MediaBack Page’s Quick Hits for June 19th :
Late Night’s faces are shifting, and in the process so is the business of television.
Over the course of the past several months we’ve already watched late night television begin to evolve as Conan moved from New York to Los Angeles and handed the keys to Late Night over to Jimmy Fallon. Now, of course, Jay Leno has handed the storied reigns of The Tonight Show to Mr. O’Brien – but unlike those late night shifts of the past this story doesn’t end here. Instead, in September, Mr. Leno will re-emerge in a new prime-time show on NBC nightly at 10PM.
So in essence, rather than a simple hosting transition, like that of Carson to Leno, this movement instead is more like a seismic shift for late night television. (Actually, I’m not even sure that moniker even is accurate anymore, as we’ll now see this variety-style show airing from 10PM to about 1 or 2 AM.) With the addition of Leno’s new program to the landscape there are many questions, which are left to be answered in the coming months and years. Can Leno be successful at that early hour? Who will get the big guests? What will differentiate the programs? Does the audience have enough interest for what amounts to 3 hours of talking heads on Network television each night?
That said, however, potentially one of the most interesting questions that remains to be answered is that of what the impact will be on the Business of Television. Consider for a moment, that if the strategy works NBC, will have taken a time slot that typically requires on average $3 million dollars per night to create an hour long drama – and filled it with a topical comedy variety show which is costing somewhere in the ballpark of $30 million for a year. The result for the network will be the ability to earn a higher return on their investment – and therefore a better payoff for the network’s ownership: GE.
Further, if this proves successful, there is a high likelihood that it will change the entire game of television: putting pressure on the other broadcast networks to adopt similar strategies; yielding improved profits for the other ownership groups (and their shareholders). Additionally, this shift would leave a lot of popular programming and creative talents without a home – a void that can actually create new opportunities for growing cable outlets like TNT, FX, Lifetime and others. All in all, this late night shift could alter the television landscape as we have known it for quite some time.
Actually, if it works out I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw NBC extend the Today show by a few more hours, and rebranded the 10PM – 1AM block as The Tonight Show and called it a Day.
MediaBack Page’s Quick Hits for June 1st :
One of my favorite radio bits used to be a promo for the latest way to read books: “Now introducing Books-On-Tape-On-Paper.” That always made me laugh since it seemed so ridiculous that we had gone so far that the reintroduction of the printed word seemed “new.”
However, recently, as I’m in the midst of wrapping up my first e-book, Tom Verducci’s The Yankee Years, I have been thinking about the fact that the printed word really has been re-invented and is symbolic of the overall media shift and fragmentation of audience habits. It seems so simple but there are actually quite a few different options these days for how you can read the latest novel or biography. Reading used to be such a simple task; you went to the library or local bookstore, browsed around, and if you chose well, went home with, and enjoyed a page-turner. It was pretty much a choice between hardcover or paperback; which was often a decision that was made for you based on what was “in-print.”
However, in 2009 depending on your preference there are quite a few ways in which you may experience that latest thriller or biography: Are you more of a buy it in hardcover as soon as it’s published type of person? Or do you wait for the paperback version? Do you download and listen to audio books? If so, do you go with abridged or unabridged versions? Or do you download an e-book to some device, such as the Kindle?
Really, who ever thought simply reading a book could be such a complicated endeavor? That said, there is an important lesson here for communications professionals; we have to communicate in a variety of ways to reach today’s diverse and segmented audiences. Books have adapted and become available in a multitude of formats because audiences have changed and everyone’s preferences vary…so shouldn’t we be applying the same logic to how we communicate and showcase experts, opinions, products and events?
Clearly, you may not be dealing in the arena of books, but when it comes time to tell your stories (or those of your clients) this shift is real and people are getting their news and information in a variety of ways; the result is we have to think strategically about offering the same information in any number of different channels. When it comes to thinking about campaigns we have to move beyond just those traditional methodologies (think hard and soft cover books) and leverage new opportunities to communicate and reach today’s audiences. So while the press release, and the media outreach will always play a role in communicating let’s take a page out of the e-book and start thinking about how we can utilize new methods for telling the same old story.
MediaBack Page’s Quick Hits for April 30th :
MediaBack Page’s Quick Hits for April 27th :
MediaBack Page’s Quick Hits for April 24th :
MediaBack Page’s Quick Hits for April 3rd :
On Tuesday night, as I began to unwind from a busy day I turned on WNBC to watch the local news, and caught Len Berman’s teaser about his upcoming piece on the New Yankee stadium. I flipped around and made it back to NBC just as Berman’s sportscast was about to begin. Berman raced through a litany of sports stories, all as readers, without any video highlights. After those he then had a brief package on the New Yankee stadium. Overall, the sports segment struck me as rather lackluster and very un-Berman like.
Fast forward to Wednesday morning, and I am reading a post on a popular Media message board, and I find out that Al Roker had sent a Tweet yesterday that legenday New York sportscaster Len Berman had ben forced out. Now, the subpar sports report makes sense.
But it seems ironic that the news of a popular New York broadcasting figure would first slip out via a new medium such as Twitter. Especially, given the fact that local outlets like WNBC are trying to stay prominent and relevant in the face of new online options that are distracting audiences. I think the smarter move for these outlets would be to further devlop these types of talents in an effort to connect with and retain local audiences.