Posted on 05/12/2008 4:22:59 AM PDT by abb
For decades, this has been the week for network television to strut its stuff. But not everyone is in the mood to party this year.
Typically, the major broadcast networks -- Fox, ABC, CBS and NBC -- have spent about $5 million each to whip up excitement among advertisers for their new fall schedules. They would fly hundreds of stars and executives to New York for extravagant presentations at tony Manhattan venues, followed by lavish parties.
The five networks, including the upstart CW, rounded up $9.3 billion in prime-time commercial sales in the weeks after last year's "upfront" presentations.
But a souring economy and a lingering hangover from last winter's writers strike, which cut short the TV pilot development season and depressed prime-time ratings, could cast a shadow over the kickoff of the industry's springtime selling season, which begins today in New York.
"Advertisers are not going to be willing to pay higher prices given these ratings drop-offs," said Jason Maltby, a top executive at ad-buying firm Mindshare.
The upfront presentations will be a toned-down affair. CBS Corp. and Walt Disney Co.'s ABC canceled their parties. ABC plans to downsize its presentation by holding a more low-key "sales meeting" at Lincoln Center. NBC Universal ditched its Radio City Music Hall event in favor of a more trade-show-like expo "experience" at nearby Rockefeller Plaza that will showcase all of its media units -- not just the fourth-placed NBC network.
"The world has indeed changed," Michael Nathanson, media analyst for Bernstein Research, wrote in a Friday report about the upfront process.
In an age of shifting consumer tastes and viewing patterns, the giants of television are losing stature. Digital video recorders that enable viewers to speed through commercials are just one technological threat to network advertising revenue.
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(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
"Network evening newscasts will go dark after the '08 elections and their news divisions disbanded."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/12/business/media/12russell.html?ref=business
May 12, 2008
Production of a Movie Stops Over Funds to Pay Its Stars
By MICHAEL CIEPLY
LOS ANGELES — The Screen Actors Guild on Friday pulled its members, including the stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Biel, from a movie being directed by David O. Russell after producers of the film failed to keep sufficient funds to pay actors in a union-mandated account.
The independently financed film, “Nailed,” halted production but is expected to resume shooting early this week, according to a person who is involved with the film but spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid conflict with colleagues.
While financial jolts are common in the world of independent film, the mid-production shutdown grabbed attention because it sidelined some high-profile stars. Mr. Gyllenhaal received an Oscar nomination for his performance in “Brokeback Mountain,” and Ms. Biel has been a fixture in studio films like the Universal Pictures comedy “I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry.”
Word of the production’s troubles was reported on Deadlinehollywooddaily.com over the weekend.
Mr. Russell is known for off-center comedies like “I Heart Huckabees” and “Three Kings.” A spokesman for the Endeavor agency, which represents him, had no immediate comment.
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ping
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/12/business/media/12ratings.html?ref=business
May 12, 2008
In the Age of TiVo and Web Video, What Is Prime Time?
By BRIAN STELTER
This week, the television upfronts — in which the broadcast networks present their schedules to advertisers — will open with a mystery. Who stole six million viewers?
That’s the number who were watching prime time television last May, a month affectionately known as “sweeps,” but have disappeared this year, according to the overnight Nielsen ratings. Each of the major broadcast networks, save for Fox, has seen its audience decline this season. The ratings for hit shows like “American Idol” and “CSI” have approached record lows.
Where some of last May’s 44 million viewers went is not a mystery, according to the networks. The writers’ strike this winter deflated the ratings and accelerated the flight of viewers to cable channels.
But the more significant shift can’t be blamed on the strike. In the past television season, there has been a sharp increase in time-shifting. Some of the six million are still watching, but on their own terms, thanks to TiVos and other digital video recorders, streaming video on the Internet, and cable video on demand offerings. So while overall usage of television is steady, the linear broadcasts favored by advertisers are in decline.
The mystery, then, is what the networks should do now.
Brad Adgate, research director of the advertising agency Horizon Media, said that advertisers were paying attention to the changes.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121055293815783981.html?mod=2_1567_topbox
‘Upfront’ Spending May Soften
This Year as Economy Takes a Toll
By SUZANNE VRANICA and STEPHANIE KANG
May 12, 2008; Page B9
The shaky economy is likely to damp spending at this year’s upfront ad-selling event, according to media buyers and analysts.
Starting this week, broadcast networks will host their annual presentations to advertisers and reveal their fall schedules. (General Electric’s NBC unveiled its fall lineup last month but will be staging another advertiser-focused event Monday.) The upfront is of major importance for the networks because they sell about 75% of their ad inventory for the new season.
Media buyers said early reads on marketers’ budgets show major ad-spending categories such as automotives, some retail and some financial services are likely to be down. Another sector showing softness, they say, is pharmaceuticals, a major television-ad spender.
Even ad-spending giant Procter & Gamble is considering cutting its overall ad budget by as much as 10% this year, according to two people familiar with the matter. The maker of Tide and Crest has been aggressively moving ad dollars to the Web. “We can’t comment on our media buying strategies,” said a spokeswoman for P&G.
At last year’s upfront, marketers committed an estimated $9.3 billion. This year, in addition to the economy, the networks’ task is complicated by fallout from the writers’ strike and the lack of blockbuster hits, according to media buyers and some analysts.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/12/business/media/12adcol.html?ref=business
May 12, 2008
Advertising
Marketers Welcome Television’s Shift to a 52-Week Season
By STUART ELLIOTT
THE broadcast networks and Madison Avenue may want to adopt “Honky Cat” as the official theme for the 2008-9 television season.
Why? A lyric that Elton John sings — “And oh, the change is gonna do me good” — encapsulates the attitude of many broadcasters and advertisers as they prepare for a different kind of upfront week, which begins on Monday.
The term upfront refers to the springtime previews offered by the networks of the prime-time programs they intend to broadcast in the fall. It also describes how the advertisers and their agencies decide to buy billions of dollars of commercial time ahead of the fall season.
Change is in the air because of the mess the 100-day writers’ strike made of the 2007-8 TV season, which ends this month. The strike scrambled the networks’ schedules, chased away millions of viewers and impeded the ability of advertisers to reach the audiences they wanted.
“The networks, and advertisers, realized that an upfront reflective of a business model born when there were three networks is unsustainable,” said John Rash, senior vice president and director for media negotiations at Campbell Mithun, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies. His reference was to the era when ABC, CBS and NBC were the sole choices for viewers.
After the strike was settled in February, the broadcasters resolved to rethink how the coming upfront week would proceed. As a result, the strike “had a major silver lining,” said Rino Scanzoni, chief investment officer at the GroupM division of the WPP Group, which is composed of giant agencies like MediaCom and MindShare. The upfront week had turned into “a dog and pony show,” Mr. Scanzoni said, “missing the mark from what it was intended to be: speaking to advertisers and media agencies about what the networks’ strategies will be for the next season.”
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121054331586783549.html?mod=2_1567_topbox
The CW Sells Stake
In Prime-Time Block
By SAM SCHECHNER
May 12, 2008; Page B8
The ailing CW network, which is jointly owned by CBS Corp. and Time Warner Inc., is making the unusual move of selling a stake in a block of prime-time programming to an outside entity.
Media Rights Capital, an independent movie and TV studio, has reached an agreement to buy a financial interest in a three-hour block of Sunday nights on the CW beginning in the fall, the companies announced Friday. MRC will create the programming in consultation with the CW, and both will work together to sell ads for the slot, according to MRC’s president of television, Keith Samples.
Bringing in new investors is one way networks are trying to keep profits up, following a writers’ strike that pushed viewers to cable and the rise of technologies like digital video recorders that have cut into broadcasters’ ad revenue. The CW recently went so far as to stop streaming its buzzy show “Gossip Girl” online to force viewers to tune in.
As TV networks head into this week’s series of “upfront” presentations to advertisers, prime-time viewership on major English-language broadcast networks is down 9.6%, to an average of 8.3 million viewers this season, according to Nielsen Media Research. The CW is having a particularly hard time. The network’s season-to-date viewership is down 22%. It has attracted an average of only 1.1 million prime-time viewers on Sunday nights, according to Nielsen, routinely getting topped by cable channels such as USA or TNT.
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http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/tv/la-et-channel12-2008may12,0,1394771.story
From the Los Angeles Times
CHANNEL ISLAND
Will ‘Ugly Betty’ and others strike for SAG?
Films and TV sag under the $tar system.
By Scott Collins
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
May 11, 2008
HERE we go again. The entertainment industry quivers near the brink, threatened with another devastating strike even as people are still picking up the pieces from the last one. Can it be much longer before we start seeing A-list celebrities wielding picket signs again?
Last week’s flameout of talks between the studios and the Screen Actors Guild means that TV and film performers could walk off the job as soon as June 30. If that happens, Hollywood would have enjoyed barely four months of labor harmony since the 14-week writers strike ended in February. Another TV season, much of which is set to be unveiled beginning today during the networks’ annual “upfront” presentations to media buyers in New York City, would be imperiled.
It’s not freak-out time — yet. SAG and the studios are likely to resume talks at the end of this month, which would still give them plenty of time to hammer out a deal over payment for shows that run on new media, product-placement fees and other issues. And while much attention has been paid to tensions between SAG and its sister guild, AFTRA — which represents many broadcast performers and which last week started negotiating separately with the studios — the sideline blowhards aren’t blowing as Santa Ana-hot as they did during the run-up to the Writers Guild of America strike.
Neither are most of the major players. Asked about the prospect of another walkout, Doug Allen, SAG’s chief negotiator, told me last week: “That’s not our objective. We’ve made more progress than management admits or has been reported.” Studio sources who declined to speak for attribution also downplayed the likelihood of a work stoppage.
Still, mere talk of another strike is enough to jolt Hollywood, where ordinary workers who took massive hits to their pocketbooks during the writers strike are still scrambling for scarce TV and film jobs, as my colleague Richard Verrier recently reported in this newspaper.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/12/technology/12ecom.html?ref=business
May 12, 2008
E-Commerce Report
Real Estate Lists Grow Comfortable With the Web
By BOB TEDESCHI
AS if home buyers do not have it good enough already, finding a house for sale on the Web is becoming easier.
The triple threat of a weak market, legal pressure and increasing competition has compelled real estate professionals to offer their information more freely online, putting cracks in a walled garden of data that stood strong while the industry enjoyed its breakaway growth. It also presages an end to the days when sellers must list their homes with a broker so buyers can see them.
The trend revolves around the nation’s roughly 900 multiple listing services, or M.L.S.’s, where local brokers post information about homes they are selling. In years past, these services were highly restrictive about where and how that information could be distributed — for instance, frequently not permitting Web sites to display M.L.S. listings alongside for-sale-by-owner homes, bank foreclosures or other properties not represented by real estate agents.
Now, these organizations are connecting more freely with sites like Zillow, Terabitz, ZipRealty, Redfin and others. And while these sites do not have all the M.L.S. data, they have enough to give users more of a one-stop site for real estate shopping than ever before.
“It’s a natural evolution of competition and what consumers want,” said C. Robert Hale III, chief executive of the Houston Association of Realtors, which operates the area’s M.L.S. “The consumer wants to see everything.”
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http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6559666.html?desc=topstory
Upfront: Flat Is the New Up
Advertisers, Marketers Sound Off on Upfronts
By Marisa Guthrie & Ben Grossman — Broadcasting & Cable, 5/12/2008 12:05:00 AM
A bitter writers’ strike, depressed ratings and a national recession aren’t exactly getting TV executives — or ad buyers — in an upfront mood. With so few pilots, can networks outperform analysts’ dour predictions?
The View from Advertisers: Spending Less (Marisa Guthrie):
In the ad bazaar of the TV marketplace known as the upfronts, flat may be the new up.
The television industry heads into the upfront selling season battered by a number of troubling market forces, including continued viewer fragmentation, depressed primetime ratings, increasing digital-video-recorder penetration and a national recession.
The Uprfronts Curtain Raiser
Last year, the broadcast networks wrote an estimated $9 billion-plus in upfront business. This year, many buyers expect spending to be flat at best, and that may be a good thing in the current environment. Others are even less sanguine, with some observers predicting spending to be down by as much as 14%, according to at least one Wall Street analyst.
The falloff in live viewing in primetime has been precipitous this season. CBS is down 8%, while Fox and ABC are down double-digits — 11% and 15%, respectively. Fourth-place NBC is flat. Buyers expect the networks to ask for CPM (cost per thousand homes) inflation increases, but this season’s poor ratings may make higher ticket prices hard to justify.
“It certainly puts a negative spin on the opening of the upfront,” said one executive at a major media-buying agency. “I don’t foresee many [buyers] feeling that they have to immediately come in and meet the network price-increase demands.”
Last year at this time, the change from live program ratings to average commercial ratings plus three days of DVR playback (C3) — the first metric change in 40 years — spurred posturing and hand-wringing, with some buyers vowing not to write business on anything but live program ratings. But when media-buying and planning agency Group M and NBC Universal announced the first major upfront deal, to the tune of nearly $1 billion, the majority of it written on C3, the dominos began to fall.
And while all deals are done on a client-by-client basis, the new metric provided greater accountability for advertisers and networks facing an increasingly on-demand viewer model in a world where DVR penetration is at 20% and growing.
The new digital reality stimulated greater cooperation between buyers and networks working to keep viewers engaged in not just the shows but commercial messages. Advertisers reacted positively to NBC’s early upfront last month (which the network dubbed an “infront”) in part because it presented an opportunity to collaborate on product integration and nontraditional sponsorship opportunities that are imperative in the post-millennial entertainment arena.
For example, networks and advertisers have realized the limitations of embedded pre-roll (oftentimes creative designed for linear television) on their video players. This year, there will be more conversations about digital opportunities that actually fit the space, including interactive creative.
“Clearly, TV is going to be the driver for most deals done by the advertising industry,” said Chris Allen, vice president and director at media buying giant Starcom USA. “But we want to be sure to build synergies and leverage across multiplatforms when we make buys. I think people are having a harder time doing this than they care to admit. But we’re all getting closer.”
Overall television advertising declined by 1.7 % in 2007 to $65 billion, according to TNS Media Research. Network television still gets the biggest piece of the TV ad pie, but spending is down 1.5%, according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus. The mobile market and online space may have siphoned some of those ad dollars. Internet advertising was up 18.9%, according to Nielsen. And cable continues to attract more spending, posting a 2.2% increase last year. Many buyers expect cable, which had its best summer ratings-wise last year, to continue to build momentum in the market.
Companies hard-hit by the economic slowdown are cutting marketing budgets. The Wall Street crisis put a crimp in the financial-services sector. And automotive companies, which account for a healthy chunk of TV ad spending, showed deep declines in advertising spending in 2007, and that trend is expected to continue this year.
But network primetime is still the only way to reach wide swaths of consumers essential to brand building and product launches. “TV is still a primary driver,” said Andrew Donchin, director of national broadcast for Carat USA. “It’s still doing a bunch of the heavy lifting. Often in tough times, advertisers gravitate back toward what they know works for them, and what they know works for them is television. I think television has experienced a resurgence, actually. Advertisers are realizing that TV is still an important part of any campaign.”
During an economic recession, locking in the price-wise deals of the upfront may be an imperative. With all of the challenges facing the industry (only the latest being the possibility of another strike, this time by the Screen Actors Guild), a bull market may seem counterintuitive. But that is the paradox of media fragmentation.
“It tightens up inventory,” said Brad Adgate, senior VP for research at Horizon Media. “You have to buy more commercials to make your media requirement. The more you buy, the less inventory, and that drives prices up.”
Online and mobile advertising, where the brand recall can be as high as 80%, nonetheless reaches a fraction of the consumers that linear television does. Higher CPM rates in the digital space have not given the networks a revenue stream to rival the traditional 30-second spot.
These days, the new market reality seems to be: Pay more, get less. “It’s like what the airlines have done with no-frills,” Adgate added. “People are still flying. You don’t get a seven-course lunch; you get a bag of peanuts. But you still have to go to L.A.”
The View from Networks: Fewer Pilots, Fewer Parties (Ben Grossman):
After a fall that featured few launches finding traction, a writers’ strike and ratings that as a whole were depressed — and depressing — things will look noticeably different this week: Fewer people, fewer pilots, fewer parties.
The entire process has been scaled back as networks cut costs — and save time — by deciding on shows without as many full pilots. Networks have to set schedules based on presentation tapes (often multiple scenes shot on film) or without anything shot at all. Most of the presentations will be scaled-down affairs, and gone are some of the parties, with networks like CBS and ABC dropping their traditional shindigs altogether.
It follows logic that fewer people are making the trip to New York. Network and studios alike are approving the travel for far less people than in years past. “It’s a weird mood — it’s just less of an event,” said a network executive who declined to be named.
And with all of the challenges in the industry as the broadcast networks try to figure out where the viewers have gone — and if they are coming back — network executives seem far less concerned about what the competition is up to. “The week before upfronts, you are always running out of every meeting and calling everyone you know asking what they have heard,” said one network programming chief. “This year, you’re just not as worried about the other guys.”
But the shows must go on, and NBC will kick things off Monday. Gone is the ritzy song and dance at Radio City Music Hall, instead replaced by just a party that will feature a multimedia, interactive showcasing of the NBC Universal properties.
The network announced its fall schedule — and, in fact a 52-week schedule — April 2. So advertisers already know that coming out of the Olympic Games in August, NBC will have a rookie slate that includes the Knight Rider remake, dramas Crusoe and My Own Worst Enemy and comedy import Kath & Kim.
As always, with NBC announcing its schedule first, network executives will sit back and watch what unfolds the rest of the week. Once the other networks have announced their fall lineups, the network will then decide if it wants to move some pieces around before the new season begins, as it often does.
ABC follows the next day at Lincoln Center as always, but outside of late-night franchise Jimmy Kimmel’s customary warm-up act, the show will be talent-free.
The network will pitch a schedule heavy on returning favorites, although the Thursday 10 p.m. real estate out of Grey’s Anatomy is up for grabs. One possibility in that spot is Life on Mars, a BBC science-fiction drama adaptation that may or may not include original executive producer David E. Kelley, who is said to be unhappy with the finances.
While ABC will not have a post-show party, The CW will pick up the slack with a Tuesday-night affair. Touted as a party with a presentation embedded within, the network will look to dust itself off after a year that befuddled observers both within and outside the network.
Last year’s introduction of Gossip Girl and Reaper gave the network great post-upfront buzz, but audiences didn’t follow. This year’s hot CW topic is a Beverly Hills 90210 remake, although the network has yet to shoot a single frame of film.
On May 14, CBS plays at Carnegie Hall again. Last year, the network pushed a new crop meant to attract buzz, with shows such as vampire drama Moonlight and couple-swapping Swingtown. Moonlight survived on Friday nights and Swingtown still hasn’t aired, so the network still is looking for fresh blood with its still-formidable slate of crime dramas not getting any younger.
On May 15, a network may finally puff out its chest a little when Fox takes the stage. Down noticeably less than its competitors in the May sweeps, the network will tout its strong returning schedule. It also will continue its annual attempt to strengthen its fall lineup as it enters year two of fewer Major League Baseball playoff games.
Last year, the network held its top rookie, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, until midseason. This year, it probably won’t wait past the fall to introduce one of its top candidates, J.J. Abrams science-fiction drama Fringe.
Give me a physical break, Hollywood.
If your quality of movies don't improve you will be over in India working for low pay Rupees before long.
Last February our cable was out for a few days. We tried watching Broadcast.
I REALLY do not want to sound like an elitist, Honest, but the programming was suitable only for really stupid, trashy people.
For example, reality shows where people were in court fighting over a stolen bicycle, and things like that...Don't people have LIVES anymore?
Clue:
Kill your television.
Even worse, this was the first time in about 15 years we tuned in to the major nitworks. As a result, just about anything they put on was new to us. And still, we couldn't find one program of interest.
This is a damning indictment of how far out of touch the Broadway and Madison Avenue bean brains are with the rest of the country, especially with anyone with more than a fifth grade equivalent education.
This is typical of any monopoly business that is suddenly faced with upstart competition. For all our lives, the attitude of the nets has been, "sure they'll watch our trash - what else is on tv?"
That's all changed. Much as newspapers cannot adapt to the availability of alternate news sources, tv cannot adapt to the competition of streaming videos.
Kill your television.
Oh, an hour of the Science or Geographics Channels at dinnertime won't do any harm. But if you have managed to kill your TV, you probably have never seen them. As long as one filters out the Climate Change™ undertones they are fine.
Now, if someone really wants to go looking for it, there is plenty of silly stuff on Cable. For example, who could live without the spine-chilling adrenaline-pumping thrills of a DARTS tournament? (Disclaimer: Darts are great but are not made to be watched sobre.)
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=82374
On Eve Of TV Upfront, Nielsen Ratings Remain Unaccredited
by David Goetzl and Joe Mandese, Monday, May 12, 2008 8:00 AM ET
As buyers and sellers head into a final round of upfront sales presentations by the major TV networks in New York this week the main talk will be about the fall TV schedules that typically trigger the start of billions of dollars in annual TV advertising sales. But if you listen closely, you may hear them discussing a dirty little secret: That for the second year in a row, those billions of dollars in upfront advertising buys will be negotiated, bought and sold on the basis of somewhat shaky, and still unaccredited Nielsen TV ratings.
In the weeks leading up to this prelude to the upfront advertising marketplace, the Media Rating Council quietly met, reviewed a crucial audit of Nielsen’s so-called C3 ratings system, and opted to withhold accreditation for what will be the currency for billions of dollars in TV advertising buys.
Details of the audit, the review, and the reasons for withholding accreditation have not been disclosed. What is known is that the audit covered the TV commercial data used by Nielsen to compute the average minute ratings that have become the trading currency of the national TV advertising marketplace, and that Nielsen plans to come back to the MRC in the next several weeks with a plan for addressing the problems raised by the audit.
Even if Nielsen manages to assuage the MRC committee’s concerns about the validity of the TV commercial data, the Nielsen ratings face a second hurdle: a separate audit of the process Nielsen uses to process the TV commercial data with its TV audience estimates into C3 ratings.
The bottom line, say executives familiar with the process, is that it is unlikely that the new TV ratings system will be accredited by the start of upfront negotiations, and possibly not even by the start of the new TV season next fall.
“It’s a fairly rigorous analysis,” acknowledged Lyle Schwartz, the research chief at Mediaedge:cia, who along with his boss, GroupM Chief Investment Officer Rino Scanzoni, championed the C3 ratings a year ago, as a compromise solution that broke a stalemate between buyers and sellers leading up to the 2007-08 upfront advertising marketplace.
C3 ratings stand for average commercial minute ratings for the live broadcast of a TV program, plus three days of play back via digital video recorders. They became the industry’s de facto currency - even without MRC accreditation - a year ago, offering both buyers and sellers some upside over the previous standard of program average ratings only for the live broadcast of a show. Advertisers and media buyers gained ratings that were closer to the commercial audiences they wanted to measure. Networks gained some of the non-live, playback audience from DVRs.
It was supposed to be a stopgap measure as the TV advertising business moved on to something else. It was also supposed to be accredited, as all of the so-called “currency” ratings used by advertisers to purchase media time and space are supposed to be. But a year later, they still are not.
Despite that, media buyers contacted by MediaDailyNews are maintaining an air of pragmatism, noting that it is not MRC accreditation that makes ratings an advertising currency, but a consensus between buyers and sellers to utilize them as the basis of their deals.
“Business doesn’t stop while the MRC deliberates,” noted one such stakeholder.
“The harsh reality of it is it’s in the market and it’s done,” added another. “Does it matter that the MRC hasn’t accredited it? No. There are lots of tools people use that are not accredited by the MRC. The MRC is just there to kind of bring pressure to bear on Nielsen to get it right, to get it better, to have it be the best research it can be.”
Others, including some big TV advertisers, however, are concerned about the impact on their TV advertising decisions. “I think that would hold a lot of weight in the media community, both on the buying and selling side,” said Ed Gold, advertising director at State Farm Insurance.
In fact, some advertisers have corporate procurement policies based on Six Sigma type quality controls that theoretically would demand their TV advertising buys are based on accredited ratings.
For others, it is simply like a ‘Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval,” notes Brad Adgate, senior vice president-director of research at Horizon Media. “You can feel comfortable with the data and that the numbers pass muster.”
While the MRC declined to comment on the details of the audits, or the status of the accreditation process, the council’s Senior Vice President-Associate Director Anthony Torrieri acknowledged, “Billions of dollars trade on some of these products and it’s important to give (industry members) the necessary assurance that they meet certain minimum standards and performance metrics ... so that they can feel confident the decisions they’re making are being made on reliable data.”
A Nielsen spokesperson said the ratings firm is “currently engaged in an ongoing, iterative process as is typical with first-time audits.” The executive added that Nielsen is working with the MRC because, “we respect the value that our clients place in the MRC’s review, and we value the input we receive from the process itself.”
Ultimately, some industry executives believe accreditation of C3 ratings is a temporary measure at best, as the industry moves toward an even more rigorous and refined measure of TV commercial audiences based on “exact” commercial minute, or even second-by-second commercial ratings data.
A number of research companies ranging from TNS Research, Google, TiVo and TRA Inc., have already begun providing second-by-second TV audience estimates on a commercialized basis, and at least one major media shop, Publicis’ Starcom unit, has announced intentions to utilize digital set-top data ratings via TNS as the currency for buying advertising time on networks too small to be rated by Nielsen.
Magna Global researcher Steve Sternberg, meanwhile, has called for Nielsen to offer pod ratings by the 2009-10 broadcast season, writing that the data “will be closer to the actual commercial rating” than the average used in C3.
Joe Mandese is Editor of MediaPost.
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=82350
Zucker Says NBCU Will Turn Net Into Profit Center
by David Goetzl, Monday, May 12, 2008 8:00 AM ET
headshot Jeff ZuckerAs NBC Universal holds a quasi-upfront today and looks to tout the range of its company assets, online properties will no doubt play a prominent role. But late last week, CEO Jeff Zucker said NBCU is having trouble turning the Internet into a significant profit generator, even as its audience increases in this space.
In short, the money is not following the consumers. For example, he said traffic on NBC.com has “exploded,” even as ratings on NBC have declined. But he added that “our ability to monetize it quickly enough has not kept pace with the transition ... from the broadcast network to the Web site.”
However, Zucker promised the network would “get there.” Engines will include both changes in advertising and “the way we go to market.”
He made his comments in an interview with FT.com, the online site of the Financial Times.
Regarding the NBC network, Zucker said he is concerned that the writers’ strike may lead to a long-term decline in ratings—evidenced by the audiences’ slow return to serialized dramas. “I fear that some of that audience did go away from some of those programs,” he said, adding that the full answer will come in the fall.
Zucker called it a “very unfortunate strike that was not in the long-term interest of anybody in Hollywood, including the writers.”
After today’s presentation, NBC will enter the upfront selling period, a market clouded by an uncertain economy. Last week, Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Reif Cohen predicted that NBC’s prime-time haul would drop between 1% and 13%, compared to a year ago when it brought in $1.8 billion.
“It’s something that we all think about, we all talk about, we’re all worried about,” Zucker said of the economy.
With regard to national advertising, he said NBCU has “not really seen any falloff” yet. Still, in the recently completed first quarter, NBCU’s broadcast TV operations—the NBC network and its 10 owned-and-operated stations—posted flat revenues, although operating profits were up 3%.
Some of the economic findings were attributed to lower ratings from the writers’ strike, but the economy did impact the O&Os, where ad spending was down 11%. (Many other station groups are suffering the same fate.)
Zucker said: “We haven’t seen any signs of any real economic slowdown outside of our local television stations, where the local media marketplaces are clearly affected by things like auto, retail and housing.” As for the coming Beijing Olympics on NBCU properties in August, he noted that the controversy surrounding political issues in China has not deterred any advertisers. “We haven’t seen any pullback on the part of advertisers or sponsors.”
He added that NBC news outlets will cover any controversial political activity during the Games as “legitimate news stories” and won’t “shy away.” The “Today” show and evening news will be broadcast live daily from China.
But he said the aim for prime time is to focus on “the opportunity to cover the sporting events.”
ping
Sun, beach, great buys on everything from clothes to watches, great food, very nice people (the Turks), business meetings that last at least 25 minutes each day.... and about 10,000 single Russian women looking for husbands (if just for a day....) and a ticket out of former USSR.
War is Hell
Out of touch with The Usual Suspects at network in NY.
Thanx for update. Will advise when know more.
Be well.
I keep forget there is network programming but I been watching Sunday night Cranford on Masterpiece theatre on PBS good mini series start Judi Dench
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