For the stock market, two straight monstrously big days--Thursday and Friday--rocketed many media company shares to similarly strong results. All this came after a wild week in which the Dow Jones Industrial Average managed to regain virtually all that it lost, down just 40 points on the week to 11,388.44. This followed a week in which the major indices were all up and down 3% to 4% or more for 4 of 5 days. Media analysts believe most media companies went along for the ride. It probably didn't hurt that media executives were not ruffled by current stock market volatility. Major media executives--the likes of News Corp. Rupert Murdoch, CBS Corp.'s Les Moonves, and others--spoke at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference last week, offering positive news in many areas such as the steadily improved trending of network and cable advertising revenue. On Friday, the biggest capitalized media companies took strong gains similar to the markets indices--News Corp. was up 5% to $13.99; Time Warner was 4.3% higher to $14.55; Viacom added 3.7% to climb to $26.90; and Walt Disney improved 2.8% to reach $34.39. Some of the smaller capitalized broadcast and cable-specific stocks showed bigger improvements. The best came from TV station group Nexstar Broadcasting, which soared 10.5% to $3.37. Journal Communications rose 7.5% to $5.85, and Mediacom Communications had a 6% hike to $7.35. On the cable system side of the business, Cablevision System Corp. blossomed a big 8.4% to $27.53. Charter Communications was up 4.3% to $0.98.
Based on interest in the recent political conventions, this Friday's debate will easily be the most-watched presidential faceoff ever. By how much is anyone's guess. Nielsen reported last week that 65% of U.S. homes and 120 million people tuned in to at least one of the conventions. Those homes did have seven days to tune in, and could have done so for just six minutes. (Due to the hurricane, the GOP event was only three days.) However, the figures are undoubtedly an indicator of how engaged Americans are in the campaign. Watching Barack Obama and John McCain go head-to-head this Friday on domestic policy--especially with the economy in trouble--would seem to be a bigger draw than speeches delivered to adoring crowds. The Nielsen figures also hinted that the election may prove to be extremely close. McCain's and Obama's acceptance speeches each drew 29% of U.S. homes. The story was different when it came to the vice presidential candidates' acceptance speeches. The curiosity surrounding Republican Sarah Palin helped bring in the same 29% of homes as McCain. Democrat Joe Biden attracted only 17%. Beyond the curiosity factor, there was the verbosity factor. Nielsen reported that Palin's 39-minute speech may have helped her build tune-in. Biden--sometimes labeled as long-winded--spoke for 23 minutes. The Nielsen data showed that 15% of U.S. households watched only the Republican convention, and 16% just the Democrats. Some 34% watched both. Nielsen reported that 23% of households who solely watched the Republicans had household incomes of $100,000-plus, compared to 14% who watched only the Democrats. Some 21% of homes watching just the Democrats had a head of the household who was African-American, compared to 7% who viewed solely the GOP. While there has been some talk that Democrats appeal to younger voters, 22% of homes watching only the Democrats had a head of the household under 35, compared to 20% for GOP-only viewers.
Broadcasters and manufacturers have begun to offer more consumer data services along with their HD digital radio, according to iBiquity Digital Corporation, which developed the underlying technology and has long touted such services as a way to gain traction with listeners. The new data services include features like real-time traffic reports, concierge-type information about movies, sports and weather, and on-screen program data. Currently, more than 1,750 radio stations have introduced digital broadcasts, which exploit previously unused parts of the frequency to deliver up to three new channels for each station. On the hardware side, manufacturers like Polk Audio and Jensen have introduced receivers that allow listeners to "tag" songs they like in radio airplay for purchase with iTunes. The radios come with an iPod dock, so listeners can simply transfer the song tags to their iPod and then sync up the device with their computer, which will automatically download the songs. Alpine is making receivers with the same capability for cars. In addition, 12 radio groups are developing a nationwide network to distribute information about traffic and local business in partnership with Navteq. A personal navigation device, similar to a GPS system, is also expected to be introduced in the next few years. Also, Microsoft has scheduled a first-quarter launch for "MSN Direct HD," which will offer traffic information, a radio program guide, weather, gas prices, movie information, news and stock information. Some of the most interesting initiatives come from NPR, which is using the data delivery technology to broadcast captioned versions of radio airplay for people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. For visually impaired listeners who prefer to listen to the news, NPR is introducing a new broadcast called "Digital Radio Reading Channel," with announcers reading the text of daily newspaper, book and magazine articles. This broadcast relies on the same basic digital capability as the data services, using HD's "conditional access" option to send content to specific receivers (i.e., to the listeners who opt in). Despite the promise of CD-quality sound, however, HD radio has not captured the popular imagination (or pocketbook) to the degree hoped by the HD Digital Radio Alliance, an industry consortium created to promote radio's digital offerings.
Ad revenues continued to decline at leading newspaper publishers in August, in some cases by double digits. The New York Times Co. reported that advertising revenue declined 14% to $110.6 million, while Media General posted a more modest 4.4% decline. The July-August declines at NYTCO, Media General, Gannett, McClatchy, Lee and Scripps prompted Deutsche Bank analyst David Clark to warn that "industry trends softened across all categories" between the second quarter and the first two months of the third. That points to an even more dismal second half of the year. "Based on the monthly results for GCI, MNI, NYT and MEG, we believe the trends have weakened for newspapers across the category spectrum" in the third quarter, Clark wrote. His calculations of the medium's overall performance were certainly sobering, with classifieds down 28% in the first two months of the third quarter, retail down 9.4%, and national down 12.9%. Overall total advertising was down 17.2%--paving the way for the steepest quarterly drop in recent history. According to the Newspaper Association of America, through the second quarter of 2008, total ad revenue has declined in year-over-year comparisons for eight quarters straight, meaning that current losses are compounding two years of previous losses. Worse, the declines appear to be accelerating, from a 1.5% drop in the second quarter of 2006 to an 8.6% drop in the same period of 2007, and 15.11% in 2008.
Many Generation X and Y fathers are more involved with their children's lives and more likely to make regular product purchases--not just the home electronics or riding lawnmower buys, confirms a new study from Packaged Facts, authored by Silver Stork Research. Marketers looking to reach beyond mothers to tap into this "Dad Factor" need to stop reflexively "thinking pink" and gear their brands' media outreach and benefits positioning to these new fathers, say the Silver Stork analysts. The report, "The U.S. Dads Market: A Unique Profile of Fathers, Their Attitudes, Values and Behavior as Consumers," is based on primary research conducted over a three-year period, including two recently fielded online surveys of more than 500 U.S. fathers. Of the estimated 66 million U.S. fathers, half are reported to be full-time fathers, and a growing number are single-parent heads of households. The total number of fathers is expected to grow nearly 10% over the next decade as Gen Y's age into the parenthood years. The shift to the "new dad" mentality is happening, but gradually: Currently, one in four fathers report being "very involved" with the daily activities of their children. Growing segments for exploration by marketers include single, gay and Hispanic fathers. Who are these new generations of dads? They are less defined by gender stereotypes and see much less of a dividing line between men and women--partly as a result of their upbringing and partly as a result of being married to women who work and are more active and individualistic than previous generations. Therefore, these dads approach parenthood with a team attitude. Gen X and Y dads are positive, comfortable with their gender, optimistic about being parents (focused on the opportunities of providing for their children), and much more active consumers than dads of previous generations. Key facts about newer-generation dads and marketing effectively to them, per the report:
CW seems to continue its winning ways and make headlines--this time with "Supernatural." But don't break out the champagne just yet. The show performed its best numbers ever on Thursday night, reaching a Nielsen preliminary 1.5/5--some 25% better than last year's premiere--as well as posting 4 million viewers, about one-third better than last year's debut. In 2007, the show averaged 1.3 million viewers. The show also raised its 18-49 numbers 42% to a 1.7/5. Along with solid results for its other Thursday drama--the 8-year-old "Smallville," which has a 1.8/6 in adults 18-34--CW owned the younger demo on the night with an average 1.7/5 among 18-34 viewers. That said, the full arsenal of broadcast network premieres have yet to roll out on Thursdays, which will mean tougher competition in the coming weeks. "Supernatural" in the 9 p.m. time slot competes with heavyweights such as "ABC's Grey's Anatomy" and CBS' "CSI." For the night overall, among broader 18-49 viewers, Fox came out on top with an average 2.4/7. For its "Kitchen Nightmares" at 9 p.m., Fox took a 2.8 rating--the best-rated show of the evening. CBS was second to Fox at a 2.3/7. The Eye network got some decent results from its summer series "Flashpoint," earning a 2.6/7 at 10 p.m. and a 2.5/7 from a "CSI" repeat at 9:00 p.m. Univision was next at 1.9/6. Its "Al Diablo con los Guapos" tied NBC's "America's Got Talent" with a 2.3 for the top numbers at 8 p.m. ABC, NBC and CW all tied for fourth at 1.8/5.
More TV afternoon doctors are on the way. With the syndication season just one week old, Sony Pictures Television has sold "Dr. Oz" to 14 major markets, including Fox stations in the top three: New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The show is scheduled to start next year. Deals to carry the new medical program have also been struck on stations from TV groups such as Gannett, Post-Newsweek Stations, Belo, Scripps, McGraw Hill, Hearst-Argyle Television and Fisher Communications. "Dr. Oz" is a co-production of Oprah Winfrey's "Harpo Productions" and Sony. Mehmet Oz is a regular guest of Oprah Winfrey. Last week, CBS Television Distribution launched "The Doctors," a spinoff from the "Dr. Phil" show. It debuted to the highest household ratings of any new syndicated show this season. "Dr. Phil" is a co-production of CBS Television and Harpo.
Leading up to Media magazine's September 22nd Creative Media Awards in New York, MediaDailyNews will publish the synopses of the three finalists in various CMA categories. The complete lineup can be viewed here. Finalists in the "Creative" category include: Fallon's "Tin Man" campaign for Sci Fi Channel; MindShare's "The Rookie" campaign for Unilever/Degree for Men; and Starcom Canada's campaign for Diageo/Johnnie Walker.
In 1975, my father was the executive in charge of sales at IBM in northeast Ohio, then a thriving business epicenter. The world still considered the electric typewriter the greatest advancement in word processing, and IBM was preparing to deliver its second generation Selectric model. The Selectric II had a Dual Pitch option to allow it to be switched between 10 and 12 characters per inch. This was an exciting differentiation for Dad's sales team to exploit while on sales calls to Goodyear Tire & Rubber, LTV Steel, General Tire, Goodrich and Smucker's. Some 700 miles east, a Harvard student named Bill Gates was skipping his pre-law classes, thinking about the keystroke as an instrument in a symphony of functionality, rather than an end to itself. He saw computing power as a way to unleash human creativity and productivity. Soon after dropping out of college, he joined Paul Allen to test his dream. I find an analogy to today's world: In September 2008, the media planning and buying industry finds itself in a similar situation: Are we in the manual typewriter mode, the Selectric II phase, or that fuzzy point in-between when few grasp what the next level looks like? Working in the advertising and media buying industries for almost a quarter-century, I have experienced all phases, and am excited we ourselves in a time of enlightenment. In my current work at MediaBank, I am witnessing first-hand the industry's rapid adoption of new technologies and digital tools, such as our media-buying platform, which makes daily operations better and more efficient. People are beginning to depart from the legacy platforms that can no longer achieve the best results. But I worry that many are held back by the false satisfaction of steady but incremental progress that sustained Selectric II loyalists. The status quo is our industry's biggest threat. What's critical to digest: Small steps are no longer sufficient. It's time to understand fully what a dearth of innovation can do to your business -- and your future. When MediaBank entered this industry, we took very meticulous notice. We found a few monolithic and archaic software platforms that nearly the entire media planning and buying industry used. We saw progress in the business of media buying crippled by these legacy platforms. We saw the investment, maturity,and growth of digital advertising being affected by systems not designed for this exciting, targeted, data-filled medium. While nearly every other industry in this country has focused on enhanced efficiency and information-centric decision making, media buying has failed to keep up. The legacy platform and its 40-year-old technology inhibited knowledge and innovation. How could this occur? How does an industry that handles more than $350 billion of annual media spend in the U.S., generates daily coverage day in The Wall Street Journal and shapes the tastes and desires of consumers worldwide, constrained itself? Software should enable innovation, not inhibit it. Consider the radical progress underway in nearly every corner of the media planning and buying landscape. There's Google. Its continuous flow of new tools and software to buy and plan all forms of digital media seeks to harness digital media data with innovations that let buyers employ its clicks and measure performance ever more precisely and accurately. There's Comscore, Quantcast, Nielsen and countless other companies spending hundreds of millions to better quantify who consumes what media where and how. Sure, these companies stand to gain handsomely if they are successful at changing the status quo, but that's the very way industries are disrupted! Ad exchanges seem to be popping up every week and adding elements of auction and barter to the ad network concept. Savvy companies like Acxiom, Navic and Experian are doing their part to get in the game by adding behavioral, demographic and predictive data to traditional viewership data. They're offering previously unavailable visibility to the personality of viewers. Broadcasters and publishers, too, are attempting to bundle media, e.g. Yahoo! Intel recently announced plans to bring Web content to your television; it also seeks to develop multiple strategies (sponsorship and product placement) to drive higher revenues from the same content. The mobile device is becoming a staple in the hands of consumers worldwide, and marketers are ready to take advantage. Consider the overarching question: What enables media buyers to make sense of this innovation? Further, how do they use the innovations in the marketplace, as well as become innovators? Without flexible, transparent and modern technology tools to power the operations of media planning and buying, no efficient way exists for a buyer to access the spectrum of innovative tools introduced into the marketplace. Without media buying operations technology that allows buyers and advertisers to see all data all the time, buyers will drown in a sea of data that has no meaning, or worse, lose all interest in cultivating this innovation. Consider that in 1975, the average media spend per transaction stood in the thousands range as only three major TV networks existed. It then slid to the hundreds of dollars range when the long tail of cable matured in the 1980s. Now, it rests in the tens (or ones) of dollars range as digital media assumes a predominant role on the media landscape. The result? Infinitely more transactions for the same amount of media spend, less dollars per transaction, and a tidal wave of data. If your technology platform does not make you the master of your data, allowing you to harness it for leverage and efficiency, then you are dangerously close to going the way of the Selectric II. Consider that the legacy media buying operations technology requires a weekend to produce management-level reporting. Are you a manager who decides on Monday afternoon that you need a summary report? Sorry, you must wait until next Monday morning because that report can't be run until the weekend! Even worse, you can't run a report across all media types because the legacy technology separates media on different databases. The print report is on island A; the spot TV report is on island B. We at MediaBank know the industry does not want to tolerate this state of affairs. Our largest reports take just seconds to run, at any time, and can be run across every media type in one report. We propose that it is self-defeating to run a multimillion dollar or multibillion dollar business without such tools. We believe the vision for the future of media buying and planning integrates all current and future media tools, all current and future innovation in data and targeting, and all current and future advances in the buy-and-sell transaction into a consolidated platform. Financial professionals spend their days on Bloomberg, which integrates all available data in real time and provides its own analytics platform for financial professionals to make sense of data. Similarly, we believe media planning and buying professionals need one platform that integrates all available data in real time, provides its own analytical platform for continuous insight and intelligence, and allows media buyers to make informed, intelligent decisions. How does this transition take place? How does the revolution happen? Right before your eyes, it's happening now -- and the decision that media buyers and agencies must make is whether they are satisfied with their version of the Selectric II or whether ready for breakthrough technology. A great operations and analytics platform delivers integration to all available forms of viewership, targeting and demographic information. It is built on modern, flexible technology to accommodate its operational efficiency. It has its own analytics platform that allows your buyers to make smarter, more data-informed decisions, and then allows them to provide more intelligence and value-add to their clients. It also provides intuitive interfaces that allows the evolution of buyer-seller efficiency (be it ad exchanges, auctions, or something else) to find the buyer at the point of decision making. In essence, if a buyer is doing the job right and researching ratings to target, say, males ages 17-25 in Atlanta, shouldn't the operational platform provide, in real time, all offers from all publishers and broadcasters across all media types? Why should the buyer have to hunt these down on a variety of ad exchanges and auctions? And, why wouldn't the operations platform have the capability to bring these opportunities to the buyer without foregoing the screen? We believe a media-buying operations platform should do all of this - and more. And you shouldn't be satisfied with anything less. So where does this lead? Is there an end to innovation? Obviously, in the case of media buying technology, if you are satisfied with legacy technology, you may want to throw out your computer and buying yourself a Selectric II. But if you understand that your clients will be examining your efficiency, information transparency and choice of operational technology platforms in your next business review, you may want to re-consider the ties that bind all innovation to your operations. That tie is your operational platform. It's your business' central nervous system. It matters. It is the key to your future efficiency, flexibility, profitability and innovation. A wise Buddhist monk once said: "The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is right now." For your technology platform, the time is now.