• by June 28, 2004

TV INDUSTRY DISCOVERS THE VALUE OF PR - Some radical ideas on the future of TV advertising are coming not from the major ad agencies, or even from consumer marketers, but from the TV industry itself. We may forget, but TV networks, channels and program distributors are some of the biggest users of TV advertising time, as well as so-called "off-air" advertising time and space. They don't call their TV time "advertising," of course. They call it promotion. Call it whatever you like; the major TV networks now invest the equivalent of $1 billion each year in TV commercial time, according to estimates from Nielsen Monitor-Plus. That makes them bigger network TV advertisers than such consumer marketing biggies as General Motors, Procter & Gamble or Johnson & Johnson.

But the marketers of television programming are facing the same crisis of confidence over the efficacy of conventional TV advertising impressions that other consumer marketers are experiencing. The solution, according to a Frank N. Magid study released last week by PROMAX/BDA, a trade group that is the TV industry's equivalent of the American Association of Advertising Agencies and the Association of National Advertisers, relies less on conventional TV advertising impressions and more on things like public relations and ads in interactive TV programming guides.

The PR move is especially interesting for several reasons:

1) It mirrors Madison Avenue's own communications planning soul-searching and the question over how best to integrate PR into the mix;

2) It could create new competition for space in editorial outlets that other consumer products and services are vying for;

3) TV companies and brands already are some of the strongest public relations brands.

Individual TV brands (the industry and most consumers call them "shows") historically attract huge volumes of editorial coverage. Just look at the TV section of any major daily newspaper if you're still unclear.

But recently, their corporate entities have begun vying with some of America's biggest corporations for share of America's so-called "corporate news hole." While companies like Walt Disney Co. and Time Warner historically have ranked alongside the Microsofts, Wal-marts, and General Electrics of the world in terms of corporate news coverage, the PR industry was surprised during the first quarter when a major TV company jumped out of nowhere to a prime position. That company, Comcast Corp., coincidentally made a lot of news because it had made a takeover run at Walt Disney Co., but analysts at PR industry researcher Delahaye, say the news industry might have liked what it's seen.

Comcast ranked fifth in total news stories among the top 100 U.S. corporations during the quarter. It also ranked fifth in terms of Delahaye's so-called "net effect," a metric that considers the positive or negative impact news coverage has on a company's public esteem. The folks at Delahaye also have a nifty way of factoring corporate news coverage based on the relative size of a corporation. On this size-adjusted basis, Comcast actually was the dominant corporate news brand during the quarter, overshadowing all the heavyweights.

While it was the Disney bid that cast the news spotlight on Comcast, Delahaye research chief K.C. Brown says it revealed that Comcast had "all the right fundamentals" for corporate news coverage and now that the corporate news media are familiar with it, the Comcast name is likely to become "sticky" with the news media.