Commentary
Does Facebook Actually Have An Audience?
- by P.J. Bednarski , Staff Writer @pjbtweet, March 7, 2017
The buzz for a while now has been that Facebook will be the next entity to jump into the original content business.
In the spirit of the-more-the-merrier, I say good for Facebook.
They say there are only six basic stories in the world. Some say there are seven. But that’s another story.
Last year, FX President John Landgraf counted up 417 scripted shows on TV and online in 2015, and predicted 500 shows this year.
The “peak TV” crisis--we are just too creative--seems to be without a cure. Netflix is spending $6 billion on content this year, and Amazon is spending $4 billion.
My point: If Facebook is getting in the game, it must realize there is a lot of competition out there — and this is not quite their bag.
At its core, Facebook is the place friends and acquaintances share cheery hellos and venomous drop-deads that people spend all day composing and reading. Facebook Live is mostly nonsense, but has gained a reputation as the place to watch a series of grisly incidents, like murders, beatings and suicides.
If you had to describe the fare at Facebook, domestically or worldwide, I’d bet one of your descriptions would be “disagreeable.” There's a lot of yelling going on.
There is not a Facebook audience. There is, really, a big crowd that uses Facebook, but it is not one solid base. It is almost the opposite.
Nonetheless, Facebook hired Ricky Van Veen, founder of CollegeHumor.com, to suss out longer-form content for the social site, which dearly wants to keep its billions of users locked in. With money and a known brand, Facebook sounds like a logical new content entrant.
“Our goal is to kick-start an ecosystem of partner content for the tab, so we’re exploring funding some seed video content, including original and licensed scripted, unscripted and sports content, that takes advantage of mobile and the social interaction unique to Facebook,” Van Veen said, according to Consumerist.
Today The Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook “is mainly interested in weekly series, with episodes lasting up to 30 minutes. One genre Facebook isn’t interested in, at present, is hard news—a fact rankling some news organizations that have dedicated significant resources to previous Facebook video initiatives, including its push into live video.”
The edgy fare that Netflix and other digital makers are creating isn’t necessarily overtly political. But I’d say most of it comes with far more attitudinal edge than typical content on television. Its comparative riskiness is conditioned by the fact it’s a pay service. If you want it, you'll pay for it.
Contrasting that, Facebook’s audience is all over the
place. Whatever content it puts up there will be reaching a crowd of potential viewers that range from the suburban bridge club crowd to inner-city rappers to alt-right wingnuts. That’s
definitely not a crowd that can be programmed to, particularly because the programming you “like” will likely be the stuff all the people who aren’t like you would not like.
Paul Klein, the acerbic, witty programmer who ran NBC’s entertainment division before TV got split up into 500 channels, used to say the typical TV viewer looked at the prime-time
schedule at ABC, CBS and NBC each night and then chose “the least objectionable
programming.” It was his job to offer it.
Back then, those three networks were each divvying up about 100 million households into thirds. Well, Facebook reaches 1.7 billion unique visitors a month. How do you please a crowd like that?
pj@mediapost.com
P.J. Bednarski has written for MediaPost since 2012 on media and marketing topics. He can be reached at pj@mediapost.com
Unless FB and other digital TV show wannabie producers hire people with a fair amount of experience with scripted fare there will be lots of failures and badly spent money before they start to get it right. Also, there are real questions in my mind whether FB users will watch a 30-minute sitcom or who knows what series on a regular enough basis to lure advertisers away from "linear TV"---even it the "audience" data is reported correctly and verified by an independent auditor. We shall see, of course, but this may be a rocky road for FB---unless it learns some of the lessons that the TV networks have learned---often the hard way.
The 18-49 audience is trending down for your TV broadcasters. Obviously FB has some of that time. What say you?
You make a fair point Leonard.
As the video market fragments and the number of sources keep expanding of course broadcast TV's share must decline. It is possible that it could hold its audience level but that would mean the video viewing pool of minutes grow - which there is some evidence showing that it is.
And yes FB has some of that 'slice of the iceberg' that slipped into the sea. In essence FB is getting a proportion of the proportion of linear TV that has been shed. That proportion is still way smaller than traditional TV, and will be for quite some time IMHO. What is also likely is that the number of online video sources will continue to escalate meaning that the number of businesses fighting for a slice of the pie that will be growing slower than the number of sources.
But at the end of the day, the regular consumer really does care about the delivery platform. They care about the content. And at this stage of the game we all know where the pendulum in on that front.
John, the YouTube TV initiative offering a "skinny "package of ABC,CBS,NBC and Fox content plus that of their affiliates as well as their owned cable channels---about 35-40 in all---if successful, would act to reduce competition from other cable channels---Time Warner, Viacom, Discovery, etc. among subscribing homes who opt to see network/station/network owned cable content via the streaming option. If a sizeable number of homes went this route, broadcast network ratings as well as those for their cable channels would increase nationwide for the first time in years albeit via a combination of "linear" and digital viewing. This will be a most interesting development to watch as it might net the networks huge sums as their price for making their content available to YouTube, in addition to increasing their own ad sales.
Thanks Ed
I'd been away and missed that. So it's a 're-packaging/re-selling' deal in essence but via YT. Basically putting their combined content onto a further/preferred distribution channel. Nice idea. And yes - sounds like a pie with lots of cream on top.
The question remains whether FB is a preferred distribution channel for content. I suspect not, apart from the "Hey BFF, you just HAVE to see this" sort of referral.