• by John Gaffney , June 2, 2003

I Didn't Come Here To Start No Trouble, I Just Came Here To Do The TiVo Shuffle: TiVo has an audience measurement service. If you haven't read about it yet, it will now develop audience measurement tools that will give agencies, broadcasters and advertisers an analysis of specific viewing patterns within television programs. The company also announced it will offer a subscription quarterly report that uses this new measurement capability to report on viewing patterns within primetime programs. This quarterly report was developed with Starcom MediaVest Group. That's the big news here. Starcom has leant considerable credibility to this effort. TiVo, on its own, could not have pulled this off. Yes, it's a big deal. The company that gives consumers the the ability to skip commercials, is now saying they'll tell you what kinds of shows keep consumer attention. They'll show you what commercials get zapped the most. But we cannot lose sight of a very basic truth here. I think this research approach puts the emphasis on the commercials rather than the state and quality of the programming. Taken as a whole, I think TV programmers need to make sure they're putting up the best possible content - period. If a report comes back saying consumers are zapping out of commercials, I can't control that. All I can control is that the show is either so creative, original, funny or dramatic that they won't want to miss a second. Judging a TV show based on its commercial attention, is a bit skewed, in my view.

More TiVo: My second problem with this service is that it gives the high hat to cable programming. It will only measure network prime time shows. There's a whole lot more going on in the world of TV programming and advertising than what we see in network prime time.

At The Buzzer: If you haven't seen the new Mini print campaign you're missing out on the most creative use of print ads I've seen since the last Mini campaign. This one - which I believe is running mostly in men's magazines - allows you to punch out and build your own Mini from thick stock insert paper.