Its TV but not as we know it.
Fragmentation, convergence, cross-platform, curated consumption, primetime is no longer a time of day, its a state of mind, content delivered on-demand, non-linear and self-scheduled.
There must be life after the 60 second spot. Said Jim Stengel, In fact Jim Stengel Chief Marketing Officer for Proctor & Gamble says that he believes that interruptive TV advertising stopped working around 1987.
In 1965, 80 per cent of adults in the US could be reached with three 60 second TV spots. In 2002, it required 117 prime time commercials to produce the same result. In the early 1960s, typical day-after recall scores for 60 second prime time TV commercials were about 40 per cent and nearly half of this was elicited without any memory aid. Currently a typical day-after recall score for a 30 second spot is about 18- 20 per cent and virtually no one is able to provide any form of playback without some form of recall stimulate.The number of brands and messages competing for consumer attention has exploded, and consumers have changed dramatically. They show an increasing lack of tolerance for marketing that is irrelevant to their lives, or that is completely unsolicited. Traditional marketing methods are diluted by a hurried lifestyle, overwhelmed by technology, and often deliberately ignored.
I was in the states recently and sat down with a family that had pre-recorded their must-see TV programme, Thief. All the ads, were zipped through. Just an observation :-)
Peter Lauria writes,
Television is having its Sybil moment. Not unlike the title character played by Sally Field in the 1976 made-for-TV movie of the same name, television seems to be suffering from multiple personality disorder. Advances in visual experience, control, technology, display, and the quality and diversity of content have come in such swift succession that the divide between new forms of television and the mainstays seems to widen daily.Consumers now live with broadcast television, cable television, video-on-demand, Internet TV, video iPods, time-shifted television via digital video recorders, and wireless video across an array of devices, just to mention a few of TV's multiple identities.
The effect of this fragmentation is to render the word "television" all but meaningless. An unfortunate consequence of being all-encompassing is that it also implies a lack of uniqueness. Indeed, how do you define the soul of a medium that was never suspected of having one in the first place? Rewind to the 1970s and recall that the cantankerous Archie Bunker, icon of CBS' long-running "All in the Family," dubbed TV "the idiot box."
Lauria goes onto say
Television is, at its most basic, a habit. And for a vast majority of people, that habit is part of a daily routine. It has achieved what Paul Levinson, chairman of Fordham University's Department of Media and Communications Studies, calls a "media ecological niche," which essentially means that it aids and abets basic human needs. We wake up, and often fall asleep, with it. We tune in to it for information, entertainment, and even education. We invite friends over to watch it, particularly live sports and entertainment events, or turn to the characters on our favorite shows for companionship when we're alone.
All in all a fascinating piece on the power of broadcast. I don't agree with everything he says, but it is a comprehensive look at the changing nature of televsion media.
In summing up Lauria speculates
Clearly, television was a bit slow on the uptake in harnessing the power of new distribution technologies, but the medium wasn't caught nearly as off-guard as its counterparts in the music business. Music labels are suing people, seeking to shut down Web sites, and withholding products -- activities that antagonize and ultimately drive consumers away. When viewed through that lens, television's tentative embrace of new media and alternative distribution platforms looks positively progressive.Television, both conceptually and physically, isn't leaving the scene. At worst, it is in a state of arrested development, and arrested development can continue for a long time. Consider, for example, that despite overnight mail delivery, UPS, FedEx, and e-mail, Western Union only this year announced it would send its last telegram.
If the practice of sending telegrams made it until 2006, how long do you suppose it will take until television as we know it ends its broadcast day? The answer, quite simply, may be never. So stay tuned, the revolution will indeed be televised -- ideally, in as many forms and on as many screens as possible.
But the reality is that the business model of terrestrial broadcast is no longer viable. New revenue streams have to be created, and also new value. Big media also will no longer be able to dominate markets as it once did. Networking technologies have slain the bockbuster economics of mass media.
Lauria quotes big figures on a couple of popular programmes, yet in the UK we know that audience viewing figures that were once 26 million or thereabouts for the Morcambe & Wise christmas special, are now around 6 - 8 million for must see TV. ( Decline viewing audiences )
And research has also showed that time spent on the internet has overtaken time spent watching TV
And finally, its not about a broadcast network anymore, its about how we are creating our own media and network ecology
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