• by July 1, 2004

THE 100.4 CHANNEL UNIVERSE (OR, IS IT 140.8?) - It's been a while since we've spent much time thinking about John Malone's apocryphal "500 channel universe." As far as we were concerned, it surpassed that number a long time ago. But that was looking at it from the vantage point of our DirecTV set-top. Looking at it from the perspective of Nielsen statisticians, it appears that the TV universe has stalled at about 100 channels. Actually, according to today's MediaDailyNews, it declined last year to 100.4 channels from 102.1 in 2002. That was a first for what was projected to be an ever- expanding universe, ever since Malone gave his celebrated speech that coined the 500-channel notion during a cable industry conference in 1992. Twelve years later, new channels do indeed appear to be launching at astronomical rates, but the key stat from Nielsen's point-of-view is how many are actually available to the average TV household.

In the short time since Nielsen released the surprising finding, theories for its cause have abounded. Nielsen even postulated its own in a recent client communication, suggesting that it might be a result of two things: "This trend seems counter-intuitive," wrote Nielsen, noting, " Our findings indicate that the average number of ad-supported cable networks per household declined slightly, while the number of channels offering video-on-demand and pay-per-view increased."

While a decline in ad-supported cable networks might seem alarming enough - and deserving of its own investigation - the second part of Nielsen's explanation seems to touch on a much bigger issue: what the heck is a "channel," anyway?

Historically, Nielsen has lumped video-on-demand and pay-per-view channels as a single channel entity in its household averages, regardless of the number of such channels that actually existed inside a household. But the reality is that channels are becoming increasingly irrelevant in a world where consumers are essentially downloading streams of TV content onto a hard drive or through a set-top device. Nielsen acknowledges as much in its communiqué, suggesting, "As the landscape continues to change -- including the anticipated growth of digital delivery -- it might be helpful to reexamine the definitions used in creating this chart." And just to prove that, the ratings company re-calculated the whole channels receivable issue based on a liberal definition of the word and found that the actual trend went from 127.0 channels in 2002 to 140.8 channels in 2003.

Meanwhile, Rick Kerr, a cable TV executive in Guymon, Okla., has a much simpler explanation: economics.

"The more channels we add to our lineup, the higher our costs to provide the service," Kerr tells the Riff. "These costs must be passed on to our customer, who then must pay the price every month. One hundred channels seems to be the 'sweet spot,' offering enough channels of choice to the customer, while not overburdening him or her with an unbearably high monthly bill."

Then again, as Kerr notes, the whole debate shouldn't really be about the quantity of channels available to the average consumer, but the quality: "Even with having 100 or more channels in our lineup, we still hear people say, '100 channels and there is still nothing to watch.'"

THE HOLISTIC EGG (PITCH IT, AND IT COULD END UP ON YOUR FACE) - It's not very often that we get to compare notes with elite members of the advertising press, so we were reassured to learn the other day that we're not alone - that some of our greatest frustrations are the very same ones being experienced each day by top editors and writers at Advertising Age, Adweek, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, who sat alongside the Riff during a recent Advertising Club of New York breakfast forum. Specifically: the hyperbolic nature of the industry we cover, which just happens to be one, that by its nature prides itself on its hyperbole. But the over-the-top sales claims and marketing-speak that often seem to work so well in consumer advertising campaigns, apparently don't work that well when it comes to pitching industry journalists on stories. In fact, they've already begun banning certain phrases from their coverage and are apt to turn a deaf air to anyone pitching them story ideas that include any of the following catchphrases:

"Win/win situation"
"Out of the box"
"Pushing the envelope"
And, perhaps touchiest of all, "touch points"

Personally, we would add a litany of other clichés, including: "paradigm shift," "inflection point," and soon, "tipping point." Readers already know we've banned the phrases: "bandwidth" (unless used to describe media spectrum) and "the space" (unless used as a reference to physical proximity.") And just for the record, we're seriously considering banning such phrases as "contextualization," "commoditization" and "behavioral marketing" (Are there actually forms of marketing that are not intended to capitalize on or influence consumer behavior?)

But the most ludicrous example of industry doubletalk may have been one experienced by Wall Street Journal ad reporter Suzanne Vranica, who said she was astonished recently when during an interview, an ad agency chief actually suggested that the paper reposition the name of its "Media & Marketing" section to "holistic marketing." Since the Journal hasn't yet made that change, we can only assume its editors thought the idea had a few holes in it.