Asked to envision the brightest future for TV, Outfront panelists all pointed to a more effective and quantifiable way to measure the medium’s aggregate impact on consumers. It’s about “connecting ad dollars to backend” consumer behavior, said Brian Hughes, VP, Director of Audience Analysis at Magna Global. Indeed, the TV marketing ecosystem needs more “visibility,” in the words of Colleen Fahey Rush, Chief Research Officer at MTV Networks. To that point, it’s about “understanding consumers’ complete relationship with [advertising] and how that carries all the way through to purchases and what it does for the advertiser on the backend,” said …

Nielsen efforts to measure TV ratings on extended digital video screens of full TV episodes are coming. But not everyone is cheering. "This is totally a 1.0 solution," says Colleen Fahey Rush, chief research officer of MTV Networks, speaking at MediaPost's Outfront event. Nielsen will release its first wave of extended screen viewing data on April 25. Brian Hughes, vp and director of audience analysis for MagnaGlobal, says it is limiting -- that Nielsen will only ascribe digital video viewing for those TV sellers only if they run the same exact number of commercials of shows online as …

That's how Donna Speciale, President, Investment & Activation and Agency Operations, MediaVest USA, explains a lot of the surge in demand for the TV scatter marketplace, and predictions of a strong upfront. "There are a lot of other categories that are going to lend themselves to, guess, what, advertising works," Speciale said, citing an explosion of spending by technology marketers like Apple, Microsoft, and Google, as well as insurance marketers like GEICO. "Ratings are down," she said, explaining another factor pushing prices up. "We have more demand, and we have greater supply. That's just the way it goes." …

Who knew, but MTV mogul Judy McGrath grew up in Scranton, the setting of NBC's "The Office," and, according to McGrath, a nice, authentic place to grow up. She noted that the NBC series does a good job of capturing the "sweetness and love that people have for town's like Scranton." In fact, she recalled running into her old next-door neighbor, who inquired whether she still resides in New York City, which she told him, she does. "Gee, it's a shame you couldn't find anything around here," the Scrantonian consoled her.

Responding to a probing question about MTV Networks' digital media strategy, Judy McGrath noted that failures sometimes end up being successes among digital media moguls. "What I am very happy about is that we are the company that didn't get Myspace," she noted, alluding to the bidding war that parent Viacom lost vis a vis Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Only a roomful of TV ad buyers and sellers would give an ovation to a clip showing incessant product placement plugs, but after David Goetzl cued up a clip of Stephen Colbert's clever "Bing" integration – for the Microsoft search engine – the crowd at MediaPost's Outfront conference broke out into spontaneous applause.

Was Judy McGrath, Chairman and CEO of MTV Networks, surprised about the advertiser backlash to 'Skins'? Not so much, she tells attendees of Media Magazine’s 2011 Outfront Conference. “I was disappointed,” McGrath said of advertisers' response to the network’s highly provocative series. Yet, “I knew that when we picked up that format … we knew it was provocative.” Despite what The Parents Television Council says about the teen drama, Skins could still see another season -- but no word yet on that from McGrath or the network. Regarding MTV’s digital strategy, McGrath insisted you can never be totally satisfied …

Shifts in MTV Network's Spike are coming. But don't look for many body slams. The network which has had WWE wrestling and other young skewing men's programming, will be getting a different look for men. "Spike became a little to much Maxim," says Judy McGrath, chairman/CEO of MTV Networks, in speaking at MediaPost's Outfront event. "We probably went too far down that path," she says. "We want it to be come more Esquire." She says it's better for that network to have a broader male audience.

In the spirit of MTV Networks' counter-intuitive programming logic, CEO Judy McGrath explained the toning up of Spike. Using some men's magazine analogies, McGrath said, ""Spike had been getting a little too Maxim, and we wanted it to be a little more Esquire."

Sitcoms for millennials? This isn't for MTV networks' young audience, which is why many of its reality shows may work better. "They like the punch line first," says Judy McGrath, chairman/CEO of MTV Networks, at MediaPost's Outfront event. She who notes that sitcoms like "Seinfeld" and the like just don't register. Characters like Borat and others are the more important, she says. McGrath point is that research shows its audience wants the immediate entertainment value.