Despite a boost from baseball's All-Star Game, Fox couldn't come out on top in total households or adults 18-49 in ratings data for the week ended Sunday released Tuesday by Nielsen Media Research. In total households, Fox's coverage of the all-star game was the top-rated show on the air, delivering a 9.5 rating and a 17 share. It was the only Fox program in the top 25, with the exception of the 16th-ranked pregame show. But it wasn't enough to carry Fox to victory in the demos. Strong showings from Law & Order and the Dateline interview with Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck gave NBC (5.5/10, 5.88 million) the win over CBS (5.4/10, 5.71 million), Fox (4.4/8, 4.68 million) and ABC (3.5/7, 3.78 million). The JLo-Affleck interview on Dateline was the week's top-ranked program in adults 18-49 with 5.1/16, 10.6 million viewers overall. It led NBC (2.9/10, 3.7 million) to victory in adults 18-49 ahead of Fox (2.7/9, 3.4 million), CBS (2.5/8, 3.1 million) and ABC (1.8/6, 2.2 million). The top 10 broadcast television network shows for the week ended July 20:
It's taken two months and a court battle with a guy named Spike, but next month The New TNN will finally take a bow as Spike TV. Spike TV President Albie Hecht announced Tuesday afternoon that the cable channel would begin using its new name and logo at 9 a.m. Monday, Aug. 11. It's being billed as the first network aimed at exclusively at men. Aug. 11 is Spike TV Day. Men all across this great land should feel empowered to leave the toilet seat up," Hecht said. The Viacom-owned unit of MTV Networks has taken a long, strange trip to the launch date. The name change and refocus was unveiled to great fanfare in April, and Spike TV took center stage with a star-studded presentation during the MTV Networks' upfront in May at Madison Square Garden in New York. A new slate of male-themed programming was announced, including a Thursday night block of adult animated programming and a renewed focus on women, extreme sports and action-oriented movies and shows. The channel is available in 86 million homes. But the June launch was thwarted by a lawsuit by filmmaker Spike Lee, who claimed his reputation was being hijacked by the channel. He didn't want to be associated with the range of programming that would be offered by the channel. Lee was granted an injunction that kept Viacom from changing TNN's name until a trial in mid-August. That didn't stop Viacom from rebranding the channel, which it did as both The New TNN and no channel name in particular. But two weeks ago, Lee and Viacom settled out of court and a judge lifted the injuction. All that remained was for Viacom to set another launch date, which it did Tuesday afternoon. The Aug. 11 launch date will feature a one-hour special Road to SlamBall, a behind-the-scenes look at one of the channel's extreme sports programming. There will be a special edition of Spike TV's Most Extreme Elimination Challenge, which will feature an all-Spike lineup. And there will be a one-hour special filmed in June at the Playboy Mansion where Spike TV was unofficially launched. That special is hosted by rapper Busta' Rhymes and also includes Pam Anderson and Kelsey Grammer, who both star in separate animated series on Thursday nights, and Carmen Electra, Fred Durst and Kid Rock. Even WWE Raw, a holdover from the TNN days, will include a special something about Spike TV. "Beginning today and continuing for the remainder of men's lives, we will be building our home base with new programming and specials that speak to a wide range of men's interests," Hecht said. Two new daily features will also kick off Aug. 11. CBS MarketWatch, another Viacom partner, will contribute two updates daily on world markets and the economy. Another one-minute feature will report daily on the automotive industry. Other programming planned for August include Ride with Funkmaster Flex, which will premiere Aug. 16; Go Inside: Animal House (a documentary on the 25th anniversary of the classic movie starring John Belushi) on Aug. 24th and new seasons of SlamBall and Most Extreme Elimination Challenge.
Not that it was ever mistaken for anything else among the media community, but Parade has truly been getting its due in recent months as a marketing juggernaut. The 60-year-old supplement, which arrives with The Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Miami Herald and around 330 other newspapers every Sunday, reaches an incredible 36 million readers (for those counting at home, that figure exceeds the population of Canada). According to Publishers Information Bureau, Parade generated $320 million in ad revenue during the first six months of 2003 from a mere 344.2 ad pages. Despite this relative paucity of pages, more than 300 companies found a home in the magazine last year. And yet Randy Siegel, who ascended to the publisher post last month, still isn't 100% satisfied. "We do great programs and we have the best advertisers and staff in the world, but you still have to take things one month at a time," he says. When asked how this cautious assessment gels with the aforementioned statistics, Siegel laughs and shrugs off the question with a simple, "Well, you know." Whatever Siegel and his predecessor (Jack Griffin, who joined Meredith Corp. as Magazine Group president) have been doing over the last few years, it has worked. Parade is as much a Sunday institution as barbecues, siestas and family time. But the way Siegel sees it, the magazine may well only now be entering its prime. "Obviously the economy's not where anybody wants it to be, but there are opportunities that we're pursuing," he says. "In many ways, we've been an underleveraged brand." Indeed, even before his promotion, Siegel had been one of the driving forces behind efforts to bolster the Parade brand - and to do a lot of good in the process. In April, the title teamed with Tyson Foods, Betty Crocker and Reynolds to launch "The Great American Bake Sale." The idea: encourage groups throughout the nation to hold bake sales and donate the profits to Share Our Strength, an organization dedicated to eradicating hunger in the U.S. and abroad. "It's the biggest cause-marketing effort in 60 years of Parade," Siegel says proudly. The magazine also launched a national TV campaign in June. The ads, which have been airing on CBS, Court TV, Fox News Channel and TNT, among other networks, sought to illustrate Parade's editorial diversity and broad reader appeal. And this won't be the last you'll see of Parade on television: the mag's annual "What America Eats" survey is being spun into a Food Network series scheduled to debut in 2004. Similarly, Parade Radio Services can be heard on 1,200 radio stations across the country. To the urban sophisticate huddled up with a copy of The New York Times Sunday Magazine and plate of raspberry scones, these plans may seem a bit ambitious. But, as Siegel notes, Parade strives to be as inclusive editorially as possible: "We pride ourselves on how we reach mainstream Americans, not just people on the east and west coasts. Our tagline for many years has been 'a conversation with America.'" Clearly this is a policy which resonates with the magazine's advertisers, many of whom are looking for straightforward, unpretentious venues in which to hawk their wares. "It's a great vehicle for clients to reach millions of Americans on the one day of the week during which they have some semblance of free time," Siegel says. "On the other hand, as a mass-market, mass-reach publication, we need to be versatile across as many categories as possible to continue our growth." While some may think that Parade's once-a-week frequency makes Siegel's task slightly easier - he says the magazine "doesn't really have a defined competitive set" - he cautions that any magazine which rests on its laurels is likely to find itself in trouble before too long. "There are five or six other publications that we watch like a hawk: TV Guide, Reader's Digest, Better Homes and Gardens, People and USA Weekend, in no particular order," he explains. "I'm focused not just on the competition but also on what we can do to remain the leader." Parade's advertisers span a host of big-dollar categories (entertainment, packaged goods, food). Of course, like nearly every other publisher, Siegel is hoping to grow the number of automotive advertisers, though he declines to identify specific targets. He admits, however, to coveting what he calls "classic brands in America." "Our clients are conservative about where they run and when they run," he adds. "These are sober and somber times in our country, and we have an environment that our clients are very comfortable with." This, it seems, is the magazine's biggest challenge: maintaining the editorial and advertising mixes beloved by change-resistant readers and marketers while at the same time breaking new ground. On the editorial front, Siegel hopes to see continued expansion in the magazine's music coverage. From a marketing perspective, Parade hopes to help its newspaper partners promote the institution of the Sunday newspaper. "We're investing lots of money into marketing programs, especially ones that are going after occasional readers or non-readers," Siegel says. "Our goal is to be a vital resource for everybody we work with."
There are two simple takeaways from the Knowledge Networks study that was released last month, and most agencies are getting the point: Reader involvement is crucial to ad recall, and the proven formula is tied to a working number, a newly remodeled Involvement Index. After interviewing readers of the five largest-circulation magazines (Reader's Digest, National Geographic, Better Homes and Gardens, People and TV Guide), Knowledge Networks found that highly involved readers were three times more likely to recall ads than the readers with average levels of involvement. What's more, highly involved readers were nearly 10 times more likely than low-involvement readers to recall advertising. This is based on interviews in which more than 1,000 readers of the five publications' March and April 2003 issues were asked about five specific ads on both aided and unaided bases. The study was commissioned by the Magazine Involvement Alliance, a group of magazines (Reader's Digest, National Geographic, Country Living, FamilyFun, Golf Digest, Guideposts, Smithsonian and The Family Handyman) dedicated to bringing audience quality, not merely size, to the forefront of magazine selection (not simply as a tie-breaker) Our goal in this research was threefold: to precisely determine the connection between reader involvement and ad recall, to identify the readership factors that most contribute to recall, and to adjust the Involvement Index formula according to what's proven to work In the past year, there has been considerable debate over the most meaningful readership measures. So we had Knowledge Networks test all nine MRI qualitative measures as well as two other "non-MRI" measures which are used to demonstrate reader involvement. They found that frequency (reading four of four issues), reading time (spending at least 31 minutes per issue), and preference (citing the magazine as "one of my favorites") make the most impact on unaided ad recall. Contrary to a report published in Media Post, the Knowledge Networks study did not pit magazines against TV. Rather, the research explained 15% of the reason why participants recall ads, which compares favorably with the leading TV recall research that explained 12% of participants' ad recall. The point: The magazine involvement-recall research confirmed the benefit of including reader involvement as an integral part of magazine evaluation. Involvement is one of the only factors proven to move the needle in ad recall. Many other factors that are popular criteria for defining "wantedness" in media planning, such as ABC's "average price paid" measure , have yet to be proven out. Most important for advertisers is that this is not a theoretical finding. The high-recall formula is tied to a readily usable tool, the Involvement Index. Knowledge Networks established a new model for the Index that brings it directly in line with what the survey proved actually spurs recall. A new default for the Index will be based 51% on reading frequency, 25% on reading time and 24% on magazine preference as measured by MRI. At a time when most advertisers recognize that truly connecting with consumers--rather than just flitting messages in front of their eyes--is the key to establishing a brand conversation and ultimately converting a customer, arguably nothing is more important than pinpointing this ROI connection. Ultimately, everyone wants to know how reader involvement contributes to product sales. In truth, that Holy Grail of advertising is many years away, at best. A magazine's role in advertising is to provide the environment for advertisers' ads to be seen, and highly involving magazines best allow brand advantages and creative to resonate. The Knowledge Networks study has provided a critical link in the impact chain, which starts with ad recall. What's more, that link is usable today. A number of mega-agencies are already putting it to use, to significant advantage for their clients.