Already facing an antitrust suit alleging that it is maintaining its "monopoly by securing, from time to time, multi-year, staggered contracts," with big TV companies, Nielsen Media Research Tuesday announced an extension of its first such long-term contract: It's a "landmark" seven-year contract with Time Warner. Nielsen said it has negotiated a three-year extension to its existing agreement with Time Warner for both national and local TV ratings, including its controversial local people meter (LPM) services in New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta. Like its original contract--which was negotiated in 1998 by former Time Warner research czar Scott McDonald, who is now head of research at Conde Nast--it covers Time Warner's broadcast, cable, and syndication business units, including Time Warner Cable, Turner Broadcasting, The WB Television Network, HBO, Court TV, and Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution. The agreement provides the Time Warner businesses with national and local television audience estimates, including LPM service for Time Warner Cable in New York and Los Angeles and for WTBS in Atlanta. In addition, the agreement enables both companies to share information and to work together to develop and test new television measurement systems. When the original agreement was struck, it was hailed as a blueprint for the kind of long-term deals Nielsen hoped to lock up with other major television clients. Although they vary in tenure, Nielsen has secured multi-year agreements with most of its major clients, largely on the basis that there is no viable alternative in the marketplace. Nielsen rival erinMedia, and its sister company ReacTV, last week filed an antitrust suit seeking an injunctive relief to break Nielsen's long-term agreements on the basis that they prevent new competitors from entering the market. "These contracts are for terms of approximately four to seven years, and generally terminate at significantly different times," alleged the suit, which added: "Upon information and belief, [Nielsen Media Research] imposes steep financial penalties on customers who refuse to enter into long-term agreements. By strategically staggering the termination dates of these contracts, [Nielsen] has acted to entrench its monopoly by making it essentially impossible for erinMedia, or any other competitor, to challenge [Nielsen] as the currency for national television ratings in the industry generally or in any segment of the industry."
NFL advertising sales is selling strongly and at higher price increase levels than against the prime-time adult programming upfront market just concluded, say media buyers. Coming on the heels of the somewhat lackluster upfront prime-time market, media buyers say that NFL programming on CBS, ESPN, Fox and ABC is being priced, on average, anywhere from 6% to 8% versus a year ago. These increases are higher than the 4% to 5% price increases the broadcast prime-time general-interest programming received a few weeks ago. NFL inventory has been moving more rapidly. "We are definitely pacing ahead of last year," said one veteran network advertising sales executive. "For ESPN, some weeks are already sold out," said Geoff Robison, senior vp of national broadcast for Palisades Media Group. Media buyers say other networks are in the same position. ABC's "Monday Night Football" is about 50% or more sold so far. Much of that comes from its incumbent advertisers such as Anheuser-Busch, Toyota Motor Sales, and other auto companies. The first "MNF" game and the first "Sunday Night Football" game on ESPN are already sold out. Executives at ABC and Fox had no comment. A CBS spokesman could not be reached by press time. Unlike the adult prime-time market, sports has kept its attraction--and its media budgets high--among pharmaceutical brands such as the erectile-dysfunction drugs, and automobile brands, especially the imports. The NFL has been a consistent ratings performer, and has given advertisers less on-air commercial glut. For example, the NFL has a limit of 90-second commercial pods; some prime-time shows can be as high as 150-seconds long. The NFL's prime male viewer audience is traditionally hard to get for advertisers. This places them in higher demand than, say, the adult 18-49 viewers. For the last few years, adult viewers ages 18-49 have been eroding anywhere from 3% to 8% per year--although this season, viewers 18-49 eked out a slight, and rare, 1% gain. "Male viewers [overall] are eroding faster than adults 18-49 viewers," said Robison. Network sales executives say male viewer erosion is slower with sports. All this makes sports, like the NFL, attractive. That means sizable price increases. Healthy price hikes are also finding their way to Major League Baseball games on Fox for its October playoffs and World Series. The network's selling pace is 10% higher than a year ago, according to media executives.
The not guilty verdict reached by jurors in the Michael Jackson child molestation trial not only saved Jacko from the slammer, but the outcome may have led to a resuscitated career for the one-time "King of Pop." Radio airplay increased dramatically after the decision was handed down on June 13, according to Mediabase 24/7, the Premiere Radio Networks-owned research company said Monday. For the three days leading up to the verdict, June 10-12, Jackson airplay from his solo career and The Jackson 5 totaled 1,043 plays on Mediabase's 1,528 monitored radio stations. The number of spins nearly tripled to a total of 3,013 from June 10-15, said Rich Meyer, Mediabase's president. According to Mediabase, the top 10 most played tracks were as follows: 1) "Billie Jean," 2) "Beat It," 3) "Rock With You," 4) "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough," 5) "Thriller," 6) "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'," 7) "Bad," 8) "P.Y.T." (Pretty Young Thing), 9) "The Way You Make Me Feel," and 10) "Smooth Criminal." Mediabase 24/7 provides research to more than 1,650 affiliate radio stations in the United States and Canada on a barter-subscription basis, and it monitors more than 1,700 radio stations in 175 U.S. and Canadian markets. "There was an absolute spike in airplay subsequent to the reading of the verdict," said Meyer. "Only time will tell whether the increased airplay will be sustained." The Jackson verdict was also good to Court TV. According to Nielsen Media Research, nearly 31 million viewers watched the Michael Jackson verdict live Monday on 13 networks. But when the Jackson verdict was announced between 5:00 and 5:15 p.m., Court TV delivered a record 3.4 household rating, equating to 3.4 million total viewers--the largest audience ever delivered by Court TV, said Carole Shander, a Court TV representative. Court TV also scored impressive demographic ratings: 1.4 adults 18-49 and 1.6 adults 25-54--both figures ranking number one among cable news networks, Shander said.
Microsoft's Xbox 360 is poised to take an early lead in the market of next-generation console-based video game systems, and the flood of titles for all three systems--Xbox 360, Sony's PS3, and Nintendo Revolution--will drive the U.S. market for console software to more than $8.1 billion by 2008, according to preliminary projections of a study scheduled to be released next week by Kagan Research. By 2010, Kagan estimates that 54 million U.S. households will own at least one console system, and most will own both a fixed and portable system. Xbox360, Kagan projects, will capture a majority of the initial market share among the next-generation consoles, due to its early release date--the console is expected to be out late this year, with the Revolution slated for an early 2006 release and the PS3 following in Spring '06. The study predicts that in 2006, the Xbox 360 will have a market share of 54 percent, followed by the PS3 at 27 percent and the Revolution at 19 percent. In 2007, however, the Xbox 360 will lose its lead to the PS3, dropping to a market share of 37 percent, with the PS3 capturing 45 percent. In the last round of the console wars, the earliest entrant, the Sega Dreamcast, was roundly defeated by the PS2, GameCube, and Xbox--in 2001, Sega discontinued the manufacture of the system, and now only produces software titles for other platforms. But according to study author Irina Mulvey, an analyst with Kagan, Microsoft has a better chance at taking advantage of its early release date. "Microsoft has the backing of all major software makers in the United States, and they have commitments and agreements in place already," she said. There will be enough titles on the market to achieve this market share." According to Mulvey, the higher prices of the next-generation titles will drive the increase in software sales, from over $6.5 billion by the end of 2005 to $8.1 billion in 2008. Although the higher prices could lead each consumer to purchase fewer games, Mulvey said, higher adoption rates and the increase of the number of households that own game consoles will overwhelm any depressed demand.
Phase III language is the language of motivation and selling. It should be where the Phase I language of intimacy and the Phase II language of learning come together. But the marketing and advertising industries are currently truncated, mired in the growing inertia of Phase II. Our reliance on and fealty to our own communications technologies prevent us from expending the requisite effort to synthesize our language, and come at the further expense of the already orphaned creative culture. We're far too consumed with the minutiae of getting there to imagine where we're going in the first place. What we say now takes a backseat to how quickly and frequently we can say it. The inertia that surrounds our industry is very much a byproduct of our obsession with it. Inertia surrounds and shields our addictions like a protective carapace, and is why obsessive compulsive behavior patterns are so tough to bust. The digital age mantra of faster smarter better simply becomes a faster smarter better rationale for the same old same old. The most self-consumed industry of all nowadays, the one most immersed in its own inertia, is the media industry. The folks perhaps least capable of recovery, perhaps least capable of evolving Phase III language, are the selfsame folks who need it most: the scions of advertising and marketing. Advertisers beware. Be careful what you ask for. Your manic quest for ever-faster, ever-smarter, ever-better will generate little more than less, little more than DROI - diminished return on investment. Your agencies are rapidly losing their ability to fashion Phase III language, the language that defines your brand. They can only deliver a diminished brand message. In the end, faster smarter better is neither smarter nor better. Only faster. Of course, faster smarter better wouldn't be so bad were it not for the fact that consumers are also faster, smarter, and better at avoiding advertising. It's quite possible that P&G now delivers 2 billion daily ad impressions because consumers have discovered how to avoid, block, or skip past the first 1,999,999,999. But if advertisers want someone -- anyone -- to stick around for the delivery of their ads, they might want to insist upon and institutionalize the only compelling component of good advertising: good creative. That initiative can only come from the client side now that almost all of the rogue creative cultures driven by rogue creative people are gone, devoured whole by the major media holding groups. The agency community at large is far too reactive to help itself, far too addicted to its own Kool Aid to emerge with any measure of sobriety without some sort of massive intervention. No such Phase III initiative can occur, however, unless and until clients make room for it between their own ears. The agencies will follow, as always. What do you think? Addicted to Einstein's Corner? Find your next fix at Jeff Einstein's weblog -- Einstein's Corner -- at http://einsteinscorner.com.