TV Execs Prep For a Tough Year (Dinosaur Media DeathWatch™)

The Wall Street Journal ^ | January 27, 2009 | Sam Schechner

[Milhous]

The militant manifestoed tone adopted in the second paragraph of these excerpts from George Gilder's Life After Television always makes me want to shout, "Amen!" LOL.

Television is not vulgar because people are vulgar, it is vulgar because people are similar in their prurient interests and sharply differentiated in their civilized concerns. All of world industry is moving increasingly toward more segmented markets. But in a broadcast medium, such a move would be a commercial disaster. In a broadcast medium, artists and writers cannot appeal to the highest aspirations and sensibilities of individuals. Instead, manipulative masters rule over huge masses of people. ...

Television is a tool of tyrants. Its overthrow will be a major force for freedom and individuality, culture and morality. That overthrow is at hand. p 49

[abb]

Pre-broadcast = one to one
Broadcast = one to many
Internet = many to many

[abb]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123300780131917045.html
Media Group Weighs U.K. Newspaper Sale

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/01/if-you-stream-i.html
Netflix attracting more subscribers through streaming video

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/01/26/layoffs-at-fox-interactive-media/
Layoffs at Fox Interactive Media

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aY_g3c5gynr4
CBS May Cut Dividend, Save Credit Score, Analyst Says

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2009/01/26/should-yahoo-buy-the-new-york-times/
Should Yahoo Buy The New York Times?

http://www.nma.co.uk/Articles/41210/Random+House+to+extend+list+of+ebooks+after+sales+surge.html
Random House to extend list of ebooks after sales surge

[abb]

http://www.medialifemagazine.com/artman2/publish/Research_25/Internet_TV_s_bigger_than_DVRs_Not.asp
‘Internet TV’s bigger than DVRs.’ Not.

http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2009/01/saving_the_p-i.php
Saving the P-I

http://crosscut.com/2009/01/27/seattle-newspapers/18808/
The Peoria plan for saving local dailies

[Zakeet]

Individual suggestions for books/articles greatly appreciated.

Check out Marketing Myopia by Ted Levitt.

The classic article uses the Movie Studios as well as railroads as classic examples of businesses who lost contact with their consumers and paid a terrible price.

I'll be glad to refer other examples to you from time to time as work permits.

/Zak

[abb]

Once heard Zig Zigler tell about an oaken bucket manufacturer. He put the bucket on the podium and said, “These folks thought they were in the bucket-making business. They weren’t and went broke. They were in the water transportation business.”

[Milhous]

Thanks for sharing, although I disagree with some of Marketing Myopia conclusions regarding oil and electronics.

On with the snark!

After all, who was more pridefully product oriented and product conscious than the erstwhile New England textile companies that have been so thoroughly massacred?

Allow me to nominate big journalism as an arguably superior poster boy for myopic pride in product. Big journalism fancies itself as down right noble in alienating the very audiences necessary to its primary business of advertising.

[Zakeet]

To all people in the media business:

Never, ever, ever forget ... The product you offer is nothing more than a portable billboard. News is the stuff you put on paper or disseminate over the airwaves so people will pick up (or tune into) your output and look at the ads.

[MetsJetsandNets]

I’ll take the opposing viewpoint and argue that we are in a neo-Golden Age of television. Cable networks like Discovery, TLC, SciFi, the Food Network, the Military Channel all offer original programming, while cable networks like TNT, AMC and A&E offer original scripted dramas and sitcoms. Viewers have never had more choices than today. And this doesn’t even include original programming like Dexter, The Wire, The Tudors and Big Love that can be found on the premium cable channels.

If the broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) are suffering, it’s not from programming, it’s from larger issues affecting their parent companies like Disney and GE.

[abb]

Eyeballs. Advertisers follow eyeballs and always will. Electronic broadcast information distribution systems (formerly known as television) used to have a lock on video distribution. That’s why they used to be money machines.

No longer.

[RayChuang88]

If you're talking the over-air broadcast networks that supposedly have to cater to everybody, they are suffering because of the folks in Hollywood can't figure out how to write a decent program for this environment.

Yet, cable networks are doing quite well, what with the success of TNT, USA Network, FX and Spike showing a lot of scripted TV shows that cater to more niche audiences. History Channel and Discovery are also doing very well, thanks to a fact a number of well-liked series like Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs and MythBusters and History Channel's Modern Marvels and Universe.

In short, the second hammer to fall from the effects of the de-massification of the media that Alvin Toffler predicted 30 years ago in The Third Wave is about to hit: its impact on television programming.

[abb]

Well put. I’ve been saying for some time that the internet and that quaint invention known as television will blend together.

I think a lot of TV viewing is mere habit, similar to the habit of a morning newspaper and coffee. Newspapers tried to depend on that to keep customers, but no who is really interested in learning about the world around them does that any more. That morning newspaper/coffee thing is primarily older people who aren’t internet savvy.

Television had the additional hook of “appointment viewing.” You watched what they wanted when they wanted. That too is gone with the wind.

[Richard Kimball]

Too many commercials and not enough content.

I agree. I love football. I mean, I LOVE FOOTBALL. I did not watch an entire NFL game this year on the tube. Games stretch to four hours on sixty minute clock time and the average NFL game has around 12 minutes of actual action from snap to whistle.

The commercial breaks are so long I forget what the quarter is, who has the ball, and sometimes even who's playing, and I don't drink. It's not worth wading through six to seven minutes of commercials to see two plays then cut to another commercial break.

[abb]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2172722/posts
Government Bailout For The Philadelphia ‘Inquirer’?

[RayChuang88]

That morning newspaper/coffee thing is primarily older people who aren’t internet savvy.

We'll still have the morning coffee, but instead of reading a paper we'll be reading multiple news web sites from around the USA (and around the world!). There are programs and extensions available for Internet Explorer and Firefox that when you click one button will load multiple tabbed web pages, with each tab loaded at the appropriate news web site front page. In short, with one click you can have Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, ESPN, BBC, etc. all preloaded and ready to read the headlines by switching between tabs.

[MrEdd]

Read the TV guide, you don't need a TV

[abb]

Indeed! Is there even a need to go to movies any more, lol?!?!

http://www.imdb.com/

[abb]

http://www.hitsville.org/2009/01/27/katie-couric%E2%80%94where-america-turns-when-the-news-is-over%E2%84%A2/
Katie Couric—Where America Turns When the News Is Over™

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003934640
‘Seattle Times’: Carlos Slim Stake a Danger to ‘N.Y. Times’

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/editorialsopinion/2008673366_editb27slim.html
Newspaper ownership matters in American democracy

[Grampa Dave]

My wife and I didn’t even make it through half of the so called new comedy “Trust”, last night.

What freaking loser. Typical of the tv/ad business doing sit com about its industry.

Another loser last week, was the dark and very violent loser, “The Beast!”

http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/tv/bal-to.zontv26jan26,0,5643260.column?track=rss

‘Trust Me,’ skip this Eric McCormack and Tom Cavanagh comedy
Today on TV
David Zurawik | Z on TV
January 26, 2009
TNT is using its hit The Closer to serve as lead-in tonight to the premiere of Trust Me, a new series starring Eric McCormack and Tom Cavanagh.

Trust me, there is almost nothing in this drama that works.

The series is set in an ad agency with McCormack and Cavanaugh playing two best friends since childhood who now work together thinking up ads for products like cell phones.

In the opening scenes, the two are shown mid-day stretched out at a pool, recovering from hangovers. They lie shamelessly about how hard they are working when the boss calls. This is so far from funny and so many miles - here in these troubled economic times of 2009 - from where most Americans live that it almost makes you lightheaded. (10 p.m., TNT) * 1/2

[Liz]

Anything that is the product of the deranged minds of Hollyweirdos does NOT get my attention.