May 8th, 2006

Message From Michael                    (image placeholder)
                                                  May 8, 2006                                                                                                         

• SWEEPS


• VIDEO ON DEMAND BECOMING MORE DEMANDING


• BLOG YOUR HEART OUT


• THE INTERNET REPLACES MOM, DAD AND YOUR PRIEST


• CHILDREN’S FUTURE HALF EMPTY


• WEBSITES WORTH VISITING


• COCKTAIL CHATTER – TOM CRUISE, BLUE COLLARS AND MOTHER’S DAY

• SWEEPS:  This week’s tip is a question:  Is your news director and marketing manager meeting every day?  Successful stations do.  Ten minutes after the morning news meeting; and have a minimum once-a-week conference call with your consultant.  


• VIDEO ON DEMAND BECOMING MORE DEMANDING:  Trying to catch up with all the articles that I hadn’t read during my recent hiatus, one message came through loudly and repeatedly and that is the Godzilla-Morpha battle brewing over VOD.  You’ve already heard about the networks offering their prime time programs for downloading.  Everything from ABC’s Desperate Housewives to NBC’s Nightly News to CBS’s 60 Minutes mini-site on Yahoo.  TV Week’s Michelle Greppi makes the analogy that the new network revenue streams will do to affiliates’ exclusivity rights “what the ice age did to dinosaurs.”   An article in the Christian Science Monitor says it’s a ‘classic tale’ of old-line businesses struggling to cope with disruptive technology and warns it could mean tighter budgets for local stations.  An indication of the change is the announcement by TV Guide that it will include a weekly column “Downloads” listing the best TV programs available for downloading or online viewing.  Anyway, here are more facts to add to the debate and the confusion.  The broadband video advertising marketplace has grown from $30 Million upfront to an estimated $500 Million to as much as $1 Billion over the next 12 months.  That’s according to broadband video developer Brightcove vice president Adam Gerber at a conference organized by Media magazine.  Matt Wasserlauf, president of broadband video developer Broadband Enterprises says that’s conservative, considering that comScore estimates there are 4 Billion “monetizable” video streams online.  Variety magazine’s online publication, Multimedia News, reports that General Motors has struck a deal with Time Warner to produce a VOD advertising project creating a GM virtual showroom where viewers can tour new car videos and even go for an online test drive.  (BTW, look for this word to come up more often in advertising and sales circles – pre-roll.  It refers to those brief video ads that come up when you click to a website.) Meanwhile, Nielsen is reporting that despite the growth in VOD penetration, its contribution to TV viewing has leveled off or even declined in some instances.  An article by Joe Mandese in Media Daily News says that while VOD viewing has grown 600% since Nielsen began tracking it 28 months ago, that is an increase from 0.03% to 0.21% of US TV usage and that, more critically VOD usage is down in December, 2005, from the high point in the summer of 2005.


• BLOG YOUR HEART OUT:  Apparently people are doing just that.  According to blog watcher David Sifry, the blogosphere is now 60 times larger than it was just three years ago and is doubling every six months.  In fact, he says there is a blog created every second of every day.  As we noted in previous MfM’s, many of these go dark.  But Sifry says more than half (55%) are still posting three months after the blogs are created.  Even more noteworthy, blog tracking firm Technorati reports that it is tracking 1.2 Million new posts every day.Another report by Blogads notes there are four distinct segments of the blogosphere:  political, gossip, mom and music.  Political blog readers are the most engaged, are male dominated (72%), with college degrees (77%) and aged 41 to 50.  Music blogs are also male dominated (72%), with college degrees (58%) although many (25%) are students and most (44%) are between 31 and 40.  Gossip blogs are female dominated (77%), with college degrees (60%), or are students (22%) and most (49%) are between 22 and 30.  Mom blogs are female dominated (90%), with college degrees (73%), have incomes between $60K and $90K and most (45%) are between the ages of 22 and 30.  Interesting, the Blogad survey indicates that most dedicated bloggers do not listen to podcasts.Finally, in keeping with my effort to make sure you are all with it, cool and hip, a couple of new terms to remember.  Vloggers which, as the name implies, are people who blog video.  Also in addition to Spam and Spim that we’ve talked about before, add the words Splog, which you can guess, and Sping which is a fake ping from an alleged blog notifying blog trackers of new postings.  In the same vein, to be really cool, you can talk to your friends about the movie Snakes On A Plane.  I saw it referenced in a blog article and two of my daughters mentioned it to me.  Apparently it has developed a cult following through its blog site snakesonablog.com and is already predicted to be an underground hit even though it doesn’t even come out until August.    


• THE INTERNET REPLACES, MOM, DAD AND YOUR PRIEST:  At least that’s one conclusion you could reach after reading the latest report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project.  The report says the Internet is playing a “major role” in more people’s lives than ever.  More are turning to the Internet to help cope with major illnesses (54%), to help them in their jobs (50%), to help with money decisions (45%), to find a place to live (43%), to pick a school (42%) or to buy a car (23%).  The authors say that based on their research, 45% of Internet users or 60 Million Americans give the Internet credit for playing a major or crucial role in eight different areas of concern.  Despite common complaints about information overload, only 15% of those in the survey said they found the information overwhelming.  The vast majority (71%) said they got all the information they needed.


• WEBSITES WORTH VISITING:  Okay, you’re probably received an e-mail about this site, along with half of the United States, but just in case.  It is a website that tells you the prices being charged by gas stations in your area, from the lowest to the highest.  A great weblink on your home page:  http://autos.msn.com/everyday/gasstations.aspx?zip=&src=Netx.  As the debate over illegal immigration continues to heat up, you may want to take a look at a Pew website that details the illegal immigrant population in every state:  http://pewhispanic.org/factsheets/factsheet.php?FactsheetID=17.  Here’s the strange website of the week, but one with an important message:  http://www.darfurisdying.com.  It is an online video ‘game’ designed to bring home the tragedy in the Sudan.  And for something a little different, how about a website that tells you about problems with various items AND how to fix them.  Everything from digital cameras to DVR’s.  It’s titled simply http://www.fixya.com.  On a related note, a report by the Newspaper Association of America says newspapers continue to be the dominant information sites in major markets.  The report says 116 Million adults read a newspaper over a week and a 55 Million adults visit a newspaper website over a month.  According to the association, newspapers own 11 of the top 25 national news and information websites and local newspapers are the dominant site in most of the top 75 markets.  Two of the fastest growing websites in the 25 to 25 demo are in Salt Lake City, The Desert Morning News (#1) and The Salt Lake Tribune (#9). The Tampa Tribune which you may remember is partnered with WFLA also made the top ten.  For comparison purposes, with your own website as well as the newspaper’s, look at these websites deemed some of the best TV websites in the country:  WRAL.com, KXAN.com, and WPTZ.com.    


• COCKTAIL CHATTER:  As part of its marketing campaign, the producers of Tom Cruise’s latest movie, Mission Impossible III, equipped Los Angeles news racks so that every time someone opened the rack to get a newspaper, the theme music from the movie played.  Fine, except when the device – a red plastic box with wires – broke lose and landed on the rack of newspapers.  The nervous reader notified the police who, as they put it, rendered the news rack “safe” by blowing it up.  Research firm The Media Audit reports that the number of women in the blue collar work force has increased in the last five years from 31.6% to 34.9% while Hispanics in the blue collar work force has increased in that same time from 19% to 22.5%.  The percentage of Caucasians decreased from 59.1% to 52.8% and the percentage of African Americans in the blue collar work force also declined from 17.6% to 15.9%.  Constant Contact, an e-mail marketing firm that specializes in small businesses, says its recent survey showed husbands and daughters will make 72% of the Mother’s Day purchases, restaurant appointments and reservations.  Mothers themselves will account for another 20%.  And sons… well, they will account for only 8% of those purchases.      


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