• by March 3, 2004

WHAT'S THE NEXT BIG THING? - That's the perennial question of the media planning business, so it's no surprise that it's also what Starcom has asked some top cable network executives to answer when they sat on a panel during the media shop's annual "Cable Day" summit today at its Wacker Drive headquarters in Chicago. If some chit chat the Riff had with some of those executives on Tuesday is any indication, the next big thing in the TV advertising business may just be broadband video, a marketplace the Starcom folks have been trying to cultivate as a new "television daypart" and one the cable folks say could be a cable strong suit. Why? Well aside from the fact that cable still is the medium that is mainly fueling broadband penetration, cable networks and operators are among the best positioned to program broadband video content. Indeed, Feedroom.com, one of the big players in Starcom's initial "broadband upfront" last fall, mainly gets its video streaming feeds from cable networks and operators like Comcast. Another "big thing" is likely to be digital video recorders, the focus of one of the "Cable Day" panel discussions. While Starcom has done plenty of its own in-depth research on that topic, it seems the shop isn't too proud to pick a few cable industry brains for deeper insights, which makes sense, given that cable operators are likely to be the one that accelerate the next wave of DVR deployment.

Another big thing that has to be standing like an elephant in Starcom's conference room has to be the Congressional inquiries into children's advertising and the chilling effect any new laws might have on the children's television marketplace. After all, it's Starcom's own John Wagner - soon to be Spike's own John Wagner - who has been predicting that food would emerge as the No. 1 children's television advertising category this year, nudging ahead of toys.

Should a ban on children's advertising happen - hey, anything's possible these days - it would transform the kids TV advertising marketplace in much the same way the tobacco ad restrictions impacted the magazine advertising marketplace. Expect to see guidelines for the percent composition of a kids' TV program comprised of children under eight - the age researchers say they're most gullible to advertising - for food advertisers. And expect Nielsen to take its time - due to some unforeseen technical difficulties - in delivering the new "kids 8-minus" demo break.

Meanwhile, the Riff is already ruminating on the next big ad categories to come under attack. Surely, if confections aren't explicitly covered under any new food marketing to kids regs, they will come under immediate fire. And while much of the focus so far has been on childhood obesity, we fully expect the next line of fire to hit childhood anorexia and bulimia. Meaning? Well, any host of product categories ranging from toy figures like Barbie dolls to fashion, accessories, movies and the music industry, all of which frequently reinforce images of underweight body types.

But the Riff has a solution to the whole mess. Instead of having food marketers - or any marketer for that matter - post their media buys off of Nielsen demographic breaks, Congress should mandate that they utilize Simmons new "waistband" segmentation tool, which can determine the composition of viewers (or readers) based on their body types. It's the ultimate answer and a smart marketing approach, too. The fatty food guys can target underweight kids demos, while other industries could target the overweight children.

A FRUITFUL SALES PITCH - The ironic thing about ad-supported television networks is they don't like to advertise much themselves. That was clear this morning when Univision gathered the best and the brightest of the trade press' minds around its New York conference room table to hear the schpiel about their new ground-breaking research that should once and for all convince marketers and agencies they need to advertise in Spanish if they really want to reach Spanish-speaking viewers. Asked by one of the reporters (no, it wasn't the Riff), whether Univision planned to run advertising to promote these facts to Madison Avenue, co-President-Network Sales Tom McGarrity, turned to the room and said, "Hopefully, a few of you will help get that message out. Otherwise, we spent $50 on coffee and fruit that will go to waste." Not bad, thousands - potentially tens of thousands if it were MediaPost properties - of dollars worth of free media coverage for $50. Now we wonder what McGarrity and his team would say, if in a couple of months, when they go to call on the 140 network upfront advertisers they expect to sign back up with hefty advertising commitments, if some of them turned around and said, "No gracias, but here's some fruit."