• by John Gaffney , May 8, 2002

NCTA Riffs: If the big story coming out of NCTA is the move toward developing more Video On Demand services, I’m yawning. I think the story nobody wants to talk about is the pressure on cable channels for more flexibility in creative units. For every Nickelodeon or CNN that wants to keep commercial spots at 15 or 30 seconds, there’s a hungrier company like Scripps-Howard’s fledgling Fine Living network that wants to break that mold. I was talking with Fine Living’s SVP John MacDonald today, and he said his channel is ready to discuss five-minute spots as well as five-second spots with advertisers. For a property like Fine Living, a revenue stream such as product placement would betray editorial integrity. But breaking up ad units is a much more desirable alternative. Just like the Internet has had to deliver more ad-friendly ad formats to drive revenue, I think cable companies will be pressed more to deliver something new and different. Sponsorship of a VOD delivered movie might be a good start. But it’s hardly a showstopper........

AOL Riffs: “In Search of a Strategy” might be the next docu-drama you see on TNT. AOL CEO-in-waiting Richard Parsons has been playing the media and Wall Street in masterly fashion, as he says he is struggling with developing a new revenue strategy for the AOL/TimeWarner behemoth. Oh, the drama! Who will play Bob Pittman? How about Peter Gallagher? I don’t think someone as smart as Parsons is really slumming for ideas. I think he knows exactly what he will do. Having said that, I will opine that he should stay the course with everything in that company that isn’t an Internet site. With the magazine and cable properties, I think he needs to focus on delivering new products, spiffing up the presentations on some old ones and keep an eye out for the next In Style. As for AOL, it needs to get more revenue from the sports and entertainment advertisers that have flocked to other sites like Yahoo! and CBS Sportsline to spend their Internet budgets........

Sub Riffs: Here’s why you advertise aggressively, even when the chips are down and the economy’s struggling. Sandwich franchise Blimpie is finally waking up and looking to reclaim some of the market share it lost to Subway. Blimpie CEO Linda Kaplan Thaler told The Wall Street Journal that it’s time for “sub warfare.” I love that.