| Cyn Wkndr 1/10/08 |
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Cynopsis:
Weekender 01/10/08 Good morning. It's Thursday, January 10, 2003, and this is Cynopsis: Weekender. Below are a handful of industry stories - with which you may agree or disagree. You know rarely in television does anything every really get "cancelled", at least not publicly. But here it is anyway: After much consideration, Cynopsis Weekender will ride into the sunset after today's edition. It's been a heckuva three year run, and it's time to call it a day. Thanks to all the freelance writers who have participated in this weekly for the past three years. And here's three final editorials from three of our most prolific writers. Reporting From CES: Everything's Converging But We Haven't A Clue How By Daisy Whitney Imagine a dart board in front of you. Now, put a blindfold on. Next, try to hit a bullseye. You're going to need a whole lot of darts, right? That's kind of the approach advertisers and content providers are taking as they kick the tires on a broad range of new media services, such as broadband portals, gaming consoles, portable DVD-DVRs, and download-to-own online video services. The task will be even harder after this year's Consumer Electronics Show. The annual electronics extravaganza in Las Vegas spawned a slew of announcements: Disney-ABC will offer TV shows on the Xbox, Comcast has partnered with consumer electronics firms like Panasonic and LG to sells TVs and other devices with cable services built in, Sony inked a partnership with CBS to bring CBS shows onto Internet video-enabled Sony TVs, MTV Networks forged a pact to offer its shows on DailyMotion, GoFish, iMeem, MeeVee and Veoh Networks, and Matsushita Electric Industrial partnered with Google's YouTube to carry the Web service on TV sets. So how do advertisers and programmers decide which horse to bet on? Simple. "Show me a strategy to get to the TV set," said Rob Aksman, creative director for Brightline, an interactive TV marketing firm. "They need to be able to achieve significant reach." He looks for new opportunities for clients that recognize that consumers do still watch television. "I don't think people are paying enough attention to the fact that consumers still want to watch TV on their TV." Content providers are more apt to test drive as many services as possible, as MTV Networks demonstrated with its deals earlier this week. TV Guide Channel has also partnered with a range of Web video portals in the last year, such as YouTube, Veoh Networks, Hulu, AOL Video and Comcast.net. "We don't expend all our energies on every Tom, Dick and Jane, but if it's a credible company, we do deals because we want to distribute content in as many places as possible," said Ryan O'Hara, president TV Guide Network and TV Guide Broadband. Cutting a wide swath is necessary because consumer habits are hard to predict, so companies are wise to hedge their bets. "You want to grab the real estate early and partner with them early so the ones who win you are a good partner with," O'Hara said. These days, everyone is a partner. The Long Tail Versus the Big Picture By Louis Chunovic Are emerging online media about to replace traditional media? The question took on new urgency with a new year's prediction from WPP Group's Group M subsidiary: In the United Kingdom, internet ad revenues will surpass traditional television ad revenues in 2009. But the UK -- where the BBC, a public broadcaster funded by a household license fee, provides eight national TV channels -- may be a special case. Elsewhere, in the United States and globally, "look at the ad dollars" in the emerging-media space, suggested Brian Wieser, SVP/director, industry analysis, UBS, speaking at that company's recent Global Media & Communications Conference in Manhattan. "It's really quite small if you exclude search." Furthermore, while search is growing rapidly, "it's not attracting the larger advertisers." In traditional national network television there are approximately 1,000 advertisers, with fully 75 percent of the total ad spend coming from just the 200 biggest advertisers, Wieser noted. By comparison, approximately 8,000 advertisers spend on display ads online. "That doesn't include search," Wieser added. "That number is in the hundreds of thousands." In the search business the "vast majority" of ad dollars come from small businesses, not the big TV advertisers, he said. And the same is true in such other iterations of emerging online media as video, widgets or social networks: The majority of the emerging-media ad dollars are "pie expanding," rather than money from the traditional large TV advertisers. Search advertisers, Wieser said, are "literally hundreds of thousands of new advertisers ... [that] might have previously been putting the money into their sales force ... or into flyers." The reason that traditional big advertisers are still voting with their ad dollars in favor of traditional TV is that, globally, traditional reach and frequency metrics are still tilted substantially in favor of television. "We can argue that over time this will change as older audiences die out," Wieser said. However, even among among younger demos, TV usage either has continued to rise (if measured from the start of the decade) or is flat (if measured from the start of the previous decade). "This is also true around the world,” he said: “The reach of television is still better than anything else." His bottom line: "This emerging media form, although very important, is not that big." Daydreams for 2008 By Circlewipe The flipped calendar brings an opportunity to be resolutionary, not just in our personal lives … the weight, the smoking, the cursing, and, yes, the weight. It's a time to daydream about a year when our industry might actually evolve to a better standard. Sit back and imagine a year when: The WGA strike will end, but not before it reducing awards show clutter, with the second and third tiers (Golden Globes, SAG Awards, Daytime Emmys) moving to the internet or to "news" coverage, blessedly shorter. A time when both writers and producers learn that viewers are relieved not to have far-too-much airtime sacrificed to far-too-much tepid banter from celebrity presenters. Smart drama series like Damages and MadMen won't just fill the summer schedules on cable networks. But we're grateful they did in 2007. Congress passes a bill outlawing pharmaceutical ads on tv. (One can dream.) ABC News' experiment with single sponsor broadcasts becomes the standard, giving more time to newscasts. Next assignment: More news in the newscasts. Cable news anchors (not commentators) discover that it's not all about them. Their opinions don't matter, the news does. Congress passes a bill outlawing cable companies from charging for single-set digital boxes and channels we don't want. (Dreaming again.) All the Sunday news shows are available on the web after Sunday morning. Working actors take a lesson from Tom Hanks and realize they're the luckiest people on earth, not the hardest working. Producers realize that a well-crafted script is worth a good chunk of the cash they get from re-purposing that script. Writers realize it's better to work than to walk. Reality shows don't get more ridiculous. When a show says you can find more information on a topic by going to their website, it's actually there. Channel logos get smaller. Overlaid animated promo banners disappear. Three levels of chyrons become a federal offense. The longest running series of the TV season … the presidential debates … ends. But not until November. In the meantime, be grateful for the dwindling field of candidates raising millions of dollars that could be spent on bigger dreams for all of us in 2008.
* WEEK'S RECAP *
Friday, January 4, 2008
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Later -- Cyn 1/10/08 What's On This Weekend: Saturday: 8-11p, January 12, 2008 ABC: Movie: Pearl Harbor [r] CBS: NFL Playoff: Jaguars at Patriots FOX: Cops [r], Cops [r], America's Most Wanted ION: Movie: In Cold Blood [7p] MNT: Movie: Little Nikita NBC: Dateline, Law & Order: SVU PBS: Austin City Limits [9p] TELE: Cine Nuestro [7p], Cine de Impacto/Estreno UNIV: Sabado Gigante Sunday: 7-11p, January 13, 2008 ABC: AFV, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition [r], Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Brothers & Sisters CBS: 60 Minutes,The Amazing Race, Comanche Moon (Part 1) CW: CW Now, Aliens in America [r], Life is Wild, Crowned [r] FOX: American Dad [r], American Dad [r], Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles [p ], Family Guy [r], American Dad ION: Movie: Robert Ludlum's The Apocalypse Watch NBC: Dateline NBC (a Golden Globe clip show theme); Golden Globes Press Conference at 10p; American Gladiators [r] PBS: Nature [8p] [r], Masterpiece, Encore! With James Conlon [r] TELE:Cine en Casa, Cine Millonario UNIV: La Hora Pico, Los 5 Magnificos All outgoing e-mails are scanned and sent out virus free. Copyright Cynopsis 2008 |
