A slowdown of the economy will result in lower estimates for traditional local media business in the coming years, according to a recent study. But local digital revenues will continue to climb by double-digit percent increases. Taking out local digital business, BIA/Kelsey says local traditional media revenues -- TV, print, radio and other local media -- will barely move by 2016, rising at an average compounded annual rate of 0.2% to $112.7 billion from $111.5 billion in 2011. All local media revenue -- including digital -- will now grow at a slower 2.6% to $151.3 billion in four years. The media research group also revised its 2011 numbers: Local media revenue was down 2.4% to $132.8 billion versus 2010. Previously, it forecast that local media would be $135.9 billion in 2011. As with many other studies, local digital media will continue to rise. BIA/Kelsey believes local digital media business will grow at 12.7% gains -- comprising 26% of all local revenue in 2016 and reaching $38.5 billion. For all of 2011, local digital media amounted to $21.2 billion -- 16% of local media business.
In another striking move for the upstart measurement company, Rentrak has inked a deal with the CW network, where the entity owned jointly by CBS and Warner Bros. will begin receiving its service based on set-top-box data. The CW becomes the first of the Big 5 networks to sign on. Rentrak has arrangements with multiple significant cable operators from CNBC to the NFL network and has worked with MTV Networks. The CNBC arrangement set a potential blueprint that could make Rentrak an even more prominent player in the national TV market as a deal between agency MPG and CNBC, including secondary guarantees based on Rentrak data. The Rentrak service makes at least one case that offers a leg up on Nielsen: it uses many more homes to determine ratings than Nielsen’s traditional TV sample. However, like Nielsen, it does employ estimates to cover the full country. Its set-top-box data is culled from multiple cable operators, AT&T and Dish Network. The CW deal offers access to one of Rentrak’s would-be “single source” products, where viewership data will be combined with information from researcher Polk to determine how much car ads lead to purchases. CW also gains access to an exact commercial ratings product, driven by second-by-second data. If agencies push CW to cut deals based on the Rentrak information, that could give them some leverage to urge other large networks to embrace the data as more of a currency than just a directional guide. Still, the top CW executive gave no indication that Nielsen would be supplanted. "In today's constantly evolving media landscape, precise and stable audience measurement is absolutely crucial," stated Mark Pedowitz, the CW’s president. "We were drawn to Rentrak because of their larger sample size and believe their service will be complementary and supplemental to what we see today, thereby giving us a more complete picture of the CW's viewership."
L’Oreal is rolling out Ralph Lauren’s Big Pony Collection for Women in the U.S., using an exclusive song from pop band OneRepublic. Called “Life in Color,” the song is featured in TV ads and a two-minute film, shot by famed fashion photographer Bruce Weber, as well as digital applications supporting the launch. Like the men’s line of Big Pony fragrances, launched to much fanfare back in 2010, the women’s collection also includes four scents, each linked to a different color. (Think Power Rangers or Spice Girls, but more expensive and with polo mallets.) The Sporty Fragrance, #1, is packaged in a blue bottle, and is a floral citrus; #2, which is pink, is the Sensual Fragrance, described as a “floriental fruity;” #3, which is yellow, is called the Free-Spirited Fragrance, with pear and mimosa highlights; and #4, which is purple, is the Stylish Fragrance, with wild cherry and purple amber. The song, which the band will release on an album due out this summer, also plays when women take the Life in Color Quiz, which the company describes as “a digital magazine meets interactive film,” a four-question video quiz to help the customer discover her “Big Pony Fragrance fit.” Using cuts from the two-minute commercial, it also offers a $4,000 Ralph Lauren shopping spree, and can be shared on Facebook, Twitter and email. The line launches this month exclusively at Bloomingdale’s and Ralph Lauren stores, and then rolls into department stores in April. Women’s Wear Daily reports that the launch will have an ad budget of up to $20 million this year, including TV and print, also shot by Weber. The trade paper estimates the fragrance quartet is expected to generate $40 million in sales this year. Priced at $70, the launch comes at a great time for the category: NPD Group, a Port Washington, N.Y.-based market researcher which tracks the prestige beauty industry, says dollar sales of high-end fragrances (those sold in department stores) rose 11% in 2011.
As Netflix CEO Reed Hastings makes noise about his company mounting a challenge to HBO, the pay-TV network recovered momentum in the fourth quarter and added subscribers. SNL Kagan reports it added 190,000 net subscribers after two quarters of declines. It was the largest net gain for an HBO quarter since 2006, Kagan says. Sister network Cinemax also gained with 25,000 customers, though a promotion from Dish Network may have helped. Some of that uptick could be due to operators offering the HBO Go mobile access option, which Hastings has praised. But with a combination of original series and its own access anywhere opportunities, Hastings has said Netflix can try to compete with HBO with its own premium content. Besides HBO, other pay-TV networks also gained in the 2011 October-December period, giving the sector more momentum than the overall customer additions to cable, satellite and telco businesses. The overall combined net adds for operators’ customers was up 300,000. Premium networks, however, saw a bump of 2.2 million net subscribers, led by Showtime (up 700,000) and Starz (up 595,000). Kagan says about half of the additions came from satellite-TV subscribers, partly as Dish Network offered free promotions. Epix, partly owned by Viacom, had a solid 2011 fourth quarter with a net gain of 230,000 subscribers, Kagan says.
Seemingly coming out of nowhere, TV network news programming has seen a rise in viewers in 2011 after years of declines. While big news events have been a contributing factor, new digital devices could be fueling big traditional TV news awareness. For the first time in more than a decade, TV network news climbed -- a hike of 4.5% on average or 972,700 in 2011 -– to an overall three-network average of 22.5 million, up from 21.6 million, per the Pew Research Center study of news media for 2012. “NBC Nightly News," the industry leader, grew the least with 2.9% or 250,500 to 8.75 million average viewers. ABC’s “World News” added 5.3% or 398,200 viewers to 7.82 million, and “CBS Evening News” grew 5.8% or 325,000 to 5.97 million. The survey notes that ABC’s newscast with Diane Sawyer closes its gap with NBC, and that CBS –- with Scott Pelley taking over for Katie Couric in June -- grew immediate new sampling from viewers. Somewhat surprisingly, there were more traditional TV news viewers watching, those 25-54. The analysis says the growth was to some extent because of major news, such as the Arab Spring; the death of Osama bin Laden; a major political shooting in Tucson; a royal wedding in Britain; and a tsunami in Japan. The study says contributing to the uptick is that unique visits to digital sites at ABC and CBS grew during 2011 -- although they dropped at the MSNBC Digital Network. Pew says since 1980, the three commercial evening newscasts have lost about 28.4 million viewers, or 54.5% of their audience. While TV cable news is a factor, Pew says that “more than twice as many people watch the lowest-rated broadcast evening news program (‘CBS Evening News’) than watch the highest-rated cable news program (‘The O’Reilly Factor’ on Fox News).” TV morning news shows also grew in 2011 -- for the first time in seven years. Overall, morning TV shows were up 5.4% to 13.1 million viewers from 2010. NBC’s “Today” grew 3.2% to 5.4 million viewers, still the TV morning news show leader. ABC’s “Good Morning America” added 12% to 4.8 million; and CBS’ “Early Show” was virtually flat, inching up 0.2% to 2.9 million viewers. Looking at comparable median news viewership on cable networks, the report cites Nielsen, saying the viewership of CNN, Fox News, HLN, and MSNBC was up 1% for daytime and 1% in prime time. Analyzing just prime time, the study says CNN was up 16%; MSNBC, 3% higher; Fox News, off 3% (but still the overwhelming leader); and HLN, down 11%.
Dos Equis’s beloved “Most Interesting Man” (MIM) is busy this spring. First, building on its “Legendary Lines” Facebook app, where myriad Dos Equis fans daily post their own witty lines about the MIM (and are rewarded by the brand), Dos Equis is now running a “Most Interesting March Tournament.” Fans submitted their own MIM lines for tournament spots for a chance to appear in one of the brand’s ads. Dos Equis is now selecting the wittiest 64 lines; their creators will pick brackets in which to compete in a digital tournament. Those chosen will need to rally fan support each time their lines compete, in order to make it into the finals on April 2. Dos Equis’s Facebook page currently shows 1.96 million “likes.” In addition, Dos Equis has launched two new MIM commercials. One, a 30-second spot dubbed “Sword Fight,” shows scenes from the MIM’s life, including sword fighting (in a kilt), getting wild animals to calmly pose as he paints them, winning what appears to be an Olympic medal, and yukking it up with Buddhist monks. The voiceover: “He has inside jokes with perfect strangers. Cuba imports cigars from him. Mosquitoes refuse to bite him, purely out of respect...” The second – a 15-second spot for Dos Equis Ambar (“A Darker Shade of Thirsty”), shows the MIM and female friends watching snake dancers in a desert setting. Voiceover: “If you don’t have a dark secret, it’s never too late to make one.” And of course: “Stay thirsty, my friends.”
Longtime marketing industry analyst Brian Wieser says entrenched entities throughout the TV ecosystem “have nothing to worry about” regarding new gambles to create Web-based programming options, such as the Barry Diller-fronted Aereo and an Intel would-be over-the-top service. A principal reason: consumers want content flowing easy. The Pivotal Research Group analyst writes in a report that more affordable services are “preferable,” but only on paper to a degree because “the vast majority of consumers don’t want to think about how they access video: they just want it to work.” If new ventures want to widely supplant incumbent services -- i.e., turning on the TV via a remote control -- it will be “necessary to offer up a service involving as little change as possible from the existing model,” Wieser writes. With all the on-demand options consumers have on new platforms, putting them in control, Wieser says “they don’t seem to want to exercise it very much. The primary reason? TV is mostly an ambient experience.” He notes that the would-be disruptive opportunities, such as the DVR or Web streaming, have increased “marginally” when compared with traditional TV viewing. “While laptops and iPads are certainly pervasive in a large minority of homes, the nature of the devices (let alone their limited batteries) mean that consumption of video on these platforms is generally limited to ‘active’ viewing,” Wieser writes. “Very few consumers will ever consume all of their TV in this active manner, and any new service will be hard-pressed to replace old ones in the near-term for much of the population.” He suggests that Aereo and Intel’s prospects are likely to go beyond “niche audiences.”
Stripping away all the buzz and technology, at its core social media is just another way to tell a story and simultaneously grow your audience base and drive ratings. At MTV, we’ve been hyper-focused in growing our social ecosystem and exploring new ways to create quality experiences on these platforms. The hard work and investment appears to be paying off -- we’ve grown our social graph to nearly 100 million Facebooks likes and close to 5 million Twitter followers, as well as ranking as the No. 1 TV brand on many other platforms, such as Foursquare, Tumblr and Instagram. In addition to reach, our fans are deeply engaged and highly active with us on these social platforms. From the advent of radio, movies and television, content inspiration has always followed technological innovation. Social is no different. As content creators, storytelling is core to what we do -- and we believe that social is just another platform to tell a story. Despite what you may hear, technology and social can’t make average content good, but it can make good content great. It is our role to understand how our audience thinks and then apply that knowledge to engage them in more meaningful ways across social platforms. Through our work and proprietary research, we’ve learned that young adults, who we refer to as millennials, are programmed differently than previous generations. Even if millennials aren’t your demo now, they will be soon, and it’s invaluable to understand what motivates them. By many reports, there are nearly 100 million millennials, young adults born between the early 1980s and 1990s, in the U.S. That’s a staggering number and arguably the single largest generational cohort in American history. This is a generation that’s perpetually connected to their network, their social graph, their entire world, at all times. Their network is their source for all products and experience. As storytellers, it our role to understand how our audiences think and then apply that knowledge to engage them in more meaningful ways across all platforms. With this in mind, we are now creating content and designing experiences that will be foundational in envisioning the next generation of social TV, based on a number of observed millennial behaviors. One of the defining characteristics of the generation is their creativity and innovative power. They demand a hand in the creation of products, experiences, performance, and the work of their favorite artists. They want to have a role in navigating the story and deciding its outcome. Millennials want a direct personal and interactive relationship with the musicians, celebrities and brands they love. They demand zero distance between product and consumer, full transparency and total access. This is a generation that grew up on gaming. By the time they are 21, they have spent over 10k hours gaming -- the equivalent of going to school every day from 5th to 12th grade. They’re experts. It’s engrained in how they think. Game-like dynamics will drive many emerging products and content that are important to this generation We’re now in the process of incubating and testing new experiences based on these insights that will be foundational in envisioning the next generation of social TV. Here’s one example. This past April, we introduced a digital-only awards show -- the O Music Awards -- to celebrate how technology is impacting music. To kick off the show, we had rapper Chiddy of Chiddy Bang attempt to break the world record for longest freestyle rap at 9 hours and 15 minutes. With minimal budget, we designed an interactive experience where those watching the world record attempt unfold via a live stream could tweet and suggest topics in real time directly to Chiddy to rap about. Not only did our audience love having direct access to Chiddy, but by allowing them to tweet in topics to co-create and influence the story arc, they were able to experience real time fan gratification, similar to the validation they seek from their social graphs. There was a level of authenticity and realness here that drove an insane amount of user engagement. As a result, we landed two trending topics on Twitter for a digital only event -- without a TV counterpart -- and the O Music Awards went on to come our second-biggest live stream to date. This is just one of the many early experiments we’ve been testing that illustrate the potential that storytelling without borders provides content creators. While content will always be king, the ways audiences will consume and interact with it are quickly changing. It is critical that we as an industry listen to the audience and embrace these changes. Despite all of these advances in technology, at the end of the day, it’s about storytelling. Social media is simply providing us more ways to engage and delight our audiences.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, "The vast majority of digital video ad dollars are not coming from TV," according to Randy Cohen of Advertiser Perceptions, who said the main source of dollars is digital display. Overall 86% of dollars going to digital video are coming from sources other than TV budgets.
When should you expect an entertainer to delivery journalistic-type content? Short answer: Never. When should you expect an entertainer to delivery a “story”? Short answer: Always. Actor and comedian Mike Daisey recently made hay from his one-man show about Steve Jobs and all things that go wrong in the world of Apple -- particular all the problematic worker issues surrounding super-long work hours in China where super-popular electronic products like iPads and iPhone are made. Public radio storytelling program,“This American Life” ran an excerpt of Daisey’ on-stage spiel and found that some of the stuff he “reported” didn’t exist, such as a conversation with a worker at a Chinese plant called Foxcomm. Though the radio show did do some fact-checking, it allowed the piece to run as if it were “news.” (To be fair, worker conditions, as reported by outlets The New York Times, continue to yield big question marks for Apple in China). Now Daisey owns up to his faults and what he should have done: “What I do is not journalism. The tools of the theater are not the same as the tools of journalism…. For this reason, I regret that I allowed ‘This American Life’ to air an excerpt from my monologue.” He says his act "uses a combination of fact, memoir and dramatic license to tell its story, and I believe it does so with integrity.” Integrity of the story, I’m guessing. It further offers a little more collateral damage surrounding new media efforts when it comes to the term “content” in place of “journalism.” For example, do we need to fact-check “content” for TV reality shows? How much of this veracity do advertisers really want? Marketers surely want to know what they are getting when they buy in -- even when it comes to public broadcasting-style “underwriting” and “sponsorships.” This is not to say some of this stuff doesn’t have a place. “The Onion” seems to have figured this out well. But the mixing of created storylines and real-life facts can generally be confusing for consumers of such media. We should have expected some of this. We are told the mountain of on-air opinions from cable news channels seemingly features real reporting and factual stories. Now, with hot and heavy competition among media platforms, we seem to be moving to the next step -- allowing entertainers to create a strange brew of fiction/fact “content.” If we are not fact-checking this stuff, we need to create a new label, or at least slap a disclaimer on it.
Maybe you’ve heard this already, but a new season of “Mad Men” is returning to television Sunday night. But it’s not just the TV show that’s back; this will also mean the return of the “Mad Men” recappers. All next week, the Internet will be flooded with people summarizing, analyzing, obsessing about and trying to make sense of the show. Mad Blog will return here to MediaPost, but if history is a guide, there will also be lengthy recaps on the website of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and an uncountable number of other mainstream websites. Recapping long predates “Mad Men,” although nothing seems to bring out the inner recapper in so many writers as Matt Weiner’s blend of sharp writing, superb characterization and unexpected plot twists. From the beginning of the Internet, viewers have gone online to discuss their favorite TV shows. First there were chat rooms, message boards and blogs. Then in 1998 a handful of wise guys started recapping episodes of “Dawson’s Creek” on a site that became known as Television Without Pity, or TWoP. TWoP operates under the motto “spare the snark, spoil the network” (which Wikipedia helpfully explains is “a takeoff on ‘spare the rod, spoil the child.’” Got it.) It provides detailed, sometimes excruciatingly detailed, scene-by-scene summaries of series episodes. These summaries are laced with sarcastic observations that point out the logical inconsistencies, lame character motivations and other plot absurdities in a show. You would think there’d be no bigger waste of time than going onto the Internet to read a blow-by-blow recapitulation of a television show you’ve already watched, but what makes TWoP so popular is the humor. The recappers have the rare ability to articulate a thought that existed in your head as a vague observation that you couldn’t quite put your finger on. And of course recapping also helps you get a better understanding of a show by picking up bits of dialogue you might have missed and offering context and insight. TWoP is the granddaddy of recap sites, but it is hardly the only one. There’s also HitFix, The Huffington Post, and Grantland, which recaps NBC’s Thursday night line-up http://es.pn/zrDxIm). And if “Mad Men” is your particular thing, just go to Google and search for “Mad Men recaps.” There are dozens of sites to choose from. There may be innumerable summaries of Mad Men, but not every television series should be recapped. Not by a long shot. I’d rather watch four hours of C-SPAN than read a recap of something like “Hawaii 5-0.” The best candidates for recapping are quality shows with passionate loyalists -- or what Adam Sternbergh in The New York Times calls “superviewers.”These are shows like “Lost,” “The Office,” “The Good Wife,” and “Community.” But it’s also fun to read recaps of entertainments that are already self-parodies -- reality shows like “The Jersey Shore” and “Survivor” and over-the-top dramas like “Glee” and “Downton Abbey.” Recapping would seem to go against today’s cultural ethos, which is to dumb things down and make them shorter, given our miniscule attention spans. But just as the trend in TV sets is to make them both bigger and smaller, so too is the trend in TV commentary to be both shorter (e.g., Twitter) and longer (recaps.) People will not only read 18-page recaps of “Mad Men,” they will then comment about those recaps in return. In the end, this is all about community. This is a subject that’s been chewed over ad nauseum, especially by me, but the rise of the Internet has created opportunities for people to fill in the social voids in their lives with digital connections. The fact is that most people watch television by themselves. And some of the most passionately followed shows are viewed by just 1% or 2% of the population, so you can go to work the next day and not find anyone to talk to about the show. Just as live tweeting is the online equivalent of wisecracking with your friends when you’re watching TV together, recapping is the digital substitute for chatting around the water cooler the next day. As we head into Sunday, Matt Weiner has promised at least one major surprise in the “Mad Man” season opener. I can’t wait to see what it is, but I also can’t wait to see what my digital friends -- the recappers -- think about it.
Spoiler alerts are now ongoing in entertainment coverage, which can be good and bad news for TV marketers. Big storylines of some upcoming story arcs -- like how Mike Defino in "Desperate Housewives" was killed off – could be of concern. But don't blame too many people. Sometimes, you can point fingers at real-life legal processes -- like the $6 million lawsuit filed by Nicollette Sheridan against ABC and Marc Cherry. That's where the news came out. (And now all this is for naught, given the judge on the case has declared a mistrial). Stuff like this can be a dual-edged thing. We can only imagine on that day any ABC marketing executive would have groused, "Oh no! Back to the drawing board!” Still, no worries -- there is more to come. With this season being the last for "Wives," there’ll be other storylines that could be teases. And if you aren’t interested in “Wives,” there is Fox’s “House,” also in its last season, to consider. Performers, writers and directors know it's a pretty big sin to reveal key storyline stuff before it happens in a TV series, movie or whatever. But happy prognosticators always like to guess. Even if one knows in theory what happens, it doesn’t necessarily kill off the suspense. There is always the "how" to consider. In 1999, Chris Pula, then head of theatrical marketing for Walt Disney Co., said he had an epiphany over a dramatic-fantasy theatrical movie. For the TV commercial and trailer, he wanted to let one character -- a boy -- reveal a key part of the story by saying, "I see dead people." Pula said Disney and production executives were resistant about promoting “The Sixth Sense” that way, feeling it gave away too much of the movie. But Pula insisted. He said it would push moviegoers’ interest and get them asking questions such as “What does this boy mean?” “And how?” These days, TV show promos talk about an "Episode You Can't Miss!," "The Most Dramatic Episode Yet!,” or “Just Want To See What Happens To [fill in the blank]!" But we crave more. If the writing and stories of a series are really good, it will always have other levels to explore – which will make the marketing message more compelling. With all the ways people interact digitally with each other, it is surprising that more “insider” TV scoops aren't revealed –-especially when it comes to key, mostly end-of-the-year, episodes. No matter. In this DVR-enabled, time-shifted world, one thing is for sure: You are always on constant spoiler alert.
Interesting view on a well-reported subject. Marketers buying TV media need to take into consideration the distraction factor with more viewers spending time multitasking on mobile devices while watching a show. Scott Brady, senior VP of digital analytics at Nielsen, said during a breakout session on mobile that 88% of table and 86% of smartphone owners use their device while watching TV.