Commentary

TV Viewers Need Time To Adjust To Changing Brand Images

As Donald Trump has now recognized, there are few absolutes in the world. Having a simple plan on immigration -- like getting rid of all illegal immigrants?

Sorry, the world is much more complicated.

The problem with his kind of messaging spills in all directions in TV land. Story lines are easier when you have good guys/bad guys like.. er.. those on reality shows, such as “Celebrity Apprentice.”

Real life, non-TV life, takes work and coming to terms with those grey areas. (Big sigh!). Traditional TV story lines don’t help ease my pain.

Still, we have no problem with transitioning TV characters/brands. Watching NBC’s “America’s Got Talent” recently with past bad-guy reality judge Simon Cowell might give us some sense here. Now, a slightly nicer Cowell can talk about the wonders of a magic act performance.

Case in point: Candidate Donald Trump is now experiencing a transition -- or at least looking to alter perception. All to gain scale. But TV consumers need time to digest TV changes. Cowell evolving act took years in the making; Trump only has nine weeks to work some magic.

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Over the last couple of TV seasons, the CW made a transition to be more than just a young woman's TV network. Now, it caters to young women and men -- and maybe not so young. Some would say all this was to gain scale/viewers, thereby broadening appeal to TV advertisers. Can’t really blame them.

Increasingly, you may find any number of traditional TV networks looking to make a transition when it comes to digital media platforms. Many of the oldest-skewing TV networks can find median ages of viewers/consumers much younger when it comes to networks TV content on digital platforms.

Will this be a grey area for some networks -- slightly uncomfortable or entirely welcomed? Depends on how it is marketed.

Now back to politics: If Donald Trump were to go after, say, health insurance companies, would some voters opinions of him change?
Seems some more eye-opening changes to come. Life is complicated, TV less so -- even for those running for the highest public office in the land.

2 comments about "TV Viewers Need Time To Adjust To Changing Brand Images".
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  1. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, August 26, 2016 at 8:12 a.m.

    It's also a question of credibility. Trump obviously believes that all it takes is saying something and everyone will believe him---even if he has said exactly the opposite for the past six months and many of his most ardent supporters are clearly not in sync with his latest babblings. This is the classic hallmark of the egomaniac who thinks he is the smartest person in the world and everyone else is an idiot---compared to him.

  2. Paula Lynn from Who Else Unlimited, August 26, 2016 at 8:35 p.m.

    Fine, let Simon Cowell run the country and deal with the rest of world like your life depended upon it. Put tRump back into the circus.

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