Just tell your TV what you want. The big electronic-guide based service Rovi is teaming up with Nuance Communications so cable TV subscribers can tell their TV sets what they want to watch. "Entertainment options will continue to grow,” stated Corey Ferengul, executive vice president of product management and strategy at Rovi Corp. “With it will be the complexity of finding and deciding what to watch. Consumers want easy-to-use and simple ways for discovering entertainment that doesn't require a remote control with as many keys as a keyboard. Voice brings this capability.” TV viewers will be able to change the channel with voice commands, as well as browse, bookmark and search for content on both live and VOD TV programming by speaking. The technology is similar to that used by Apple’s iPhone 4S's Siri function. The companies did not disclose when the technology would be available. The companies are also developing an application using Dragon TV -- Nuance's voice- and language understanding platform for set-top boxes and connected-TV devices -- with Rovi's guide technology. This technology can offer more detailed search information. For example, a viewer can say: Find comedies with Adam Sandler, Show me information on "'The Big Bang Theory," and even Who plays Chuck on "Gossip Girl"? "Consumers love that today's cable services and program guides offer so many options for shows, movies, content, information widgets and more. But without an easy way to access and discover that content, today's digital living room experience is lost," said Michael Thompson, senior vice president, general manager, Nuance Mobile.
Teenagers watch TV in less common areas of the home -- more so when it comes to their gaming consoles. More than other groups, teenagers 12-17 get the highest score when it comes to watching TV in their bedrooms, for example -- at a 47% score, nearly equaling living-room/family-room TV watching, which is at 48%. They watch TV in “other” rooms 5% of the time. When it comes to gaming, however, the move out of traditional areas is greater. Nielsen says more than half -- 52% -- of teenagers' time spent with a gaming console happens in nontraditional spaces or bedrooms -- or perhaps basements. That leaves 48% who use gaming activities in more common areas -- the living or family room. Nielsen says 12-17s represent an outsized share of game console usage -- more than triple that of their share of TV or DVR usage. The most traditional places for TV viewership among older viewers continue to be the living-room areas. Viewers 35-64 give living rooms a 62% number, and those 65 and older are at 69%. Those older groups take in TV 31% and 21% of the time in bedrooms, respectively. Even those a bit older than the teenagers -- the 18-34 group -- are more traditionalists: 57% view TV in living rooms, 37% in bedrooms, and only 7% watch TV in “other” rooms. Younger 6-11 viewers trend much like their older counterparts, with 60% of TV watching in living rooms; 35% in bedrooms; and 5% in “other.”
In today’s DVR dominant world, the only “appointment television” taking place during prime time is when the “season pass” is being set on the DVR. “Spoiler alerts” are commonplace in our vernacular thanks to the DVR, and the only real “appointment television” for marketers and their messages is those watched live. For the first time in upfront history, DVR penetration could be more than 50% among 18-49s, the demographic that many television marketers use as a buying metric. DVR penetration is already significantly higher at 65% for people with household income of $60K+, those planning to buy a car in the next year or for those who own a tablet computer. Marketers across all categories need to recognize and address the impact that DVRs are making and it’s important to take stock of what we have learned in the four years since Nielsen’s meaningful measurement began. Audiences have taken control of their nighttime entertainment TV viewing, leaving marketers to adapt to this change. Live viewership of network prime sitcoms and dramas has declined by almost 20% over the past four years. As live viewership declines, there is a 50% increase in the contribution of commercial playback of recorded programs. Yet marketers shouldn’t count on playback. Nielsen reports that network prime-time performance in commercial playback is a 50/50 proposition with half of commercials being skipped. An SNTA analysis of commercial playback shows that the preponderance of network prime-time commercials viewed are those that air in the first commercial minute of the pod. That’s problematic as two thirds of commercials air outside of the first commercial minute in network prime and nearly 75% air outside the first minute in cable prime. And we all know that network promotional messages never run in the middle of the pod. Commercial playback has slowed as well, with live + same day viewership dropping sic percentage points to 82%. While this is only a 7% decline over the last two years, the magnitude is significant for timed messages like movie openings, a price point promotion for a restaurant or a one day retail event. This does not mean that television’s impact is diminished. In fact, numerous studies show that television continues to be the dominant force in driving sales. Marketers operating in a DVR dominant environment, enhance the impact of their television communications by following four approaches:
NBC kicked off the 2012-13 broadcast upfront season with a move that may have alienated millions of people: the cancellation of legal drama “Harry’s Law,” this despite the fact that it often was the network’s most watched entertainment series during its two-year run. The trouble with “Harry,” as NBC noted, was that its audience was unmanageably older-skewing, even though it was much larger than that of many other television shows. That means most of its viewers were 55-plus -- or “dead,” in the eyes of advertisers who continue to lust after the 18-34, 18-49 and, less passionately, 25-54 demographic groups. Such industry ageism is nothing new. Indeed, it was an issue of near-calamitous proportions for CBS back in the early-‘90s, when that network almost buckled under the weight of all the old folks who were enjoying so much of what it was offering before it went all procedural crime drama and smart-mouthed comedy. Shows such as “Murder, She Wrote” and “Falcon Crest” were enormously popular but unforgivably mature in their audience profiles. CBS doesn’t skew as old today as it did back then; in fact, it manages to do just fine attracting large audiences of all ages – and advertisers, as well In that context, it seems rather rash for NBC to go and kill one of the few shows on its network that drew a substantial audience even if that audience was “old,” rather than to find a way to make it work. But “Harry’s Law,” which appealed to millions of older people who enjoy watching television, was cut down in favor of a number of new series that NBC hopes will catch the eye of much younger viewers, many of whom choose not to watch television at all. They’re too busy with anything and everything else, especially when it comes to entertainment. Also alienated by this cancellation are the millions of people who welcome challenging and thought-provoking drama. “Harry’s Law” wasn’t a perfect show, but it was the only scripted series on television that consistently tackled controversial contemporary issues. For example, and as if on cue, two days after word came down (via a tweet from 60-plus series lead Kathy Bates) that “Harry’s” was toast, the show featured in what would turn out to be its penultimate episode a story about a gay man who could not give life-saving blood to his dying brother because of laws preventing gay men from donating blood without the written consent of the recipient, who in this case was unconscious on account of being near death and all. Watching this show during its two seasons, even sporadically, I’ve heard numerous compelling and at times startling debates in many a lively courtroom sequence, on subjects ranging from human rights to animal rights to immigration concerns to the economic destruction of the American working class at the hands of the United States government, big banks and corporate giants. I believe a recent storyline that explored the potentially fatal dangers of high school football propelled that decidedly unpopular topic into the national conversation. The cancellation of “Harry’s Law” also suggests that there is no place on broadcast television for a series featuring a woman in her 60s in its lead role, regardless of her talent or accomplishments. (One wonders how Bates, an Academy Award winner, even got the part in the first place.) Tellingly, this is not true of shows headlined by 60something men, as proven by some of the highly successful crime shows currently on CBS, including “CSI,” “Criminal Minds” and “Blue Bloods.” Most “civilians” don’t understand how broadcast television works. Perhaps that’s why so many of them have been complaining to me about the fate of “Harry’s Law.” They see this as curious behavior for a federally regulated business tasked with serving all Americans regardless of age, ethnicity or economic status. Advertiser preferences are often in direct conflict to that, but a network can’t exactly demand that companies pay for something they don’t want. That said, it should be increasingly clear to anyone with a head that 50-plus consumers are no longer all about adult diapers and denture cream, if ever they truly had been. From where I sit, men and women in their 50s and 60s (and beyond) are as likely to purchase goods and services as anyone else. It seems that if they aren’t busily buying things (or trying new things) for themselves, then they are hurriedly spending every spare dollar on their kids. And so it is that the lack of industry support and cold cancellation of “Harry’s Law,” whose only crime was that it appealed to older viewers, many of them quite discerning, makes no sense on many levels. At the very least it is just plain sad. I’d argue that the typical viewer of this show was likely upscale, given the intellectual heft of its courtroom arguments, but what’s the point? NBC has a bundle of new shows ready to go for fall, some quite promising, others much less so. One of them stars a monkey. Enough said.
You need the right sales strategy. But if that doesn’t work, why not change the game -- and the rules. So here’s a recent headline: “Tired of Low Ratings, CW Is Developing Its Own Measurement System.” Quite understandable. But every network is tired of something. We can imagine all networks are “tired of low ratings.” For years, networks have created their own measures attached to specific audiences and behaviors. Networks have sliced and dicd up TV viewers to show off their best sides -- and matched them to specific purchasing power statistics. More recently, this has included “engagement” measures. Recently, ABC said it does well with the top 30% of consumers who are responsible for 80% of sales. Nielsen helped ABC glean the numbers and “ratings” for this. For years, NBC has said it does well with affluent viewers. There are “ratings” for that. CBS still tells you those 25-54 audiences are perhaps more valuable than 18-49, the current all-important measure for many marketers. And there are measures for it. And when you look at digital media platforms? Just multiply these measures by perhaps several thousand different metrics. While many decry that this has been holding back online advertising efforts, others have argued against “standard” measures. Still, marketers have always pushed for media standards or “currencies” that can easily compare media channels and platforms. So in TV, we have the popular C3 (commercial ratings plus three days of time shifted ratings) among 18-49 viewers for major upfront advertisers to mull over. Of course, the CW headline misses an important point. You may create your own “ratings,’ but which, if any, marketers will come running to buy? We know that the CW story can be a complicated one. The network targets mostly women 18-34, a segment that heavily multi-tasks – texting, social media, and even talking on the phone -- while watching CW shows. The TV watching itself on CW is also complicated -- decreasingly on a live basis and increasingly on a time-shifted basis – and not always through DVRs. The bigger, more complicated story, isn’t about ratings. The real headline for all networks should be: “Tired of Low Revenue, Networks Look to Make More Money.” For example, instead of making their own ratings, let them make their own TV sets -- with specific pre-selected “favorite” channels already included.