| Cyn Wkndr 2/8/07 |
|
|
|
Cynopsis: Weekender 02/08/07 Good afternoon. It's Thursday, February 8, 2007, and this is your Cynopsis: Weekender edition. Below are a handful of industry stories - with which you may agree or disagree. If you'd like to be heard - put together your own 350 word submission! Details below. Sinclair and Mediacom Make Uneasy Bedfellows by Daisy Whitney The 11th hour truce came just in time for the Super Bowl. But that doesn't mean the battle is over. Cable operator Mediacom and TV station group Sinclair Broadcast Group ended their heated retransmission dispute just in time for the big game this past weekend, restoring TV signals for 24 stations in 16 states that had gone dark for more than two months. The agreement, inked on Feb. 2, calls for Mediacom to carry the analog and digital signals of those stations reaching about 700,000 of its customers until Dec. 31, 2009. Though seemingly civil in nature, the resolution punctuates two months of pitched and public battles from each side. Sinclair has played the poster child for broadcasters' rights during the recent spate of retransmission battles. And the broadcaster appears to have won in this case, while Mediacom will likely raise its rates sometime in the next year or so to pass on the cost. That's because various media reports have pegged the price MediaCom paid between 40 to 50 cents per subscribers to carry the stations. The tacit resolution raises interesting questions for the future. "On the one hand, Sinclair, which owns mostly Fox and MyTV stations, shares in the reach provided by Mediacom, a reach that would be otherwise impossible to achieve these days. Who uses rabbit-ears anymore?" said Todd Chanko, media analyst with Jupiter Research. "They really owe their recurring subscriber revenues to those networks - and the stations that carry them. The resolution between Sinclair and Mediacom acknowledges the debt owed by cablers to the programmers that deliver their viewers. But broadcasters still have to be careful about upsetting the apple cart." However, some experts caution about reading too much into the Mediacom/Sinclair agreement. Mediacom is a small operator, said Bruce Leichtman, president of Leichtman Research Group. "Comcast is about 17 times the size of Mediacom -- I think that they might have a little more negotiating power with broadcasters," he said. Still, the Sinclair victory could embolden other broadcasters. If it does, the end of the Sinclair MediaCom battle could be the start of a whole new era of retransmission. Online Rentals Click with Consumers by Marshal M. Rosenthal 1997 saw Netflix gambling consumers would prefer renting DVDs online rather than going to a store and hoping they'd find their selections. Thousands of movies and TV shows later, the California-based company now has well over 6 million users; this despite the more recent appearance of competition in the online arena. A most formidable rival is rental giant Blockbuster, who began firing salvos designed to entice customers away from Netflix and towards their own online rental service, and has amassed about 2 million online subscribers as of end of 2006. So considering how Blockbuster has been actively trying to chip away at Netflix's subscriber base with deals and offers, their refusal to emulate a recent Netflix's price reduction might seem surprising. Not so, according to Steve Swasey, Director, Corporate Communications, Netflix, who attributes this recent development as signifying that a "brick and mortar" foundation could limit a Blockbuster's ability to truly compete. Swasey points out that Netflix has been the significant leader in behavior of this market since the beginning; a constant innovator who has demonstrated value to both consumer and Wall Street in terms of use and value. "Imitators might try to do similar things, but they're just following the lead we've set," he says. "Netflix created and continues to lead the online DVD rental market." Of course Netflix hasn't just relied on pricing to maintain their market share. They've enhanced their services and most recently added the ability of subscribers to watch movies directly from their computers while online. Swasey expects Netflix will have over 8 million subscribers by the end of '07, reaching twenty million by 2012. He attributes this to the fact that DVD continues to be a youthful, highly successful format that will be on hand for years to come. "That doesn't mean we're going to slack off on providing new services, just that we'll continue to offer DVD rentals as well as new technologies and methods for watching moving forward," he says. "That is the real key to continuing to be the leader in this business." Nine Out Of Ten Doctors Agree … By Louis Chunovic If you've ever puzzled over what that "little purple pill" does or why you should "ask your doctor" about it, then wonder no more: The advertiser's idea is simply to "get that brand in the mind of the consumer," according to Rick McMurtry, senior assistant general counsel, Turner Broadcasting System. "In exchange for not mentioning the ailment, they don't need to mention all the side-effects that their product might have." McMurtry was a panelist at a recent Association of National Advertisers' Advertising Law & Business Affairs Conference session, entitled "Censors Rising? – Network and Cable Clearance." But don't call them censors; clearly, they don't like the name. It's Standards and Practices, or Rights and Clearances, not censorship, the panelists agreed. Of course, the panelists were not there to chart the changeable, sometimes fevered history of broadcast standards and practices. Instead, they offered helpful hints to would-be advertisers and showed examples of the "simple revisions" that can mean the difference between a commercial spot that is cleared and one that is not; adding, for example, such safety equipment as helmets and life vests to spots that depict skateboarders and whitewater rafters, respectively. The S&P mission is to make sure all ads are "tasteful, truthful, accurate and compliant with our guidelines," according to Chrysse Spathas, vice president of broadcast standards and practices, ABC. That means proving, for instance, that more doctors recommend your product than the competition's. Comparative negative ads are okay. Simply trashing the competition, what Spathas called "ash-canning," is not. Children, of course, require special protection from marketers' blandishments, so it's not enough to run a super or crawl that reads "batteries not included" or "each piece sold separately"; there must be audio and sometimes video disclaimers in those toy ads, too, Spathas said. Clearance by one network is not enough either. "You need to clear your commercial at each of the networks in which it intends to run," said Marilyn Colaninno, director of rights and clearances at law firm Reed Smith. "The world around us is obviously changing all the time, the world of advertising is changing all the time and the networks will update their guidelines to reflect those changes." Currently, the Standardistas frown on so-called "white coat" ads, which rely on the authority presumably conveyed by an actor wearing a doctor's lab coat, for products that do not actually require the intervention of a physician. One amusing exception screened during the panel was for a European over-the-counter skin-care product touted by a sober-looking female "scientist," who, midway through the pitch, throws open her lab coat to reveal she's wearing skimpy lingerie. And if a particular ad is not to your liking, there is a "formal challenge [process] in place," Spathas said, and both advertisers and consumers can avail themselves of it. * WEEK'S RECAP *
SUBMISSIONS / AD SALES/ SUBSCRIBE & UNSUBSCRIBE Cynopsis Ad Sales - Mark Bohn - 203-583-1224 / Article submissions for Cynopsis: Weekender are welcome, provided they are no longer than a maximum of 350 words. News articles used are paid at the rate of $1/word. Not all submissions are used. Editorials (also 350 word max) may be submitted but are not paid, and not all are used. Send submissions to Cynopsis at . The Weekender edition is published every Thursday and includes a few items to ponder over the weekend, as well as the highlights from the week. It is delivered to the entire Cynopsis subscriber list, unless you specifically request to be unsubscribed. To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your email subscription, go to the Cynopsis website, www.cynopsis.com and click on the subscribe tab. Emails to the Editor: subject E-Mails to the Editor Copyright Cynthia Turner 2006 Later -- Cyn 02/08/07 What's On This Weekend: Saturday: 8-11p, February 10, 2007 ABC: Movie: Winnie the Pooh, A Valentine for You, Movie: Bringing Down the House CBS: Pro Bowl Presented by State Farm, Cold Case [r], 48 Hours Mystery FOX: Sports Special NASCAR 07 Bud Shootout ION: Movie: Leaving Normal [7], Movie: The Mighty Quinn MNT: Wicked Wicked Games [weekly recap], Watch Over Me [Weekly Recap] NBC: Dateline, Law & Order: SVU [r], Law & Order: CI [r] PBS: Local Programming, Austin City Limits TELE: Vas o No Vas [7], Seguro Y Urgente, Cinemundo del Sabado/Estreno UNIV: Sabado Gigante Sunday: 7-11p, February 11, 2007 ABC: EM: Home Edition, EM: Home Edition, Desperate Housewives, Brothers and Sisters CBS: 60 Minutes, The 49th Annual Grammy Awards CW: Reba [r], Reba, 7th Heaven, Beauty and the Geek FOX: King of the Hill [r], The Simpsons [r], The Simpsons, King of the Hill, Family Guy, American Dad ION: Kung Fu, Movie: Other People's Money, Kojak NBC: Grease: You're the One That I Want, The Apprentice, Crossing Jordan PBS: Local Programming, Nature TELE: Cine Millonario/Estreno, Cine Millonario/Estreno UNIV: La Hora Pico , Bailando por la Boda de mis Sueños |
