In another strong indication that the advertising recovery is sustainable, U.S. advertisers and agencies continue to be near their most confident levels of future ad-spending plans, according to the latest installment of the Advertiser Optimism Index from ad industry B-to-B researcher Advertiser Perceptions. The findings, which reflect the sentiment of advertisers and agencies surveyed during October and November 2011, show their second-highest levels of confidence to increase their ad budgets over the next year since the global economic recession began in 2008. While the index dropped two points from AP’s last semi-annual survey in the spring of 2011, it remains near its highest point overall, and individually for most of the major media. In fact, every major medium with the exception of broadcast TV -- which was flat -- and mobile -- which dropped one index point -- increased its level of optimism from the spring 2011 survey. While mobile dropped a point, it remains the highest overall index -- a 60 -- representing the difference in percentage points of respondents who said they were likely to increase, versus those who planned to decrease their ad budgets over the next 12 months. The overall “digital” category gained four points to an index of 52, and cable TV picked up two for an index of 21. Broadcast TV was flat at an index of 5. Magazines gained nine points to an index of 0. And while newspapers continue to be in negative territory, the medium improved six points to an index of -18. News of the improvement in U.S. advertising sentiment comes a day after U.K.-based WARC released an update of its worldwide ad-spending index indicating that the U.S. was helping to sustain a global advertising expansion across the globe, and news that another key ad market -- Japan -- was recovering dramatically from the ad market infrastructure issues caused by last year’s earthquake and tsunami.
Like many TV station groups, the E.W. Scripps Company had some good news/bad news results from its fourth-quarter 2011 reporting period. The good: It witnessed double-digit revenue gains from non-political revenues for its TV stations. The bad: When adding in those nonpolitical activities, Scripps was at $84.7 million in revenues for the period -- a 16% decline compared with $101 million in the year-ago period. The television division's profit in the fourth quarter was down to $22.3 million versus $37.3 million in Q4 2010. Looking over a two-year period -- which is how many TV stations groups analyze their results because of big political and Olympic advertising revenues every other year -- Scripps said it had a 15% gain in revenue from the same period in 2009. Going forward, Scripps TV group hopes to benefit from more outlets. During the period it closed on an acquisition of nine television stations from McGraw-Hill Broadcasting. For the period, local advertising revenue was up 14% to $49.4 million; national spot advertising was flat at $23.2 million; political was cut down by almost 90% of what it was in the fourth quarter 2010, to $3.5 million compared with $28.1 million. Growing revenue streams were retransmission consent agreements, which improved 30% to $3.9 million, and digital business revenue, which rose 21% to $2.7 million. Newspapers -- as is evident in the industry overall -- continued to slide. Total revenue from Scripps newspapers fell 3.3% to $110 million in the fourth quarter of 2011. It was the third consecutive quarter of declines. Circulation revenue was flat at $30.7 million; print advertising revenue was down 5.1% to $67.8 million. Rich Boehne, president and CEO of E. W. Scripps, stated that late last year, the company "launched a series of paid news and weather apps that represent the next generation of market-defining digital products," believing they will be a "valuable digital marketplace for services, built upon high-quality local news content."
TiVo, the maker of DVRs and advanced television platforms for pay-TV operators, reported net income of nearly $7.2 million for the fourth quarter on a 19% net revenue gain to $66.5 million. For the full year, the company posted net income of nearly $102.2 million versus an $84.5 million loss for the prior-year period, on a 9% net revenue gain to $238.2 million. Contributing to the solid gains were two lucrative legal settlements over DVR patent disputes that netted the company more than $800 million, including a $600 million settlement with satellite TV operator Dish Network and a minimum $215 million settlement with AT&T. The company has at least one more major patent infringement suit pending, against Verizon. TiVo officials indicated Thursday that a trial in that case is likely to start in late 2012. Business continues to grow as it licenses its DVR and advanced TV platforms to pay TV providers in the U.S and abroad. Total net subscriptions increased by 234,000 in the fourth quarter -- the highest quarterly gain in almost six years, the company said. TiVo now has license deals with Comcast, DirecTV, RCN, Grande, Charter, Suddenlink, the UK’s Virgin Media, and Spain’s Ono. Total subscriptions were up about 11% for the year, to 2.3 million. Currently, its subscriptions account for “under 10%” of the total subscriber count of the companies it has licensing agreements with, said TiVo CEO Tom Rogers, suggesting that TiVo has a lot of growth potential with existing clients. The company recently completed a deal with AT&T U-Verse to access the service’s set-top-box viewing data for TiVo’s advertising research and measurement business. Rogers noted that some critics wanted the company to add households with non-TiVo boxes to its research database, and that the AT&T deal should help address the concerns of those critics. TiVo also recently did a deal with set-top-box maker Pace, enabling its boxes to access TiVo services. Thus, the Pace agreement could also potentially help increase subscriptions, Rogers said. Later this year, TiVo also plans to unveil a new Internet-based box enabling subscribers to sync TiVo with second-screen devices, enhancing what the company calls its “whole home solution.”
A month after Univision landed its first distribution deal for its three forthcoming cable networks, the company said it is in discussions with other potential operators and expects to conclude arrangements. Dish Network broke the ice with a January deal to carry the sports, news and telenovela outlets as part of a package targeting Hispanics. The deal gives it exclusive rights for a second sports channel. The networks are targeted for an April 1 debut. Univision declined comment on reports about a partnership with ABC News. Somewhat dispiriting for Univision’s local station business, even with the increased importance of the Hispanic electorate, the company’s stations -- save Florida -- are not located in the most hotly contested areas. “Unfortunately, the swing states don’t line up well with our stations,” said CFO Andy Hobson on an earnings call. The campaign, however, could evolve to boost its stations in Philadelphia, Phoenix and Raleigh. Univision said it is investing in a political ad sales force. Univision CEO Randy Falco addressed the upcoming national upfront market -- suggesting it is early to gain more than general visibility -- but ratings growth should help, particularly in the 18-to-49 demo, where 70% of the dollars are committed. Also, ad sales in the second quarter -- the one before the upfront bazaar -- look promising. Overall, Univision reported that its television business, which includes several networks and local stations, posted an 8.6% revenue increase in the fourth quarter to $516.8 million. An increase at the local station business marked a sharp reversal from the double-digit percentage declines in the first three quarters of 2011.
Friday brought more discouraging news for newspaper publishers, with the Washington Post Company announcing another round of revenue declines in the fourth quarter of 2011. WaPo’s total revenues declined 10% to $1.06 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011, due to declines at the company’s newspaper publishing, education, and broadcast TV divisions. Revenues were flat at WaPo’s cable TV division. Full-year revenues also declined 10% to $4.21 billion in 2011. Total revenues for the newspaper publishing division declined 4% to $181 million in Q4. This was attributed mostly to continuing declines in print advertising revenue at The Washington Post, which sank 6% to $77.1 million. For the full year, newspaper publishing revenues fell 5% to $648.0 million in 2011, due again to declines in print advertising revenue, which sank 11% to $264.5 million. The company sustained losses in other divisions, as well. The educational unit, which includes Kaplan higher education, test prep and related businesses, saw total revenues decline 14% to $597.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2011. For the full year, revenues fell 14% to $2.47 billion in 2011. The company’s broadcast TV division saw revenue decline 7% to $319 million in 2011, due mostly to the absence of political and Olympics advertising. WaPo’s cable TV revenues were basically flat at $191 million in the fourth quarter and $760 million for the full year.
CIMM is taking a pro-active role in advancing new media nomenclature and processes with both its Lexicon(terms and definitions associated with Set-Top-Box data measurement) and Asset Identification Primer (glossary of asset terms). These documents form the basis of this column, which offers a common language for Set-Top-Box nomenclature that can expedite the rollout of the data for its many industry applications. Recent columns have examined commercials from several aspects: avoidance, retention, engagement and measurement. Rounding out this discussion is this week’s column on various commercial indices. In fact, the three metrics described below are from four different measurement companies and they highlight the challenge we have in standardizing terms and definitions for use in STB data measurement. Which should be the preferred metric for industry use – the Commercial Rating Index (from TRA), the Commercial Tuning Index (from Nielsen) or the Commercial Viewership index (from Kantar and TiVo)? CRIabbrCommercial Rating Index CIMM DEFINITION : Index of the Household Average Second Rating of the Ad to the Average Second Rating of the Program. (Source: TRA) CTIabbrCommercial Tuning IndexSee also: Commercial Viewership Index CIMM DEFINITION : Referenced by Nielsen as ratio of commercial rating to program rating available at spot level. CVI abbr Commercial Viewership Index CIMM DEFINITION : Represents spot retention relative to underlying program. Average spot rating % divided by average program rating% (including commercial seconds) expressed as an index. (Source: Kantar Media Audiences) 2: Ratio of commercial rating to program rating (indicating audience retention) available at spot level. Indicating how often they fast forward through or tuned away from advertising. (Source: TiVo) Please refer to the CIMM Lexicon online at http://www.cimm-us.org/lexicon.htm for additional information on these and other terms.
Big Internet companies might now look at the cable industry and its mostly failed Canoe Ventures and say, "Not all that easy, is it?" Over the past several years, media agency executives put a lot of promise into cable’s addressable advertising efforts -- and much more promise into cable than into the Internet when it came to premium TV efforts. Why? A strong belief was that, unlike with the Internet, cable offered more easily accessible big time scale to send, say, Purina commercials to pet owners or Yamaha commercials to motorcycle owners. Canoe Ventures issued a statement that it had responded to the "marketplace." Was that the marketplace where not every cable network wanted to give up inventory for addressable ads? Or the marketplace where major issues still existed in getting all the multiple-system cable operators to work out their technical problems due to different set-top boxes? Could it have been the marketplace where major advertisers wanted different things -- with different metrics? (A lot of this could be said of Internet platforms and publishers as well, where different metrics and varying opinions about research standards seem to be at issue.) What happens now? TV-oriented media and marketing executives can only put so much money into the likes of separate premium video sites like Hulu, and into video-enabled social media efforts. While digital is growing, the greater piece of overall consumer media behavior till resides around the big video screen in the evening hours. Can a Canoe Ventures-like effort be saved? Incentives could work. But not until cable operators really need addressable ads. Unlike with many Internet platforms, cable operators have never been that interested in boosting their local advertising businesses -- especially now that big consumer revenues are still coming in for triple-play packages of phone, video and Internet. If anything, cable operators have long coveted a bigger video-on-demand business -- an effort the big cable company owners of the now smaller Canoe Ventures promise to continue. That makes sense, because cable companies have greater vested interests in their owned VOD services. In the end, addressable advertising on a large scale now has too many different entities -- cable operators, cable networks, and advertisers -- pulling in different directions for their own interests. A simpler formula with fewer parties -- perhaps one network and one big media agency holding company -- might be able to slowly work through the technical issues. Then, if successful, the formula would get the attention of other parties. But that's a big “if.”
What a long, strange trip “Glee” is turning out to be. I can’t think of another show anywhere else on television that can so deeply engage me in one moment and so thoroughly exasperate me in the next. In recent weeks I had all but given up on the tuneful trials and tribulations of the students and teachers at William McKinley High. I’d had enough of “Glee’s” signature snark. I was over its perpetual preaching. I was sick to death of Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch), an eccentric character that was once the show’s clever comic center but had deteriorated into a cruel fool. In fact, I thought all the characters had suffered in one way or another, often behaving in ways that were necessary for whatever the show’s writers had in mind that week without regard for their personal histories. All that said, I wasn’t prepared to be knocked sideways by the titanic emotional overload of this week’s episode, in which one character attempted suicide, one suffered a catastrophic accident and the kids movingly triumphed in the annual regional competition. Indeed, I only watched because I knew it was this troubled show’s final episode before a two-month break and I wanted to see if “Glee’”s creative team was going to do anything to ensure that viewers would come back when it returns in mid-April. I understand that many people feel “Glee” packed too much story into one episode, and I agree that any of the major plot developments therein could have been thoughtfully expanded to fill a full hour. But I’m going to flag it as one of the most powerful and potentially important hours of broadcast television this season. It began with a gripping sequence in which former bully Karofsky (well-played by Max Adler) -- the jock who tormented Kurt (Chris Colfer) last season -- was himself tormented by his classmates after they learned he is gay and, unable to handle the ugliness of it all, came home from school and attempted suicide. In an unforgettable moment of shattering helplessness, his father, having found him hanging and cut him down, could only hold his son and scream for help. Karofsky survived and was beginning to understand by episode’s end that his life will likely get better. The final sequence in the hour was devastating in an entirely different way. Quinn (Dianna Agron) -- rushing to make it to the wedding of Rachel (Lea Michele) and Finn (Cory Montieth) – did something entirely too many people do today, especially kids: She took her eyes off the road to read text messages on her phone, only to be broadsided by another vehicle. At the very least Quinn is going to be grievously injured. At worst… well, I think the show will be doing its young viewers a service if we learn upon its return that Quinn was killed. Shock value can be very effective, and there is no understating the dangers of texting while driving. Local papers are filled with stories about such terrible accidents. They are often fatal, and they very often involve teens. “Glee” could save lives here if it chooses not to pull its punches. There was so much going on in between Karofsky’s suicide attempt and Quinn’s deadly accident that it’s dizzying to recall it all in any detail. Wicked Warbler Sebastian (Grant Gustin) softened up after hearing about Karofsky and sought to make amends with Blaine (Darren Criss) and Finn; Sue softened up while breaking the news of her pregnancy; Mr. Shue (Matthew Morrison) softened the kids up when he told them about a moment of deep despair in his youth and reminded them that many different pressures can drive people to contemplate suicide; New Directions and the Warblers competed in the annual regionals (and New Directions emerged victorious); Finn’s mother and stepfather and Rachel’s dads conspired to stop their kids from getting married; Quinn was reinstated in the Cheerios. Some of these plotlines (Sue with child, the parents’ plotting) were right in sync with the unfortunately all too familiar “Glee” weirdness. But others illustrated the unique power this show has to explore issues kids face every day. I was particularly impressed with a scene in which a distraught Kurt crashed a meeting of the school’s new Christian club, the God Squad. (That’s another nice touch on this aggressively inclusive show. How often are Christians represented anywhere on series television without being made the butt of silly jokes? That subject will be in play once the ABC comedy “GCB” makes its debut March 4.) In a telling exchange between Kurt and Quinn (who was pregnant in “Glee’s” first season), Kurt asserted that the pressures gay kids can face in high school are across-the-board worse than those faced by pregnant teen girls. Kurt, often the sensitive center of the show, came off as seriously self-absorbed. “Glee” can be accused of many things, but a reluctance to highlight flaws in each of its characters isn’t one of them.
Ever find yourself at a big and noisy party, trying desperately to focus on conversation with one other person or your immediate circle? You appreciate the environment of being at a large gathering, but for this moment you really find the ambient noise distracting. This is something like the phenomenon of “Social TV” within many second-screen experiences. Almost every companion app seems obliged to include relevant Twitter and other social media mentions of a show while you are watching it live. But trendy as anything with the moniker “social” may be in digital media right now, the actual value add of most “Social TV” executions seems to me highly questionable. At yesterday’s idea-packed Tablet Revolution event in New York we took up one of my favorite topics – second screening -- and I was happy to hear this topic of social overkill addressed. Bravo TV’s Dominique Nguyen and Umami’s Scott Rosenberg both confirmed what I had long suspected – many users find those social streams more daunting than helpful. The torrent of posts is overwhelming. Many people see the thing flowing into the app and aren’t sure what to do with it, or where and how to enter it. Rosenberg says it is a real problem. While the basic idea of plugging into the social channel for that group feel is well-intended, in reality many of the posts are just meaningless shout-outs and silly utterances that don’t enhance the viewing. Worse, it just gets distracting and feels like something that needs to be tended. Thankfully, this is something both Umami and Bravo are thinking hard about in their next iterations of their respective apps. Bravo’s is coming -- and Umami launched its new version in the Apple App Store today in order to be ready for Sunday night’s Oscars telecast. Rosenberg contends that one problem with the social TV experience is that it tries to complement the visual experience of TV with a text experience. And so this Umami version adds two key visual elements to Social TV: screen grab sharing and a dashboard. The “Freeze Frame” feature snaps an image of what is on and shares with your social network, so you can illustrate and comment on a scene or just share an ad, a recipe or fashion image, etc. This function has the dual advantage of making social exchanges more visual, but also making them a bit more content rich. It gives a poster something to talk about. The other Umami addition is the “Dishboard” that uses infographic techniques to show levels of chatter about the show and highlights trending topics. These are interesting first steps in working through the challenge of making social exchanges usable content in the second screen. Social media has always been too much of a good thing across the digital ecosystem. It drowned the Internet in bargain ad inventory. It swamped the data miners with a mass of user information and commentary that require complex algorithms to filter. The ad tech folks are still figuring out how best to scrape, parse and wrangle all of this data into usable targeting tools. And on the user end, these “feeds” of user-generated content have become fire hoses that are too unwieldy for consumers -- let alone TV viewers -- to manage. The next generation of second-screen apps will not “tap” social media, but shape this resource into less of a motor mouth companion.
Media disruption. Some have it; more are looking for it. Consumers and marketers might like it, but perhaps not all the time. Dish Network would like to pile on to the media disruption by launching its own wireless broadband business -- which would be a welcome addition to Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile. "We have a history of being very disruptive in the video business. I think we would be disruptive in the wireless business," said Charles Ergen, chairman of Dish Network. Dish Network would also be a good continuing independent operator -- much as it has been with its satellite TV service. In an earnings call, Ergin was full of bravado: "It would transform not only our company but transform the way people use wireless in the United States." Big media companies can transform themselves. Dish Network’s traditional business has seemingly hit a certain level, even with its acquisition of Blockbuster and starting Blockbuster’s streaming video business. Dish hovers at around 14 million subscribers -- down around 160,000 in 2011. Dish wants what traditional cable operators have had for the last decade or so -- a way out of its mostly single business of delivering video into the home. With their growing Internet and phone businesses, cable operators have saved the day for shareholders -- while maintaining their more or less aging video business with new digital components. Media disruption continues to be a term loved by media analysts -- especially when it comes from established players who can move into new businesses with a certain degree of consumer loyalty and marketplace heft. So Ergen and Dish continue to keep their mystery going. The trouble is that everybody is looking to affixed the disruption moniker. Consumers can grow weary of the all the entertainment entropy. Business-wise? Disruption can mean more options for marketers. But it usually comes with an iffy period of business development, including questionable metrics, post=analysis, and service. Sure, we savvy media entertainment consumers and marketers all want to rebel. But it’s a media rebellion that never seems to end. There is no rest. Is this the state in which big media companies want to keep their consumers -- and their marketing/advertising partners?