Of vinyl records and 8-track tapes

January 12th, 2012

Every once in awhile a quote comes a long that’s bound to stick around for awhile, one you’ll likely see many times downstream. This one is from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito (a George W. Bush nominee) during yesterday’s hearing on cursing and nudity over broadcasting’s airwaves. Suggesting that the market itself should be allowed to deal with the issue without regulatory interference, Justice Alito made this remarkable statement:

Broadcast TV is living on borrowed time. It is not going to be long before it goes the way of vinyl records and eight-track tapes.

What’s most remarkable here is its source, the mind of a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. If this is the way a member of the final court in the land views things, broadcasting has no hope of ever finding relief in the courts against market forces that threaten its existence. The spectrum that the government licenses to broadcast companies is eventually going to wireless broadband, and that will doubtless end up in the courts. Alito is not alone in this belief, but he’s the highest ranking government official that I’ve ever heard say it.

My friend Ethan Beute asked via Twitter “how long?” I think this is going to come upon the industry much sooner than later. It will appear like a thief in the night, although it has been visible and approaching for many years. Broadcasters have been playing defense all this time, while intruders from Silicon Valley and elsewhere have been staging guerrilla and flanking attacks with armies funded by venture capital. Lobbyists representing the NAB and local interests are at war with those representing the Telcos and others, and it will likely be bloody. In the end, though, it’s pretty hard to deny the interests of the public in the matter, and that is strongly tilted to the wireless broadband side.

My advice to broadcasters has always been to move forward strategically on two separate paths. Get as much as we can out of the mass media market available to us via those airwaves and at the same time develop new ways to make money. Mass is shrinking and fragmenting. We can’t “fix” that, but we can find new ways to replace the revenue. We must look outside our comfort zone, but we CAN drive the car and fix it at the same time.

Vinyl records and 8-track tapes evolved, and so can we.

Posted in Broadcasting, Legal | 1 Comment » |

“It served its purpose”

January 9th, 2012

Via Newsblues this morning comes word of a young reporter with a new job. He’s Syed Shabbir, and the lucky TV station to acquire his obviously brilliant services is KSHB-41-NBC in his hometown of Kansas City (Market #31). He must be brilliant, because he’s only been in the business for two years, having begun in Topeka (Market #136), where he worked for a year before jumping to WCPO-TV in Cincinnati (Market #35) a year ago.

He told Cincinnati.com that working in his hometown has been his dream since the 8th grade, and now he’s made it. He’s a big city kid. Good for him. Bad for the business.

“I came to Cincy, because I needed to get out of Topeka,” he tells Cincinnati.com. “It only took me a year before I got tired of the small market stories and small market pay (in Topeka). I knew WCPO was only going to be a stepping stone, so I only signed a one year deal. It served its purpose, and I guess I’m lucky things are going according to plan.”

According to plan. Yep. That’s the way it is. Along the way, everything this young man did was to prepare himself for his dream, and this is the curse of the ego it requires to “be on TV.” Mr. Shabbir’s concern as a journalist in both Topeka and Cincinnati was for what those stops could do to fulfill this dream, not in serving the community. I’ve seen it a million times. The job reel is more important than serving the news needs of the community. Moreover, these kinds of people who are  just having their purpose served have no interest in the roots of their stepping stones, because they’re not really in it for the news; they’re in it for their own purposes, and one foot is already out the door at the moment the other foot steps in.

A commenter to the Cincinnati.com story, Steve Gaines, wrote: “loved being your ‘stepping-stone’ ….pls feel free to come back to cincinnati & walk on us again in the future…but honestly, i don’t even know who you are..”

I hate this about our industry. It cheapens what we do and robs smaller markets of what they need and deserve. Parochial news coverage wanted by small towns gives way to the cosmopolitan stories that look good on a young person’s reel. The retort, of course, is “pay me what I’m worth, and perhaps I’ll stay.” No you won’t. It is what it is. What you’re worth? Give me a break! You’re not in this for a “living wage” in a small town, because your definition is a better-than-living-wage. You’ll add “who doesn’t want that?” to which I’ll reply “go to law school.”

Maybe I’m the prick here. Maybe I should instead be chiding broadcast companies for not paying people more. I don’t, because I honestly don’t believe it would solve the revolving door problem. Besides, it’s extremely unrealistic economically. These people likely believe that they’re doing the Topekas of the world a favor by loaning them their brilliance for a year or two. Oh. Right.

Moreover, the egocentricity of young news people is an evolution that took place during my lifetime in news management — on my watch. People used to get into “the biz,” because it was a way to make a difference. Today, it’s all about “being on TV” or “being a star.” Watergate produced Woodward & Bernstein, and they became the poster boys for a new generation of journalists and journalism instructors. Shortly after that, trust in the press began to decline. Around the same time, communications schools began popping up to feed the growing beast known as television news, and the industry borrowed from the newspaper paradigm of small-market-to-big-market.

The Personal Media Revolution challenges all this, and I believe the day is coming when communities themselves will grow their own journalists. The Syed Shabbirs of the world — with their 8th grade dreams — will build and study their craft at home and work their ways into positions with local media companies. They will then be people with roots who care deeply about the communities they serve, whether it is governed by geography or issue. That will be good for journalism, it seems to me, because what we have now are gunslingers passing through towns, people generally who are a mile wide and an inch deep (but look good on TV).

Like Mr. Shabbir, they’re serving the purpose of self, and crapping all over the public in the process.

Posted in Broadcasting, Culture, Education, personal media | 3 Comments » |

CJR story brought to you by the FCC

January 2nd, 2012

The Columbia Journalism Review has presented — as a news commentary — a piece indirectly written by the FCC that favors the commission’s position in a key legislative issue involving broadcasters. The piece hypocritically trashes broadcasters for the same kind of behavior it represents, and it does so using the popular buzz term “transparency.” This is a smokescreen for what’s really being conveyed.

First, a little background.

Long ago, our government decided that “the airwaves” belong to the public and, therefore, should be regulated by the public’s representatives in Washington. Licenses to “use” the public’s airwaves were granted and maintained by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and so was born an antagonistic relationship between the licensor and the licensees. Broadcasters have long held the upper hand in this antipathy. They are a powerful group with the ability to easily reach the public “back home,” where legislators raise money and votes. The National Association of Broadcasters was and is a powerful lobbying organization.

However, there’s been a recent shifting of that power, and things are a little different today. Armed with knowledge of a real demand for wireless broadband — which would use that same spectrum owned by the public — the FCC is turning up the heat on broadcasters. This will evolve to an all-out war that threatens the core value of all of broadcasting, and as the number of people receiving TV via those airwaves alone dwindles, the case of the whole industry weakens. We’re in a season when broadcasters can extract value two ways: through subscriber revenues from cable providers and via advertising based on reach, at least some of which is over-the-air. As a group, therefore, broadcasters must promote both, and that hands the FCC an industry with a split focus to regulate. The FCC, however, cares mostly about that spectrum.

We can argue that cord-cutting raises the value of that over-the-air signal — especially in high-definition — but the longer technicians are able to innovate and resolve compression and other hi-def delivery problems, the more viable TV over IP becomes, and so we must admit that broadcasting’s “cake and eat it too” has a limited window. Broadcasters are well aware of this “problem,” and are working on so-called solutions that limit broadcast signals over IP to those geographic regions determined by broadcast licenses, thereby maintaining the old status quo. The weakness of one solution supported by the NAB and big broadcast companies (Syncbak) is that it requires the broadcast signal to verify geographic position within the market. This will be a hard proposition to sell Congress or the FCC as pressure mounts for broadband spectrum.

It’s into this scenario that an advisor to the FCC Chairman was begun writing what I would call “attack pieces” published in the Columbia Journalism Review. What or who is being attacked? Broadcasting, specifically television. It would be untoward for me to suggest that this is a deliberate effort to cloud the picture of the FCC versus broadcasting, but it does strike me as odd that such vertically-slanted stories would be published in the high church of the Columbia Journalism Review.

Steve Waldman is the writer/advisor, and his latest (This News Story Is Brought to You By…) is about how some television stations “allow sponsors to dictate content” within or close to newscasts. Mr. Waldman was the lead author of the FCC’s Information Needs of Communities study, which challenged broadcasters and helped lay the groundwork for the above arguments about the best use of spectrum.

One of Mr. Waldman’s major concerns in the CJR article is the use by certain television stations of video news releases disguised as news stories or other methods that those with a position employ to escape the wall of separation between news and advertising via the public’s airwaves. In making this charge in the Columbia Journalism Review, however, Mr. Waldman is guilty of the exact crime of which he accuses broadcasters, namely the presentation of a government position paper as news or commentary. I find it astonishing that the CJR would permit this, and yet, there it is.

That said, Mr. Waldman’s point is well-taken and broadcasters most certainly should be following the law and clearly labeling such as sponsored. But so should the Columbia Journalism Review, for this piece was surely presented — however indirectly — by the FCC.

Posted in Broadcasting, Ethics, Journalism, Legal | No Comments » |

Big ad money shifting to promotions (and away from media)

December 7th, 2011

Advertisers are now media companies themselves, and as I tried to point out in my last essay, we now find ourselves actually competing with them. The evidence of this is everywhere, but media companies simply ignore it, because the only thing we can see with advertisers is, well, advertising.

For as long as I have known Gordon Borrell, we’ve both been saying that the ad category to watch — due in large part to the disruptive nature of the Internet — is what Borrell calls “Promotions,” the spending of marketing dollars on things other than traditional advertising. So dramatic has the growth been in this category — and what’s projected to come — that the gouge it takes out of advertising budgets won’t be a small bite.

“This was no boating accident; this was a shark!”

Borrell Associates is a research and consulting company that’s driven by data. Once each year, the company produces major trend reports and then tracks those quarterly. Its latest data about the Promotions category is incredibly revealing, especially as it relates to growth.

In an email exchange with Kip Cassino, Borrell’s research guru, he noted that for some time, far more has been spent on promotions than intermediated advertising and that this trend is not only continuing but accelerating.

Most of it is money — five cents off a can of peas at the supermarket, or $2,000 off the next new car you’ll purchase. Discounts, deals, couponing, loyalty programs all share one thing in common: they are vehicles for enhancing sales with the promise of savings.

Promotions have another thing in common as well. Their ROI is immediately apparent. If a store owner puts a coupon on his website or in the daily paper, he knows exactly how much business it brought him — no guessing about “engagement,” or reach and frequency. This appeals to most businesses, especially the smaller ones.

Online promotions have lagged online ad spending, but Cassino says that is changing as well. “With the burgeoning popularity,” he wrote, “of mobile devices — the phones and tablets — online promotions will see massive growth during the coming five years.”

He noted that most businesses don’t separate promotions from advertising, so spending on a website or social media strategy is just “advertising” to them. The ramifications for media companies are stark.

“As overall spending on the intermediated (ad) side of marketing continues to decrease,” he wrote, “these media outlets will either have to learn how to gain revenue from the promotional side or face growing competition for a shrinking revenue pool.”  The result, he added, will resemble “a continuous game of musical chairs.”

Most media companies, Cassino noted, simply ignore the situation. “They note incremental growth on the ad side,” he wrote, “and see no reason to look at where most marketing growth is really occurring.” This is true, he noted, for both legacy and online players. Education, said Cassino, is the first step.

Promotions are not merely an extension of advertising. They have been invisible to many media outlets for decades, because they are primarily tactical tools — the province of the brand or product manager. They are top-line, not bottom line, oriented. Almost any media can find a good spot in promotions, but to do so requires a thorough knowledge of how and when it makes sense, and how it is best applied.

The invisibility is most obvious when it comes to the online world, where, as noted, we’re now competing with the people who have the money. More and more companies are spending promotions dollars on social media, for example, because it really delivers for them. According to Borrell’s latest SOCIAL LA$R™ (Local Ad Spending Report) research, businesses use the following metrics to determine success in this area (in this order):

1. New Customers
2. Additional Fans, Friends, Followers
3. Increased Visits to Business website
4. New email contacts
5. Increased Sales volume
6. Increased Visits to Business Social Network pages
7. Lead Generation
8. Increased Tweet Responses

National advertisers are way out ahead of local businesses, as the below graph shows, which ought to look like a big, fat opportunity to everybody.

When you examine these numbers, it’s pretty clear that businesses — remember, they’re the ones with the money — are now functioning exactly as we function. They are using tools that used to be ours alone, and the energy powering the movement to personal media (which includes businesses) is both abundant and renewable. Our goals are virtually the same as those of business-turned-media-companies, but the problem is we’re still counting on them to support ours. That is not going to last forever.

The opportunity we’ve always had is to use our knowledge and skill to advance this phenomenon and find our new value therein. There’s growth written all over this, and it begins with eyes to see it.

If you haven’t already, I encourage you to read my latest essay, Social TV and Second Screens: To What End?.

Posted in Advertising, Broadcasting, Newspapers, personal media, Reinventing Local Media | 2 Comments » |

Social TV and Second Screens: To What End?

December 5th, 2011

Here’s the latest in the ongoing series of essays, “Local Media in a Postmodern World:”

Social TV and Second Screens: To What End?

This one is for broadcasters and broadcast companies. An awkward situation is brewing for broadcasters in the world of social media. As advertisers continue to spend money on themselves that used to go to advertising, they’re discovering the value of so-called “second screen” experiences and, in some cases, tailoring their TV ads to jump start the process. The problem is that the TV industry is doing the same thing, and in so doing, competing with the people who pay the bills. This is doubly problematic, because we already know that this “second screen” activity can and does take place during the very commercial breaks that pay those bills. If you haven’t explored the world of unintended consequences in this area, I urge you to read this essay – all the way through.

Posted in Broadcasting, Reinventing Local Media, Social Media | 5 Comments » |

Stop complaining and do your job!

November 22nd, 2011

I was surprised in two ways when I read bureau reporter Gary Sinderson’s editorial “Why The Penn State Scandal Stayed Secret” in TVNewsCheck this morning. Surprise number one was that Mr. Sinderson’s employer, Cox Media Group, would permit this, and the second surprise was the cavalier manner in which he excused not doing his job.

In a nutshell, the piece is defensive rubbish about how he got scooped by a Harrisburg newspaper writer (Sara Ganim) and how tough it is to work as a TV guy in a restricted environment such as Penn State University. The key graph for me comes as Mr. Sinderson is congratulating Ms. Ganim while at the same time acknowledging that he had basically the same information.

We compared notes on the Sandusky issue. She did fine work and deserves the boatload of awards that will probably be coming her way. We both knew the truth of the story was in Harrisburg with the grand jury. The Patriot-News, to its credit, gave her the time necessary to work on the story.

Why couldn’t I report it? I didn’t have the time to get the needed verification to move the story ahead or to convince my bosses it’s not a rumor, but a real story. It’s just the nature of my particular job. I’m a one-man band, expected to crank out several stories a day. I may get a day or two to work on a large story, but not the time afforded to Ganim.

Let me say, as a veteran news manager in “the biz” and now as an observer of media trends that this is nonsense designed to shift blame to managers who either didn’t believe him or wouldn’t give him the time and resources he felt he needed. It also taps into the misleading and empty jargon from certain industry types who (perhaps even sincerely) believe that more resources is the solution to the problems of TV news. It’s the greedy corporations or the demanding producers who just don’t understand what it’s like out here. Poor me.

I’ve personally worked with “one-man-band” bureau chiefs who’ve worked tirelessly to uncover deep and provocative misdeeds while at the same time maintaining the daily needs of the content machines. These people never complained. Never. They felt it was a privilege to hold such a position, and they worked their butts off to prove it. In a bureau where you’re the Lone Ranger, you’re also the king. You are the master of your own reputation, more so than in any other job within the TV news industry. On behalf of all of those hard-working people everywhere, I deeply resent Mr. Sinderson’s suggestion that he was somehow blocked from this story by his institution or the difficulty of finding people to go “on the record” with him on such a story.

I was fortunate enough to grow up in the news business in Milwaukee in the 70s. We had a major who refused to talk to the press and a police chief with dictatorial powers who designated the chief of detectives as the only person who could speak with the media. Being seen speaking with a reporter, whether on duty or off, was grounds for dismissal. It was impossible to do our jobs without determination (never take “no” for an answer) and ingenuity, of which we had bundles. It all depends on how badly you want it.

That was then, and this is now, but the principle is the same. Cox might want to look into its resources in State College but not to “give more time” to what it already has in place.

Posted in Broadcasting, Journalism | No Comments » |

Oh-oh! Press trust stays low.

October 20th, 2011

The opening sentence in the press release from Gallup says it all:

The majority of Americans still do not have confidence in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. The 44% of Americans who have a great deal or fair amount of trust and the 55% who have little or no trust remain among the most negative views Gallup has measured.

Here is the new data from Gallup tacked on to old data from Gallup, so that you can get the big picture. This is in 3-year increments going back to 1973. I’ve been updating and showing this image for ten years, because it immediately ends arguments about the viability of continuing down the same, tired paths.

This slide evidences the insurmountable problem for media companies today, because it slams the door on any attempts by the press to right the ship doing things the way we’ve always done them. It ain’t gonna work. Period.

The standard journalist response to the decline in ratings or circulation is that we’re not doing enough “hard” news, whatever that is. Or we’re not doing enough “investigative” news, whatever that is. Look at that graph. The nostalgia with which most journalists sincerely believe will fix what’s broken has to go back a very long way, for the decline in trust goes back 35 years. Thirty-five years! It’s broken, and we need to start over, not go back to the good old days when the people were spoon-fed by our “expertise.”

This is why contrary opinions, like the one expressed by AP’s David Bauder this week in New life in television’s evening news, are so disappointing. Bauder takes a look at some numbers and concludes that the network evening newscast is back.

…the networks have just completed a TV season where all three grew their audiences for the first time since 2001-02, when terrorists struck and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars began. The growth is continuing for the first few weeks of this season.

The reason he and his list of experts cite is concern about the economy and what he calls “the curating function of the evening news,” which is necessary because, you know, the audience is incapable of figuring out anything for themselves.

People follow news, “but they want someone they trust at the end of the day to explain it to them, to show what it means to them. Somebody credible,” said Michael Corn, executive producer of ABC’s “World News” with Sawyer.

Brand name journalists mean something when people can’t trust the accuracy of what they see online, said Dave Marash, a veteran journalist who worked at ABC News and Al-Jazeera English.

What Bauder and those like him fail to do is overlay the Gallup graph onto attempts to justify the hole in which we find ourselves. Michael Corn apparently believes that people “want someone they can trust at the end of the day to explain it to them.” Right. Now take a look at that graph and repeat that to me.

Folks, let’s be honest. The rise of new media is, in part, a direct response to the Gallup graph, and we make fools of ourselves every time we try to explain it otherwise. Before we say people trust us, we’d better be sure of the facts.

Posted in Broadcasting, Culture, Journalism, Networks, Newspapers, Reinventing Local Media | 3 Comments » |

Broader-casting, what the…?

October 17th, 2011

When any industry is confronted with a disruptive innovation, its first response is denial in the form of a collective “so what?” The disruption counts on this, and when it advances to the point where it can no longer be ignored, the industry’s next response is an attempt to somehow assimilate the new concept into itself. Around here, we call that bolting the disruption onto the existing business model. What starts out as a logical Ries and Trout Marketing Warfaredefensive strategy turns into a disaster, because the disruptive innovation doesn’t need that which is being disrupted.

The local television industry is in an awful spot right now with so many things working against it that the future is really quite uncertain. The FCC wants its spectrum. The Internet wants its audience (and money). People want their content unbundled from the infrastructure that supports the industry. The economy sucks and seems to be getting suckier. Media companies are swimming in debt at a time when they can’t even afford the interest. Advertising is in a full blown revolution. The networks want more and more of the money earned from cable companies.

But perhaps the worst thing the industry has working against it is a trade association that seems bent on bolting new media onto the old. The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has trademarked the word broader-casting® and provided a definition that positions multiplatform distribution as the new thing. I suppose they’ll next change their name to the National Association of Broader-casters®.

From expectations to players to technologies to strategies, there’s a great shift taking place in broader-casting® — with or without you. Driven by the demand for content anytime, anywhere, this evolution has set in motion a kaleidoscope of consumption options with infinite new profit centers. To capitalize on yours, use our Limited Time Offer and register today… For more than 85 years, the NAB Show continues to be the essential destination for broader-casting® professionals who share a passion for bringing content to life on any platform — even if they have to invent it. From creation to consumption, this is the place where possibilities become realities.

The NAB is also helping to fund the Syncbaktechnology, which allows local stations to live stream their broadcast signals online to only those who can “see” their over-the-air signals, thereby shifting the broadcast model to the Web. Is there any demand for this? Perhaps in certain situations such as breaking news, weather and sports, but people are already fleeing the “lean-back” prime time advertising flood (one hour out of three is dedicated to marketing), and the reasons for doing so are only exacerbated in the “lean-forward” environment of the Web.

The NAB's "Great Content Shift," redefining digital media and entertainment.

The weakness of the broader-casting® strategy is that it’s a brand-extension effort built around the value proposition of advertising adjacent to scarce content. However, this is precisely what’s being disrupted, so any effort to sustain that — or spread it to multiple screens — is highly problematic and shifts attention away from different businesses and business models that could actually position local broadcasters for the future.

When the core competency is disrupted, we have no choice but to shift to edge competencies, and there’s plenty of money to be made within the disruption by engaging in our edges. When brand-extension is your only strategy, then your competition remains those within the same space. In any of these multi-platform distribution plays, therefore, a television station’s competition is the other television stations, and this completely misses the point of what’s taking place.

The Web isn’t hurting TV by taking away its viewers; it’s hurting TV by taking away its money.

Perhaps the biggest issue with “the shift” strategy is that it is defense at a time when we must be playing offense. It sounds like it “might” be offense, but anything that attempts to maintain the status quo or sustain the broadcast business model is actually a defensive strategy. You cannot play offense within the paradigm of “casting,” whether it’s broad or broader.

This is all personally very sad to me, for local broadcasting was much more than just a job for me for a very long time. I still have many friends in the industry, and they’re mostly terrified of tomorrow and desperate for opportunities outside broadcasting. At AR&D, we’re about to launch a major initiative that we hope will lead broadcasters down a different path, and I certainly hope they have “ears to hear.”

Posted in Broadcasting | 1 Comment » |

Playing defense when offense is required

October 1st, 2011

Here’s the latest in my ongoing series of essays, Local Media in a Postmodern World.

Playing Defense When Offense is Required

The world of local media is under attack by powerful outside forces, including a bad economy. We find ourselves with our defensive units on the field constantly, and this is interfering with our ability to play offense. The problem is that this is a time when offense is what’s really required, if we are to survive into the future. This is not a new message for me, but I’ve tried to state the situation a little differently this time in the hope that some who were unable to receive it in times past will now be open to the message.

I’m in Chicago for the annual Borrell Local Mobile Advertising Conference this weekend. I’m moderating a discussion with my friend, Raycom’s Pat LaPlatney on how to make money with “consumer generated content.” I’ll be using the thoughts expressed in this essay, which is why it’s being published today. If you’re in Chicago, drop by the session and say hello.

Posted in Advertising, Broadcasting, Disruptions, Reinventing Local Media | 1 Comment » |

Ads dominate ESPN online videos

September 27th, 2011

The Cowboys won last night on ESPN, so I spent a little time this morning at ESPN’s website to catch the analysis and post-game interviews. The experience was irritating, to say the least, and it reminds me again that television companies, who are used to “monetizing content,” are going to have a really hard time with consumers as unbundled viewing continues to explode. Let me repeat: pre-roll ads don’t work for viewers, especially not in this kind of segmented environment.

It’s clear after watching about 10 videos, that the only thing that matters to ESPN is the “draw” that the headlines and video captions produce. It’s all about the ads. Clicking on a link leads immediately to a volume-enhanced, 15-second commercial (often the same one), regardless of the length of the clip you’re about to see. When the clip is finished, ESPN’s video player defaults to the next video in line, which results in another ad being served. Even though I was clicking out of the player, I’m sure ESPN recorded those as ad views.

The point is that, at least for ESPN, it isn’t the content that has precedence; it’s the ads, and this is going to bite them in the ass, because pre-rolls are not at all like ads in a television commercial pod. They’re far more disruptive, and consumers have the choice of bailing out altogether and doing so with a substantially bad taste in their mouths. I am extremely reluctant to click on videos knowing that such is coming, and that’s true regardless of how badly I want to see the content. As a consumer, I also make a mental note of the brands that employ this strategy. I have choices.

The industry misses all this in its need to find a replacement for the money tree that it used to harvest in the legacy world. Online video ad rates are far, far too low, because we’re using old wine accounting for a new wine universe.  Assisting us in this fool’s folly is Madison Avenue, which relies on the old wine accounting methods to get their share. Folks, it’s going to crash and burn, because nobody has asked the people formerly known as the audience if they’d accept all this. I would bet the ranch that 20 years from now, we’ll look back and laugh at the lunacy of sticking a 15-second commercial in front of a 30-second piece of video “content.” It’s a hopelessly archaic concept.

Much is written about how the entire TV universe will eventually be delivered via the Internet, complete with pictures of people in easy chairs “leaning back” to watch what they want, when they want it. Put a scowl on the faces in the easy chairs, however, and you get an idea of the untenable nature of forcing this on people. They will not stand for it. Will. Not.

So rather than timidly going along with it, we need to find the coconuts to stand up and say “no!” Online inline advertising is doable but not by using old accounting methods and pricing. We also need to get off this 15-second bandwagon. It’s just too long to be viable in today’s time-is-the-new-currency world. Think about it. People don’t skip commercial pods via their DVRs because they hate commercials; they just don’t have the time for so damn many of them!

This is our business. Nothing should be more important than finding a reasonable substitute.

Posted in Advertising, Broadcasting, The Great Horizontal | 1 Comment » |