[fight_truth_decay]

Q Scores and Brands

"All of industry (including goods and humans) pays close attention to the survey research of a Long Island firm called Marketing Evaluations; twice a year, the firm calculates “Q scores”—which measure the familiarity and appeal of news and entertainment figures (also referenced as TVQ, not to be confused with Neilson). In the summer of 2004, Couric had a negative Q of twenty-four, which was not so different from Sawyer’s negative Q of twenty-two (or Dan Rather’s twenty-three). But Couric’s negative Q had gone up twenty per cent in the previous four years, while Sawyer’s rose half as quickly. It is not unusual for a personality’s negative Q to rise as he or she becomes more familiar, but Couric’s rise was unusually rapid. At the same time, ABC’s research also showed that Couric’s appeal was waning," writes KEN AULETTA of the New Yorker Magazine.

“The closer you get to the personal life of the consumer, the better off you will be. Marketing strategies that mesh with consumers' everyday lives work better,” says Adbusters' Lasn. “But the overall mood is set by the large multi-million-dollar campaigns, and they just won't work anymore.”

Value and quality ratings have slipped in Q Scores", writes Betsy Spethmann Senior Editor for Promo Magazine.
Brands like Sprint, Wal-Mart, Sears, America Online, and Budweiser scored highest in Q scores. What's crucial is matching brand promises to consumer values, says Brand Keys president Robert Passikoff. “Most corporations have no clue how to measure customer values, so their communication processes have major faults,” he says. “Protests are a manifestation that people feel brands aren't resonating with their [own] values.”

Not sure what top score was achieved by Bud, although reported scoring in the highest Q's; but JELL-O rated 53. Couric -24 to JELL-O's 53? Now, if "laggards" Gibson and Williams were to stand next to a bowl of High Q Scoring JELL-O.......just a little silly research folks!

[TomGuy]

“It’s 22 minutes of reading news; how hard can it be?” scoffs a producer at another network.

Ouch!

What’s hard, of course, is getting the audience at home to prefer the way you read the 22 minutes of news to the way Charlie Gibson at ABC and Brian Williams at NBC do it.

I haven't watched the network news in over 3 years, and I haven't missed a thing. They - Couric, Gibson, Williams - delude themselves with their own self-importance, if they think people have to watch them to know what's going on in the world.

Thanks to cable news and the Internet, we don't really need them to filter and interpret the news for us any more. Amazingly, we can get the unfiltered raw news and interpret it for ourselves.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

And what are people saying?

They're too busy yawning to say much of anything. Old media and it's TV news anchors are becoming less relevant with every passing second. That isn't going to change because of one middle-aged dumpy lady with strange looking eyes.

[Enchante]

"There’s so much emphasis on appearance, you’d almost think Katie had been recruited from amongst the bouncy babes at the Playboy mansion"

I'm quite sure that if they'd picked their new anchor from among the ranks of the Playboy bunnies they'd get both a much better journalist and someone far more pleasing to the eyes. Come to think of it, why doesn't one of the MSM networks try that? It surely couldn't be worse than their usual fare.......

[Dahoser]

To Katie’s benefit, even though Gibson and Williams both run first-rate newscasts, neither has exactly lit a raging bonfire in Nielsen’s computer. Katie—I mean, Couric—will be the one clear distinctive choice.

Why is that, Shales? Is it her legs? Her hair? Why is she the one clear distinctive choice among the three except that she's the woman? Wasn't it you just one paragraph before intoning there was such an emphasis on appearance over substance? You phony Clymer!

[nevergore]

But ..but...but...she's supposed to be perky!

[hatfieldmccoy]

Who's Katie Couric??? Does CBS still have an evening news show?? :)

[operation clinton cleanup]

More importantly, will she go sleeveless and flex her biceps?

[martin_fierro]

They're taking bets over here that Couric won't make it to next April.

[tje]

I think Katie will do well. It's not like she's got any competition and she's targeting the 'Entertainment Tonight'/'Oprah Winfrey'/'The View' audience. People who are seriously into news no longer look to the networks. This is all for Nielson stats, truth and facts be damned.

I hope I'm wrong.. but this is just a continuation of network news down the drain...

[andyandval]

[mhx]

Nobody asked those kinds of questions when Brokaw started doing ‘Nightly News,’” says Steve Friedman

Nobody wanted to see Brokaw's legs.

[Chode]

That “tick tick tick” heard in the hallways at CBS News isn’t the “60 Minutes” clock—or Walter Cronkite’s pacemaker.

It’s PKC's Stiletto Heels coming down the hall...

[NativeNewYorker]

I've *seen* her legs...and your headline brought back not-so-great mental images.

[Myrddin]

My wife sent me what might be a mock interview.

Couric to Marine Sniper: What do you feel when you shoot a terrorist?

Marine Sniper: Recoil.

[taillightchaser]

How dare you demean a can of Budweiser like this. This socialist b!tch doesn't have the brains of the pop top on the can of Bud!!!!!

[curmudgeonII]

Who cares?

[George Smiley]

BTW, the correct, ahem, typography for the Columbia Broadcasting system post-Rather is

cBS

.