NBC Gambling On Variety Hour Format
Compared with the cost of production and the product integration and sponsorship opportunity of of a scripted series, a weeknight show is a veritable gold mine of opportunity. A word of warning, though: the good ones aren't just about celebrity interviews and off-set antics. The good ones combine format with compelling content. If NBC plays this card right, Leno's show could be one of the most favorable interactive television opportunities of the 2009/2010 season.
How? Let's take a look at some interesting scenarios that could be played out:
1. Interactive voting and polling. From viewers voting on politicians to celebrity outfits to movie ratings to true or false questions, there are two-screen and single screen applications that have been tried, tested and are proving to be true.
2. Off-air product-integrated call to action. Let's think out of the box here. There are iPhone apps, BlackBerry apps, widgets and gidgets -- it's not that hard to figure out some kind of integration with data aggregation on the back-end.
3. In-show interactivity. Have a contest, have a call-in, be the 100th voter and win. Make these interactive features live and really make the show DVR-proof.
Many of you will read this and say that it is easy for an outsider to come up with all these pie-in-the-sky ideas, but these things are impossible within the "reality" of the television band advertising business, due to real "business" reasons. And the outsider's answer to that would be, quoting Arthur C. Clarke, "The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible."
0 comments on "NBC Gambling On Variety Hour Format".
Leave a Comment
LYDIA LOIZIDES
Lydia Loizides is Vice President, Product Management, at Canoe Ventures LLC. Lydia is also a Trustee
of The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS), and Chair
of the Advanced Media Committee of NATAS, NY. You can read Lydia's personal blog here. The views expressed here are her own and do not reflect the views of the organizations or associations that she is affiliated with.
Recent TV Board Articles
-
Don't Know Much About History June 18, 3:42 p.m.
ABC’s announcement that it will launch an updated 1980s version of the classic TV show “The ...
-
Measuring The Unmeasured At The ARF June 17, 11:57 a.m.
The ARF always offers events that are a must-attend for researchers. This year’s audience measurement conference ...
-
Lifetime's 'The Client List' and 'Army Wives': Two Of The Best Soap Operas On TV June 14, 10:48 a.m.
As we saw last season with the creative challenges that compromised ABC’s “Revenge,” which went from ...
-
Get Smart June 13, 9:41 a.m.
Editor's Note: Due to a systems error at MediaPost, the original email edition of this TV Board ...
-
In The Media Lab: Q&A With ABC's Mark Loughney June 12, 11:12 a.m.
Mark Loughney, vice president of sales and strategy research for ABC, started in academia -- but ...
-
'Game of Thrones' And Other Violent TV Shows: How Much Is Too Much? June 7, 10:58 a.m.
What does it say about television – or, more to the point, the television audience – ...
-
Ovation: America's Only Art Network June 6, 11:49 a.m.
Bank clerk T.S. Eliot wrote poetry at night. There are many of us who, like Eliot, ...
-
Twitter And Television June 4, 4:10 p.m.
I think we can all agree that Twitter is a remarkable platform that’s having a significant ...
-
The Comic-Con Effect: Science Fiction, Supernatural Permeate Prime Time Next Season May 31, 12:45 p.m.
What has the massive multitiered marketing power of Comic-Con wrought? Or should we hold the outsize ...
-
Q&A With Crown Media CEO Bill Abbott May 30, 2:49 p.m.
Although Bill Abbott started his career as a buyer at an agency, he soon moved into ...
The only way to discover the limits of the possible with the Jay Leno show is to push them to the edge of Jay Leno.
Jay Leno is old and even older news. Nobody is going to sit and watch this tired and shopworn bore hog a whole hour of yet more of the same, predictable and endlessly boring crap.
NBC has not had anything worth watching on TV in many years. What they are doing with Leno is proof of the desperate measures they've employed, to not be forced to start running infomercials on prime-time, but even that would be preferable to watching Leno, who has always been a medicore and annoyingly UNfunny comedian, and now is just a dumpy old boring guy with lousy jokes, who never had an original thought in his life.