Message From Michael
January 17, 2007
SWEEPS
THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT 2007
THINGS YOU SHOULD WATCH OUT FOR IN 2007
THE SLEEPER QUESTIONS OF 2007
THE WEIRD PREDICTIONS FOR 2007
COCKTAIL CHATTER


SWEEPS: I couldn’t go this long without at least using the dreaded word. Sweeps. We will be sending out a separate document for client stations with some last-minute considerations for the February sweeps period. In the meantime, this week’s MfM is a look ahead at what the futurists and crystal ball gazers see in your future. I preface it, by referring back to the famous quote or admonition: You can’t predict the future, but you can help create it.

THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT 2007: Research firm eMarketer says 2007 will see the crossing of the great divide. High-speed Internet penetration AT HOME (an important distinction) will pass the half way market. The firm predicts 50.2% of households will have broadband, up from this year’s 43.9%. That translates into 60 million residential subscribers. By 2010, two-thirds (63%) will have Broadband connection. Yesterday was the deadline for comments to the Federal Communication Commission which is reviewing media ownership rules. The decision is expected to reverberate throughout the broadcast and media world. The FCC has posted all of its media ownership staff reports and studies on its website. (That will be the subject of a future MfM.) On a related note, an estimated 3,000 people attended a national conference in Memphis on media reform.

THINGS YOU SHOULD WATCH OUT FOR IN 2007: The predictions and forecasts centered, unsurprisingly, on the growth of User Generated Content and Social Networks. Half to two thirds of every media source I subscribe to mentioned one or the other. However, one semi-surprising prediction was that the soothsayers and prognosticators should not count out Traditional Media.Consultants with the Deloitte firm say the ‘traditional’ media are, as they put it, “ideally placed” to take advantage of the explosion of user-generated content and social networking even though the revenue, at least for now, is limited. Howard Davies, the director of media strategy for the firm, told Reuters that there are two types of UGC people – those looking for five minutes of fame and those wanting to contribute to a discussion or community. He says the five-minute-famers phenomenon won’t grow, but that the “less glamorous” side is part of Internet society now. As possible proof of the traditional media’s favorable position, Paul Bond in The Hollywood Reporter reports that of the top ten movers of the tech-oriented newspapers Showbiz 50 stock index only one, Real Networks, is generally considered a new media company. He argues that last year was a mixed bag for new media companies while traditional stalwarts like Disney, News Corp and TW showed some strong stock advances. The question, says Deloitte, is whether the traditional media companies will see new media as a threat or an opportunity. Reporter Seth Sutel writing for the Associated Press says that’s why many mainline companies are hiring new media executives with experience, as they try to figure out whether to buy existing new media operations, re-build on their own operations or start from scratch when the investment pay-off is long term. Mike Shields writing for Media Week says the question is whether “web 2.0 darlings (like) MySpace and YouTube can stay hot while becoming more corporate.”Regardless, big companies will soon begin adding social networks and user-generated TOOLS to their Intranet sites, predicts Clark Kokich, worldwide president of Avenue A Razorfish. The simple reason, he tells The New York Times, is that the tools have become part of the youth culture. In a similar vein, Steve Bryant with The Hollywood Reporter predicts that video specialization and video editing will be two of the hot trends. As ‘most viewed’ becomes less novel, people will start looking for video tailored to their specific interests (daredevil stunts and college sports for example) and lesser-known websites (not YouTube and MySpace) will grow. Even more powerful a trend is that consumers are becoming more savvy about the editing tools. As reporter Bryant put it, “when I was was in short pants, I had no idea what a cutaway or cross-fade was… but today’s tweens and teens are intimately familiar with the language of the screen which has major implications for how the online video market will evolve.” Meaning – still shaky handcam videos in 2007, but the quality will improve. The New York Times article framed the issue in an interesting way when it reported that companies designing products will have to consider the large group of young people who use their thumbs more than their index fingers.Although nobody quite said it, it seems a foregone conclusion, ever since the cell-phone recorded London bombing, that UGC will be part of the news mix in 2007. Several major news groups, including the BBC and Reuters, have turned what was once a trend into a fact of life. The next move will be in UGC advertising. Although several major companies, including Anheuser-Busch and Proctor and Gamble have signed on to a greater or lesser degree (mostly lesser), most observers still question how advertisers will turn the viral video phenom into attention-getting, revenue-generating, money-making advertisements. Advertising giant JWT predicts, regardless, that there will be a growth in what it calls “participatory advertising.”

THE SLEEPER QUESTIONS OF 2007: Part of the issue is one of the top ten sleeper questions of 2007 – how to measure the impact of advertising. Nielsen is wrestling with that in its on-again, off-again measurement of commercials. The Online community is wrestling with it as well. Also on the top ten list of questions, possibly even making # 1, is whether the TV and PC will marry or divorce. And, if so, who gets custody of the kids. No-one questions the belief that 2007 will see greater distribution of video via broadband by everyone, including the networks. On the tech side in 2007 there is an echo of the VHS – BetaMax battle of years ago between new video storage system Blu Ray and DVD, although here the question is probably more of a “when” then an “if.” The growth of local search on the Internet raises all kinds of questions for local media – newspapers and television in particular – over how thin can you slice the local advertising pie. Also, on the sleeper question list is just how far mobile/wireless technology will go and whether consumers want to go along. The various groups have mixed predictions ranging from video cell phone ubiquity to rejection. Forbes magazine editors say the process “stretches the limits of human eyesight and attention.” Apple’s iPhone may help decide the question. Privacy issues will become a major question this year as online options grow and with them, the illegitimate spammers, spimmers and phishers and the legitimate marketers and advertisers.

THE WEIRD PREDICTIONS FOR 2007: People’s on-line lives will take on a life of their own in 2007. Second Life, which could arguably be called an amalgam of user-generated content and social networking, is the leader. Futurist Faith Popcorn’s Brain Reserve group predicts that people will start bequeathing their avatars – the characters that represent them in online fantasy worlds – to their friends and families. On the flip side of that, The New York Times, citing several sources, says more and more people will be pushing the ‘off button’ to escape the media-saturated world. Advertising giant JWT in its list of the top 70 trends of 2007 sees a growth in school buses running on biodiesel fuel, sustainable construction of ‘green buildings’ and a greater interest in Hallal foods, which are foods prepared according to the Quran. People will be making their broadband connections by ‘plugging’ into the power outlets at home as ‘powerline networking’ takes hold. Forbes magazine sees electronic books making a comeback, despite some earlier setbacks, as authors and publishers see the value of easily downloadable books and readers become more comfortable reading on an LCD monitor. On the flip side of semi-normalcy in predictions, expect LED lights to replace light bulbs, VoIP (Voice Over Intenet Protocol) taking the place of more and more regular telephones, the mainstreaming of the Internet and a maturing of the online population. In the end, as Mike Shields writes in Media Week, “unpredictability rules” when it comes to making predictions. As he candidly put it, last year’s forecast report by the magazine “did not once include the terms ‘you’ and ‘tube’ in the same sentence, let alone the same word.” But to leave you with a final thought, a quote from Google CEO Eric Schmidt who told the BBC that 2007 will be a “bull market for imagination.”

COCKTAIL CHATTER: All right, this really isn’t cocktail chatter, but it could provide a lot of future cocktail chatter and so I thought it fell into the theme of this week’s MfM. The Project for Excellence in Journalism has launched a weekly “news coverage index.” The report, published online every Tuesday, codes the stories that dominated the news in the past week in newspapers, online, on network TV, cable and radio. Not surprisingly, the dominant story last week was the Iraq policy story which “filled 34% of the overall newshole,” followed by Congress (7%), Somalia (5%), the actual situation in Iraq (4%) and stories about the homefront related to Iraq (2%). The Malibu, California, wildfires came in sixth, just ahead of British soccer star and Posh Spice husband David Beckham’s $250 Million contract. What is particularly interesting about the report is what the different media focus on each week.

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