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Forget TV shows, commercials are ruling the day
2007-05-18
In the U.S. television business these days, it's not about how many people watch a drama or comedy -- it's about how many watch the commercials. The chief reason is that the decades-old ratings system is changing, with new measurements coming soon from Nielsen Media Research that show how much of the audience stays tuned to commercial breaks. The shift dominated discussions at this week's upfront presentations, when ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox unveiled their new prime-time lineups to advertisers. Suddenly, broadcast networks must find ways to keep viewers from fast forwarding through commercials or using the breaks for a snack run. As ABC President of Sales and Marketing Michael Shaw pointed out: "The network that delivers the high commercial ratings... will attract the highest amount of ad dollars." Those dollars are the lifeblood of the industry. After their presentations, TV executives will meet with marketers to book around 80 percent of the season's prime-time commercial spots. Last year, about $9 billion worth of deals were struck. Shaw acknowledged during ABC's presentation that commercial ratings will result in a big shift for advertisers. "It changes how you plan, and it changes how you buy," Shaw said, drawing attention to ABC's own attempts to persuade audiences to watch commercials. "When you advertise on ABC, people see your commercials and they pay attention," he said. The comedian Jimmy Kimmel, who hosts a late night show on ABC, joked to the audience: "In other words, we have the laziest viewers there are -- they can't even be bothered to hit the fast forward button." But broadcasters are deadly serious about keeping viewers tuned to breaks, with about one-fifth of American households now equipped with digital video recorders (DVRs) that let the audience skip through commercials. At Walt Disney Co.'s ABC, for instance, deals have recently been struck with Cox Communications Inc. and Time Warner Cable Inc that block viewers from fast-forwarding through commercials during on-demand programs. At the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit, which coincided with TV's upfront presentations, Time Warner Cable Chief Executive Glen Britt said the ABC deal reflects the changing landscape of advertising. "It's no big secret that 30-second spot, bought per thousand eyeballs, is under attack," he said. "Advertisers feel it doesn't really do what they need anymore. All the networks are frustrated by that." Broadcasters are looking at other approaches, too, including bringing characters, storylines or short "minisodes" into commercial breaks to entertain viewers. A smaller network, CW, the joint venture of CBS Corp. and Time Warner Inc., moved in this direction last year by testing out short, advertiser sponsored snippets that ran during commercial breaks. More recently, News Corp's Fox introduced comedic clips about "Oleg" the taxi driver during ad breaks, while NBC announced at its upfront that it will experiment with "minisodes" from the comedian Jerry Seinfeld this season. Seinfeld's 20 "minisodes" are short sketches for General Electric Co.'s NBC that were inspired by his work on the DreamWorks animated "Bee Movie," which hits the theaters this fall. Part entertainment and part commercial, the live-action sketches will air "somewhere, sometimes, somehow" during the TV season, he said. One of NBC's former top executives, Randy Falco, who is now CEO of AOL, said broadcasters simply cannot keep "slamming people over the head with the same commercials all the time." But Falco, speaking at the Reuters Summit, also said advertising agencies and marketers must share some of the work in keeping viewers tuned to commercials. "Too much of the burden has been put on programmers and not enough on advertising agencies," he said. "They have a stake in this game, too."
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