Message From Michael -- December 3, 2007

SWEEPS AFTERMATH

SWEEPS BY THE NUMBERS

REPORTS OF TV’S DEATH ARE

READING REPORT FOLO

HEY, BIG SPENDER, SPEND A LITTLE

COCKTAIL CHATTER – CHINA AND RUSSIA

YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST


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SWEEPS AFTERMATH: Only one of the five networks, Fox, showed any improvement year-to-year in the November ratings. Or, put another way, every network but Fox dropped year to year, according to Nielsen and reported by The Programming Insider. Fox claimed the #1 spot in the Adults 18-34 demo, but more importantly, as I say, it was the only network that was up year to year. CBS won the race for households and for total viewers, and tied in the Adult 25-54 demographic, although it was down 7% year to year. ABC claimed the title in the key Adults 18-49 demographic, although it, too, was down 7% year to year. NBC… well, the Peacock Network really didn’t have anything to crow about, dropping anywhere from 10% to 20% in the various categories. Its only consolation was that the CW was worse, dropping a staggering 21% to 25% year to year.

SWEEPS BY THE NUMBERS: A “record.” A “new zenith.” These are two references, also from The Programming Insider, about cable programming ratings in November. The ‘record’ was a reference to the male-driven G4 program which had 96,000 viewers. The ‘new zenith’ was a reference to Style which had 101,000 viewers. Just to put that in perspective, the number one station, WABC-TV, this November in the number one market, New York, had 281,000 viewers. And just to provide perspective on the perspective, the number one station, Belo8, in the Dallas-Fort Worth market, which is #5 in the country, had 248,431 viewers for its 10pm newscast. Okay, some more perspective (and, yes, that means more numbers). New York has 7,391,940 TV households. Dallas-Fort Worth has 2,435,600 TV households. The difference in the TV stations is that while a rating point is worth 73,920 households in New York City, WABC won with a 3.8 rating; while in Dallas-Fort Worth, even though a rating point is ‘only’ worth 24,350 households, Belo8 had a 10.2 rating.

Okay, one last set of numbers and then I promise I’ll quit. Nielsen Media puts the total number of TV homes in 2008 at 112,798,170. The Census Bureau puts the total U.S. population as of today (December 2nd) at 303,505,856. Lastly, total viewers for the network evening news put NBC on top with 9.91 Million viewers for the week of November 19th, followed by ABC with 9.03 Million and CBS with 6.94 Million. I should also note that there are cable channels pulling substantial numbers – like ABC Family (1.1 Million), SciFi (1.14 Million), and USA (1.98 Million). Also, many of you will note that NBC’s Brian Williams took back the number one spot from ABC’s Charlie Gibson after Williams appeared on Saturday Night Live.

REPORTS OF TV’S DEATH ARE: You know, the rest of the quote – Greatly Exaggerated. Two recent reports confirm that TV is here for some time. The first, a survey by researcher Jack Myers and commissioned by ‘global intelligence service’ Teletrax found that nearly half of media industry executives believe that Television will account for the majority (60%) of the video being delivered with the Internet accounting for the rest by the year 2012. Another fifth believe that Television will account for 80% of the video delivery. Of course, on the flip side of that, one in ten executives believe that the Internet will account for 80% of the video delivery system and two in ten believe the Internet will account for 60% of the video by 2012. Not surprisingly, the younger the age group the higher the usage of video on the Internet or other mobile sources. There is much less equivocation in a report released by consultancy firm Bain and Co. which says it will be five years or more before Internet video becomes a viable alternative to broadcast, cable or satellite. Even more telling, the Bain report says that by 2012, U.S. viewers will spend on average two hours MORE per week watching television but that Internet use ‘outside of the office’ will only rise by half an hour per week. The head of Bain’s ‘global media practice’, David Sanderson, is quoted in a Reuters’ report as saying the technology isn’t quite there and neither is the business model for Internet video.

Disclaimer: The Teletrax/ Myers report is focused on ‘selling’ the concept of video watermarking, which is one of Teletrax’s services. Video watermarking is a system of embedding a mark into video and/or audio so that it can’t be picked up by the ear or eye but can be tracked by downstream recognition devices. The other form of tracking content use is video fingerprinting which ‘recognizes’ the different sound, motion and patterns of the video.

Footnotes: Regular readers of MfM will recall previous studies reported here that despite the proliferation of user-generated content, most video users still gravitate to professionally produced content. And add to the long list of things I didn’t know: Former Massachusetts governor and Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney was once CEO of the Bain and Co. management consulting firm.

READING REPORT FOLO: There was so much info in the National Endowment for the Arts’ Reading Report, profiled in last week’s MfM, that I had to do a brief follow-up. One of the other fascinating facts in the report confirms previous studies about media multi-tasking. More than a quarter of 7th to 12th graders (28%) say they are using other media ‘most of the time’ while reading while nearly another third (30%) say they are using other media ‘some of the time’ while reading. And the two top ‘other’ activities are watching television (11%) and listening to music (10%). The report cites U.S. Department of Labor statistics that indicate 15 to 24 year olds spend an average of 7 minutes each day ‘reading for pleasure’ (remember, that’s the key). The same age group spends two to 2 ½ hours a day watching television. And before any of you ‘oldies’ start tsk-tsking, the report says the 45-54 age group spends 17 minutes a day reading something other than what’s required for work, while the 55-64 group spends 30 minutes and the over 65 group spends 50 minutes a day ‘reading for pleasure.’

HEY, BIG SPENDER, SPEND A LITTLE: Or, if you’re Proctor and Gamble, spend a lot. The consumer products and advertising behemoth retains the title of the world’s largest advertiser, spending a whopping, unbelievable, incredible, amazing $8.52 Billion worldwide in the last year surveyed. In its annual Global Marketers report, Advertising Age says the top 100 marketers spend $97.8 Billion in the 90 countries surveyed, with nearly half (47.1% or $46.02 Billion) being spent in the U.S. alone. In part, of course, that’s because 46 of the top 100 marketers are U.S. based. Europe accounted for the next largest amount (31.8%) followed by the Asia/ Pacific region (15.3%). The London/Rotterdam based Unilever came in second worldwide at $4.54 Billion, beating out General Motors which actually lowered its advertising by 17.4% to $3.35 Billion, followed by Clichy, France, based L’Oreal at $3.12 Billion, and Toyota at $3.1 Billion.

Media companies making the list include Time Warner at #7 with $2.14 Billion worldwide spending; Walt Disney Co at #13 spending $1.75 Billion; General Electric which sort of qualifies as a media company at #23 with $1.25 Billion; News Corp at #25 with $1.1 Billion; and Viacom at #41 with $735 Million. The report available at http://adage.com/images/random/datacenter/2007/globalmarketing2007.pdf gives you country by country breakouts from Australia to Azerbaijan and from Italy to India.

COCKTAIL CHATTER: As a side note of sorts to the P&G spending, the company has launched a website, along with NBC Universal Digital Media, aimed at pet owners, called petside.com. Another website, midomi.com, allows you to search for songs or artists by singing or humming a few bars of the song you are looking for. And just in time for the holiday season the Mall of America joined with Phillips Electronics to implement a cell phone text parking system in which you can put in your car location and a text message will be sent back to remind you where you parked. Trendwatching website Springwise.com says the latest PC video game to make the rounds is Arabian Lords which is a bilingual strategy game inspired by the rise of Islam between the 7th and 13th centuries and targeted specifically at Middle Eastern players. According to Blognation Russia (which, BTW, is a great site for reading about the former Soviet Union), Russia has its first Billion dollar Internet company – Mail.ru, a free web mail service which South African media and Internet group Naspers paid $26 Million to get a 2.6% stake. China-based (and Yahoo invested) search engine Alibaba is launching an online ad service to compete with the other Chinese ad service Baidu, named – no, joke – Alimama.

YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST: Social networking giant Facebook has had to roll back its controversial advertising program Beacon (featured or ‘warned about’ in an MfM last month) which sent alerts about what people were buying to their friends, after a rebellion by members and privacy groups. However, it still retains the extremely targeted behavioral/contextual advertising program. And 60 Minutes did a profile piece last night on the One Laptop Per Child program featured in MfM several times over the last year.

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