• by Frank S. Foster , June 13, 2008

Earlier this week I had lunch with a couple of friends in New York, one of whom happened to be a broadcast client. With the announcement that David Verklin would indeed be the CEO for Canoe Ventures staring at us in the daily press, Canoe's potential effect on research was front and center. While others have discussed the effect addressable advertising will have on the industry, our focus was somewhat more pressing. The question posed to me was: "Given all the promises of more granular data coming out of Canoe, where should local broadcast audience researchers focus their considerable energies?"

On the surface it may seem an interesting problem, but the answer is obvious and inarguable. Canoe can provide tactical knowledge where it is needed most -- at the station level. Imagine local research built on the viewing habits of the thousands to tens of thousands of viewers that tune into a station's evening news program, not on the viewing habits of five to 50 recruited panelists. To paraphrase George S. Patton, good tactics can save the worst strategy, but bad tactics can sabotage even the most foolproof plan.

The Emergence of Tactical Research
Today, the industry is shackled with audience research that is strategic in nature. Reliable, accessible, high-quality insight available in tactical timeframes simply does not exist. Small sample-based research may provide an acceptable view of macro issues, but support for daily decision-making is not its forte. However -- with the right infrastructure -- Canoe Ventures can deliver tactical insight even for broadcast affiliates. Leveraging Canoe, researchers can help station managers address at least three key areas:

· Better decision-making

· Better content selection

· Higher quality audience insight

Better Decision-Making
While this is a broad topic, think local news. Who should the weekend anchor be? Do audiences react differently to certain local news reporters or stories? When audience levels surge during the weather report, where do they come from? Is the weather segment too long or too short? Do audiences turn away when Sports dives into the local NHL club? Literally hundreds of evaluations like these are made every day in newsrooms across the country. How often is quantitative analysis used to support such decisions? Rarely, because the sample sizes are too small and the data is imprecise and difficult to use.

Today, the industry leverages smart, experienced news directors and station managers to make tactical decisions. How good are those decisions? No one really knows. The feedback loop is delayed and wrought with noise and error. Just as quantitative analysis changed the financial industry, researchers will be able to leverage Canoe's data to transform local news. We will still have the smart, experienced news directors -- but they will learn faster and make better decisions.

Better Content Selection
This too is a widely encompassing theme, but think digital subchannels. For a local broadcast station, deciding which syndication deal to pursue and where to place such content is time-consuming enough. But the availability of digital subchannels greatly compounds the problem. Should the station have a single, compressed 1080i signal and a second 720p subchannel? How about a compressed 1080i channel, a 420p subchannel and a slideshow-like subchannel (e.g., NBC Weather Plus)? Should the format change by daypart? Should we run a second camera angle on a standard definition subchannel during the local NFL game? Should we stagger commercial breaks in that case or synchronize them?

If you suspect the Nielsen local ratings are unreliable tools for such assessments today, wait until the number of local broadcast channels jumps from eight to 25 -- or from 28 to 130. The number of content decisions that must be made locally is going to explode -- and research based on Canoe's data warehouse may provide desperately needed understanding.

Higher Quality Audience Insight
For a broadcast affiliate, local knowledge is imperative. While some station managers have 25 years of experience in a single market, many more have fewer than three. Station managers and news directors not only want to know what their loyal viewers are watching when they are not tuned to their station, they also want to know what viewers find interesting on competitors' channels.

Data from Canoe's data warehouse will provide the answers to a myriad of typical questions. Are my on-air promotions working? When should I run news promos on cable networks, and which networks are most effective at driving traffic? When do viewers leave my news broadcast during the weather segment, and where do they go? How many viewers channel-surf during the first two minutes of my evening newscast? Do they ever come back? If I change the way we open the news, can I stop a significant number of viewers from surfing?

Availability of such data will usher in a new breed of questions as well. Which newscasts have the highest rated sports segments and why? How loyal are my sports viewers compared to my competitors? Where do audiences tune when local disasters strike? Where do heavy local news viewers tune when there is breaking local news? Can a promotional campaign affect such behavior? Does extensive local coverage of sports teams affect the loyalty of evening news viewers? If I change commercial pod lengths, can I alter channel surfing behavior? Does the availability of on-demand content affect viewer loyalty of late-night news? How do viewers react to different advertising insertion strategies for linear and on-demand local content?

The availability of high quality viewership data is one of the often overlooked by-products of the cable operators' efforts with Canoe. While the mainstream press and many trade publications tout the coming age of addressable advertising, the more relevant story (especially in the short term) is the data's potential affect on linear television. Affiliates should embrace set-top-box data. Do not fret, the Nielsen currency will not change any time soon. Negotiate access to set-top-box data in your retransmission agreements and leverage analysis of the data to make better daily decisions. Your viewers will thank you for it.

I must concede a single caveat. The technical hurdles to ubiquitous data collection are far from settled. While not rocket science, creating a data warehouse based on information from a myriad of unique cable systems will require significant expertise and perhaps, a rather lengthy "learning period." Aggressively attacked, these problems can be solved in a matter of months. Passively handled, the process will linger about unfinished for years. Let us hope that the cable operators give Canoe the requisite access and authority to complete the task.