Commentary

Programmatic TV: The Score

Strawberry Fields

During a recent NPR interview about The Beatles and their classic “Strawberry Fields,” a musicologist suggested that Americans misunderstood the reference of the opening stanza’s lyric “nothing to get hung about”:

Let me take you down
Cause I’m going to Strawberry Fields
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about

What’s to misinterpret?

Overly concerned. Uptight. Anxious. Nervous. Pre-occupied. Obsessed…a litany of adjectives and adverbs.

The catch, the musicologist mused, was that John Lennon, the songsmith, grew up in Liverpool, which contained a park within the town of Woolton that hosted a site nearby utilized in prior centuries as the town square for public hangings. Nothing to get hung about.

Regardless of the interpretive accuracy of the lyric, the essence of the sentiment was captured.

FIFA Women’s World Cup (July 1, 2015): England vs. Japan

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The Associated Press reported: Laura Bassett bent over, pulled her soccer jersey over her face and sobbed. Her teammates gathered around her, but nothing they said could make it better. Minutes earlier, the England defender had stretched out her leg to intercept a through ball in the last seconds of a Women’s World Cup semifinal against Japan. The ball deflected off her boot, past the England goalkeeper and into the goal off the crossbar. It consigned England to a 2-1 loss in the biggest match of its women’s team’s history.

From a statistical vantage point, the goal technically could have been counted toward the player’s post-season performance in terms of number of goals scored – even though it was against her own team. Regardless of the interpretive accuracy of that score, the essence of the action was sympathetically not captured.

The Infamous 24-Hour Vertical Index

To date, all television inventory represented in programmatic TV proposals is opaqued. A proposal delineates TV networks and impressions by network, but not impressions by program or daypart for the individual networks represented in the proposal. It is extremely difficult to vivisect. And although proposals include individual TV network target indices, they are provided for a 24-hour rotation – though the marketer’s schedule might only include a spot in no more than one daypart. Additionally, the option to meld the targeted indices across the variety of TV networks does not exist to provide an overall understanding of the schedule’s potential targeted delivery. Each exists in its own isolated universe.

Regardless of the efficacy of the 24-hour vertical index directional calculation, the essence of the measurement captures…?

1 comment about "Programmatic TV: The Score".
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  1. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, January 8, 2016 at 11:57 a.m.

    In other words---------?

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