ABC Dabbles in Infomercials

One of my favorite news magazines is ABC's 20/20. The stories are excellent and the personalities (John Stossel and Elizabeth Vargas) are among the best in the industry, in my opinion.

On tonight's show the focus was a follow up on a story about Camden, NJ with an emphasis on the positive developments that the city has seen through the eyes of a particular family (sprinkled with many examples of a lack of progress). The story includes a family that lives in a horrible home and receive an Extreme Makeover on the ABC network program. That was followed with an interesting human interest story on a brother sister competing against each other on ABC's Dancing with the Stars.

I don't know about you, but if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it is a duck. Tonight's 20/20 was a very interesting and well done infomercial. It was about other ABC programs. It was done in a tasteful and entertaining manner. Believe me, if I didn't like it, I wouldn't have watched it. But one of the program's major objectives was to clearly sell other programming.

That is the future of media: advertising messages intertwined in the content. Most people won't even notice the smart shows that pursue this objective.

Request a free copy of an article by Kevin Price entitled Two Marketing Trends that Affect Your Business. In it he explains some of the most important trends in business marketing today.

California Fire Fuels TV Ratings

If I have said it once, I have said it a million times, the media is in the bad news business. Again, not news, bad news. If people merely saw news or good news, it appears interest would be at a minimum. In the words of Don Henley, we want "dirty laundry." Proof of the power of bad news can be found in one of yesterday's article in Media Bistro's TVNewser:

Last night's special edition of 20/20 posted the program's largest audience in more than a year and its highest A18-49 and A25-54 numbers in more than eight months.
The Charlie Gibson-anchored special brought in 10.9M total viewers. In the A18-49 demo the hour had a 2.8 rating/8 share; in A25-54 it had a 3.7/10.

So when the media has the opportunity to talk about the fact that we will have one of the best home selling years in history this year or focus on the 1.5 percent of home owners who are in forclosure, what route do you think they will take? Sadly, bad news is good news for the media.

Katie Couric's Big Day

Today was Katie's big day as host of CBS Evening News. She made history by being the first female anchor of the most prestigious and important 30 minutes of news. Yes, I know, that is a lot of hyperbole, but that is the media's position on it, not mine. In reality, evening news is in desperate shape and Katie Couric wearing little to no clothes would not be able to likely save its staggering decline in viewership (by the way she was fully and appropriately dressed). Furthermore, the approach they took with Katie will likely contribute to this media's further decline.

First of all, the new approach is no longer the evening news. It is, instead, a mini version of a news magazine such as 20/20, Primetime Live, or 60 Minutes. Instead of making sure the major news stories were covered in less than 30 minutes, Katie gave Morgan Spurlock of "Supersize Me" fame an opportunity to trash our "divided nation" and to express his opinion that we need to stop operating in extremes in her new "Free Speech" segment. Furthermore she had Thomas Friedman of the New York Times on who discussed how we need to restore the friendly US that much of the world loved and appreciated (and often used as a doormat, but we won't go there). The new format was mildly entertaining, but it wasn't the "Evening News."

Second, it isn't the right approach to reach the typical Evening News viewer. That viewer is 60 years old and likes to hear from older sons (such as Brian Williams and Charlie Gibson) and not necessarily from that "chatty" Couric girl. I'm just talking the typical senior, in my opinion, not necessarily my view. I don't see her surviving long trying to reach the senior crowd. Further, the networks are actually trying to distance themselves from seniors and are trying to pursue the all important Accumulators -- 35 to 55 year olds who largely drive the economy today. Which is exactly why they pursued Katie, who falls in the age group and other parts of that key demographic.

Third, she won't likely reach the Accumulators either. Most of them are doing a lot of things at 5:30, but watching the evening news isn't one of them. They are picking up kids, making meals, taking care of parents, or several other things that have nothing to do with the smiling Katie. This audience is reached now, largely, through the Internet, which allows them to watch the footage they want to watch and see it when they care to see it. In no time the podcast version of the news will have a much larger audience then the TV broadcast, but with the rate evening news is going, that won't be saying much.

I hate to be negative. I actually like Katie and miss her on the Today Show, but I believe this experiment will fail and she will have an audience significantly smaller than she did early each morning on NBC. By the way, the morning shows like Today are about the only viable way to reach the all important Accumulators because they are busy multi tasking and find the background noise of information and the relaxed environment of the program a great way to launch a day. It is sad she left this viable place to reach an audience to go to the largely dead network news. But don't worry, we will likely see her on some other day time show in the not too distant future. Watch out The View!