audiences.  Those audiences are spread out over time and across multiple platforms.  I’d say it’s been a pretty nice demonstration of how to change to follow your audience’s tastes, which is something at which they’ve always been good.  What are your thoughts?

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June 18, 2014 · 9:14 am

Alienation As A Business Model

After a very large sports weekend the trade press is filled with the various reports from the broadcasters about their record-breaking audiences.

no-cable-tv

(Photo credit: hjl)

The World Cup is generating huge viewership on TV as well as online.  The NBA Playoffs had massive audiences.  The Stanley Cup Playoffs did exceptionally well.  While the U.S.Open audience was down a bit there was still massive interest.

It wasn’t just sports either.  There was the usual slew of primetime shows that, in the aggregate, bring together a majority of the population across broadcast and cable networks.  I’ll admit to having watched my fair share of both sports and entertainment (and a little news thrown in).  As I was doing so, a thought came to mind.

All of these content providers (that’s what they are, you know) do their best to attract large audiences.  After all, a big part of their business model is selling the viewers’ eyeballs to advertisers.  Why does it seem, then, that every one of them goes out of their way to alienate the audience with way too much non-program material?

I’ll give you an example.  I tuned in the golf on Father’s Day at noon with my dad and my brother-in-law, also a golf fan.  From noon until around 1:30, we saw very little golf as NBC decided to show us feature after feature and do analysis of what the leaders would do when they teed off 2 hours later.  Even though some big names and popular players were on the course, they didn’t show us how the course was playing, how the greens were breaking, or anything else.  They also showed lots and lot of commercials.

I don’t mean to single NBC out.  Just look at how often something important on the screen is obscured by a promotional overlay, something common to every network these days.  Nielsen did a report which looked at 20 cable channels’ commercial loads in the first quarter of 2013. The results: Some nets don’t even fill 40 minutes of programming time per hour.  Nielsen told Adweek that the average clutter time today is 13:32 on broadcast; 16:59 on cable (so the program time averages barely 43 minutes).  You wonder why Netflix is so popular?

When we promise our customers one experience and then deliver something quite different, we’re in trouble.  I don’t tune in to any show to watch the ads or the promos and I’m sure you don’t either.  Yet those seem to be the focus for the program providers.  You can’t build alienating your customers into your business model.  All of us need to align our interests with those of our customers no matter what the business.   What’s your take on this?

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May 29, 2014 · 9:29 am

Give The People What They Want

I was working at a television network when the Internet became a “thing.”

Television

(Photo credit: Daniel Y. Go)

In those early years streaming video wasn’t really a consideration since the technology hadn’t been invented and there was no such thing as broadband in the home.  Nevertheless, the seeds of where we are today had been planted and there was a huge threat perceived by my compatriots at the network from the emerging technology.

Fast forward 15 years.  Today video streaming is a common part of the media experience and that technology has broadened the potential reach of content services (which is how one needs to think of “broadcasters”) well beyond the living room.  Forward-thinking companies embraced this new access to eyeballs while some continue to resist, entrenched in their old business models which are pretty much on their last legs.  The  way forward is seen in a study released the other day by the Viacom folks.  They studied the impact of TV Everywhere which defined as watching full-length TV programs on sites and apps by “authenticating,” or using pay TV log-in information.

The majority of users agree: TV Everywhere is additive to the TV viewing experience. Since they began using TV Everywhere apps and sites, 64% report watching more TV overall. This finding is even stronger among Millennials, with 72% watching more TV.  TV Everywhere also increases the value of pay TV subscriptions while strengthening loyalty to pay TV providers and relationships with networks.

  • A full 98% of users say TVE adds value to their pay TV subscription, with 67% saying it adds “a lot” of value.

  • The vast majority (93%) is more likely to stay with their provider due to TV Everywhere and 68% have a more favorable impression of networks that offer TVE experiences.

This points out how when we give consumers what they want instead of forcing them to choose an inferior option that may coincide with our business needs but not their appetites, companies do better.  Yes, I’m writing that in a way that extends it beyond just TV Everywhere but that’s the point I take away from the data.  Do you agree?

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