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The Marketing Ideanet is a free idea sharing newsletter published by 602 Communications. We are a TV training and consulting company that specializes in improving front-line news and marketing skills. Check out thousands of cutting edge examples at our web site. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.
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Graeme Newell
602 Communications
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In This Issue
Out With The Old, In With the New
48 Mil Watch Obama's SOTU
C-Span Wants More of Obama-Republican Q&A
Obama Blasts Supreme Court Ruling in SOTU
MoveOn Joins Fight Against Ruling
CBS Rejects Gay Dating Site Ad
ManCrunch Already Benefiting from Rejected Ad
CBS Rejects Go Daddy Super Bowl Ad
Budweiser Reconsiders Horseless Super Bowl Ad
Hulu Adds NFL Network to Lineup
Why CBS Should Accept Gay Dating Site Ad
Candy Crowley to Lead CNN Sunday Show
TV Beats Radio, Web For Ad Recall, Study Finds
Study Traces History of Government Subsidies for the Media
Apple Launches Text-sharing Device, the CoTex
Quotes
"A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
- Albert Einstein
“Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.”
- Marcus Aurelius
"Men will not believe because they will not broaden their minds."
- Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, British statesman, author (1694-1773)
Out With The Old, In With the New
Doug Drew
602 Communications
Morning viewers don’t want to go looking for international news on the networks and then come back to you for local news, weather and traffic. They want you to have ALL the news.
National and International news is extremely important in the morning. For one thing, viewers want to know what happened in the world overnight when they wake up. Research shows morning viewers have a high interest in national and international news. In addition, it’s the international and national news from which you will need to rely on to make sure your news content is fresh. In fact, as the show goes along, you want to start dumping as much news as you can and replacing it with fresh content. Lets face it, most of your local news stories are old, yesterday’s news. You want to replace those stories as fast as you can as the show goes along with a mix of local, national and international news.
Anywhere, Everywhere
Broaden your vision of where to look for the news. Think “Anywhere, Everywhere.” Use all your feed sources, wires, the internet, etc. It may be 5am your time, but it’s already middle of the day in other parts of the world. Somewhere something is happening. The Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed after taking off from Beirut is of interest whether you live in Fresno or Framingham. If the Berlin Opera House is going up in flames, take it live. If a school bus has overturned in Maryland, insert some live pictures. This isn’t to say you need to spend a lot of time on some of these stories. Let the cable news networks devote hours of time to them. A quick hit on a big national or international story serves your local viewers well.
What determines local news is not a matter of geography. In other words, just because it happens outside your market doesn’t mean it is not of interest to your local viewers. If the story is of interest to your viewers, no matter where it happens, then it’s a story of local interest.
If it is new, significant, and happening now, work hard to show your viewers that the news is changing and you are constantly updating your newscast.
West Coast stations really have it easy. At 5am on the West Coast it’s already 8am on the East Coast. A lot has happened by 8am. In fact, by 3am Pacific Time, new stories are probably already starting to roll into your newsroom. Those are the stories you want to concentrate on.
Anchor responsibility
As these stories come in someone has to be responsible for finding them and getting them on the air. In fact, the anchors of the show should take considerable responsibility. Anchors should be constantly monitoring the news as the show progresses using computers on the set, their BlackBerry’s, iPhones, etc. For many of these updates, you don’t even need a script. Simply read it right off the computer. With budget cuts, there are fewer people in the newsroom during many morning newscasts, and in some cases there is no one left in the newsroom as the show hits air! That’s why the talent needs to step in and take charge, working with the producer to work in fresh content.
Remember, happening now almost always trumps a day old local story.
Doug Drew is a morning news specialist with 602 Communications. You can reach him at
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48 Mil Watch Obama's SOTU
More than President Bill Clinton but less than President George W. Bush. That's the verdict on viewership for President Barack Obama's first State of the Union speech, which drew 48.01 million total viewers on Wednesday night, according to Nielsen data. Of course Obama had the advantage of airing on 11 networks, more than double the four who carried Clinton's first SOTU back in 1994. That speech averaged 45.8 million viewers. Bush's first SOTU, delivered in 2002, drew 51.8 million viewers, airing just months after the 9/11 attacks. Obama's speech, which aired from 9 p.m. to 10:20 p.m., likely got a big tune-in from people hoping to hear him outline plans to create more jobs and reform healthcare, the latter a particularly controversial and partisan issue. It was not the president's most-watched speech, however, or even his second-most-watched. Those honors go to two speeches delivered in a three-week span last February, which drew 49.5 million and 52.37 million viewers, respectively. The Obama SOTU aired on ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, Telemundo, Univision, CNN, BET, CNBC, Fox News Channel and MSNBC.
MediaLife Magazine
C-Span Wants More of Obama-Republican Q&A
Reacting to a wave of interest in President Obama’s televised dialogue with Congressional Republicans, C-Span replayed the session in prime time Friday night. The non-commercial cable channel also hinted that it wanted to suggest more televised exchanges in the future. The session in Baltimore on Friday “resembled the British custom where a prime minister responds to questions in Parliament,” Peter Baker and Carl Hulse reported. Televised by cable news channels and C-SPAN on Friday, the question-and-answer session was a vivid display of democracy. “I think it’s a first for a sitting president to take questions, on live TV, from members of Congress of the opposing party,” the veteran CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller wrote on Twitter.
Media Decoder
Obama Blasts Supreme Court Ruling in SOTU
President Obama took his fight against the Supreme Court ruling on campaign ads to the nation via his State of the Union address Jan. 27. In his speech to the joint session of Congress, the president pledged to push for more lobby reform, incuding limits on lobbyist contributions to federal candidates and a bill to "correct" the High Court's decision to allow corporations and unions to invest directly in radio and TV campaign ads in the run-up to elections. "Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests--including foreign companies--to spend without limit in our elections," the president said. "I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests--or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and I'd urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps correct some of these problems." As they head into a midterm election year, broadcasters and cable systems are anticipating that the ruling will bolster the windfall of political advertising.
Broadcasting & Cable
MoveOn Joins Fight Against Ruling
MoveOn.org has joined the call for a constitutional amendment to reverse the Supreme Court decision allowing more corporate and union dollars to flow to broadcasting and cable during elections. In an e-mail solicitation Thursday (Jan. 28), the group said it would need $200,000 initially to fund a "massive new campaign" to fight what it expects to be a "tsunami" of corporate money for campaign spots in the run-up to federal elections. But there may be an upside for ad-hungry media even in the campaign to cut off that flow. In the meantime, part of the MoveOn campaign is a flight of ads decrying the money that will be flowing into those flights of ads. In the interests of consistency with their fight to fund elections with small donations from the people rather than large ones from corporations, the group is asking for $5 apiece from its supporters.
Broadcasting & Cable
CBS Rejects Gay Dating Site Ad
Super Bowl network CBS rejected an ad Friday from ManCrunch.com, a gay dating Web site. "After reviewing the ad, which is entirely commercial in nature, our standards and practices department decided not to accept this particular spot," said CBS spokeswoman Shannon Jacobs. "We are always open to working with a client on alternative submissions." CBS said it turned down the ad partly for financial reasons, but ManCrunch believes that there's more to it than that. "It's straight-up discrimination," said Elissa Buchter, spokeswoman for the Toronto-based dating site. Jacobs of CBS declined to comment on the charge of discrimination. Buchter provided a copy of the CBS rejection letter to CNNMoney, which states that the ad "is not within the Network's broadcast standards for Super Bowl Sunday." The letter also states that the CBS sales department "has had difficulty verifying [ManCrunch's] credit status." Buchter said that basing the rejection on credit status doesn't make sense because "we offered to pay cash." But Jacobs said CBS has no record of any such offer. CBS is charging up to $3 million for 30-second spots. Buchter said ManCrunch would have been charged $2.5 million for its ad and would have had no trouble paying it, since the newly formed company recently raised $40 million from investors. Shortly before ManCrunch announced the rejection, Jacobs of CBS said her company was reviewing the ad and it was "just one of many." Jacobs also said the spots were "virtually sold out. We have one, maybe two spots left."
CNN Money
ManCrunch Already Benefiting from Rejected Ad
On Super Bowl Sunday, ninety-million men will tune in to watch perhaps the biggest moment in annual American sports broadcasts. None of them will see ManCrunch.com's new ad, though. And yet, maybe CBS's decision not to air the controversial advertisement has already done the Toronto-based website more good than a thirty-second time slot during the game ever could have. According to web traffic statistics courtesy of Alexa.com, the percentage of global Internet users who have visited ManCrunch spiked from 0.0006 at the start of this month to 0.013 as of Sunday. The site's surge in popularity is just another example of a common theme in American media. When an underdog gets into a fight with the higher-ups, media attention flocks to the scene. Conan O'Brien demonstrated this phenomenon in his "late night war" with NBC and now ManCrunch.com is doing the same with CBS. Even if ManCrunch doesn't make off with a severance check for $40 million, CBS's refusal to air the commercial certainly means that a whole lot of people will see it. Some online media reports have gone as far as to say that ManCrunch.com never had any intention of actually running the ad at all. Instead, the website submitted a commercial it knew would be rejected for the sake of publicity.
The Celebrity Cafe
CBS Rejects Go Daddy Super Bowl Ad
Go Daddy Group Inc. has received a rejection slip for one of its Super Bowl commercials, despite a lack of titillating imagery or scantily clad women. The spot features an effeminate former football star named Lola who designs lingerie for women and refers to a Go Daddy online retail portal. The spot is narrated by race car driver Danica Patrick. “It’s the first time for me I’ve been baffled,” said Go Daddy CEO Bob Parsons. “Usually we may get an ad rejected and we’ll understand. We may not agree, but we understand.” Go Daddy received a rejection letter from CBS that said the ad “had the potential to offend a significant number of people.” The company put the ad on its Web site, and so far about 94 percent of the people who have offered opinions did not find it offensive. The Scottsdale-based domain name registrar is no stranger to ads booted during for big game, one of the only television advertising venues it uses. In six years it has had several ads rejected. Go Daddy runs its uncensored ads, whether they are approved or not, on its Web site.
Phoenix BizJournal
Budweiser Reconsiders Horseless Super Bowl Ad
The maker of Budweiser beer is having second thoughts about a decision to run commercials during Super Bowl XLIV that would not feature the brand’s familiar Clydesdales. On Wednesday, the Anheuser-Busch unit of Anheuser-Busch InBev outlined to reporters what it planned to run during the five minutes of commercial time the company bought during the Super Bowl on Feb. 7. Among the nine spots are to be two for Budweiser, but neither of them would include the Clydesdales. The horses have appeared in some of the best-liked, most-recalled Super Bowl commercials. However, in some years Anheuser-Busch has kept them on the sidelines on Super Bowl Sunday; if they do not appear on Feb. 7, according to AdAge.com, it would be the third time in 15 years they were absent. Numerous articles about the brewer’s Super Bowl ad plans appeared on Thursday and some of them drew comments from readers wondering why the Clydesdales were not going to be invited to the party. Anheuser-Busch executives had explained that in consumer testing, other Budweiser spots proposed for the game had scored higher than a spot that was to feature the horses. But after the articles and comments appeared, the executives seemed to have second thoughts. Late Thursday, Keith Levy, vice president for marketing, said the company had looked at a revised version of the Clydesdales spot that did not make the cut and decided that the revisions had significantly improved the spot. As a result, he added, the company would reconsider keeping it off the air. Consumers are being invited to offer their opinions through a vote on the Budweiser page on Facebook (facebook.com/budweiser). They are being asked to choose among the Clydesdales spot, a Budweiser spot that Anheuser-Busch intends to run during the game called “Payment” and a third spot for Budweiser, called “Attention,” that was not planned to appear in the Super Bowl. The results of the consumer vote will “help determine” which spot appears, Mr. Levy said. The reconsideration was spontaneous and based on the improvements to the Clydesdales commercial, he added, and was not a publicity stunt or gimmick.
Media Decoder
Hulu Adds NFL Network to Lineup
Just in time for Super Bowl XLIV, Hulu has added NFL Network and NFL Films to its lineup of content partners. Eight shows are available at launch, including America's Game, Greatest Games, Game of the Week, Season in Review, Live Wire and Sounds of the Game. It also includes Hard Knocks, which ran on HBO but was produced by NFL Films. The NFL subsection also includes game highlights from every NFL team from past seasons. In addition, Hulu is bringing back its annual Super Bowl commercials subsection. Dubbed AdZone, the site will be added with new commercials as they appear during the big game. Currently the site is populated with 20 of the top commercials from the 2009 Super Bowl.
Broadcasting & Cable
Why CBS Should Accept Gay Dating Site Ad
Oh CBS, how did you not see this coming?
First the network agrees to run a pro-life ad from conservative group Focus on the Family during the Super Bowl, declaring the network is relaxing its standards against accepting "advocacy" ads.
Now a gay dating site wants to buy an ad featuring two men making out.
It was like watching somebody throw one of those ultra-bouncy superballs at a brick wall directly in front of them.
The biggest surprise was that the challenge came from some random Web site -- ManCrunch.com -- instead of the ever-opportunistic PETA.
Now CBS has a choice: Accept the ad and offend millions of Americans. Or reject the ad and offend millions of Americans.
Unless there's some NBC-esque baby-splitting compromise ... CBS can't really win this, right?
Well, wrong. It can.
By agreeing to run the ad.
Discrimination shouldn't be a political issue. CBS doesn't need to make it into one. The ad is brief and funny and Super Bowl-themed. The network doesn't need to endorse the content, any more than it needs to endorse the Focus on the Family ad, or agree that Budweiser really is the "King of Beers." (It's not, by the way. Sierra Nevada is. Duh.).
The network may even benefit from the controversy.
More viewers tune in for the ads than the game, according to one study. By accepting a variety of advocacy ads, it makes the advertising portion of the Big Game downright socially relevant and interesting.
Not to mention, is being perceived -- accurately or not -- as advancing gay rights really such as bad thing in 2010?
Now I'm not convinced ManCrunch actually has the $2.5 million or so to pay for an ad. And CBS is reportedly muttering something about not being sure if there's any seats left to fill on the Super Bowl bus.
All might be moot, in other words. But it's making the decision that's important.
THR Feed
Candy Crowley to Lead CNN Sunday Show
Veteran CNN correspondent Candy Crowley is replacing John King as host of the network's Sunday morning political talk show. The show, "State of the Union," airs at 9 a.m. ET and is repeated with updates three hours later. King started the program a year ago and made it a point to make reporting visits to all 50 states. He's leaving for a weekday evening political show on CNN that will start soon. Crowley has been a Washington-based correspondent with CNN since 1987 and has covered all the national political conventions except one since the nomination of Jimmy Carter in 1976. Her coverage of Hillary Clinton's campaign won a Gracie Allen Award last year. "I like, believe it or not, the poetry of politics," she said in an on-air discussion with King about the new role. She'll be the only woman among the Sunday morning public affairs hosts, joining NBC's David Gregory, CBS' Bob Schieffer and Fox's Chris Wallace. ABC is in the process of finding a replacement for George Stephanopoulos, who has taken over at "Good Morning America." Crowley pledged to show viewers the relevance of Washington stories to their lives.
Yahoo TV
TV Beats Radio, Web For Ad Recall, Study Finds
Canada's equivalent to the Television Bureau of Advertising released data Thursday from a biometric study showing that TV is notably more effective in prompting ad recall than radio or online ads. The research showed that TV spots produced "aided next-day recall" that was three times higher than radio ads, five times higher than with online display ads, and a lesser 1.4 times greater than online video ads. The study using biometric research that tracked reactions such as heart rate and skin sweat, and included 100 adults 18 to 49. It was conducted by Innerscope, and 24 national brands were included. Participants viewed TV ads appearing in a 30-minute episode of "Two and a Half Men"; listened to radio ads during 15 minutes of tune-in to a Toronto FM radio station; and saw online ads while surfing a Canadian MSN site for 15 minutes. They were also exposed to ads while reading a Vancouver newspaper for 30 minutes. Dr. Carl Marci, Innerscope CEO, stated: "Each media type has its own strengths. Some appeal more cognitively, others more emotionally. The television environment appeals strongly to both -- leading to the high engagement levels seen in this study."
MediaPost
Study Traces History of Government Subsidies for the Media
The debate over the plight of the news media often turns to the notion of government support – and just as often prompts journalists, academics and politicians to reject the idea as a step toward lapdog reporting. But government subsidies have been crucial to American newspapers and magazines for more than two centuries, even if most journalists and readers knew little about them, according to a new report to be released Thursday by the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. And the authors, Geoffrey Cowan and David Westphal, found that despite fears about journalism’s independence from government, those subsidies have been declining, not rising. In today’s dollars, they said, government support for newspapers and magazines has fallen from more than $4 billion in 1970, to less than $2 billion. “The knee-jerk reaction tends to be that government can’t get involved,” said Mr. Cowan, dean emeritus of the Annenberg School. “We think it’s important for people to understand that the government has been involved from the beginning, and that the subsidies were much larger in the past.” Since 1792, publications have enjoyed discounted postage rates, but over the last four decades, the discount has been whittled down from 75 percent to 11 percent, a difference of about $1.7 billion in today’s dollars.
Local, state and federal laws require governments to publish a wide variety of notices – in effect, buying newspaper ads to inform the public of upcoming laws, hearings, even agency budgets. But there is a growing movement to let cash-strapped governments skip the print ads and only put such notices on their own Web sites. Mr. Westphal, executive in residence at the Annenberg school, said such notices are probably worth more than $1 billion to newspapers, and they are especially important to the smallest papers. As for the end of the migration of those notices to the Web, he said, “it’s almost inevitable that this will happen.” He noted that the study did not even take into account the notices that the government requires private entities to buy in newspapers and magazines, like bank foreclosure notices and drug company disclaimers about their new products. The third major category of government support takes the form of special tax treatment for publications, like reduced sales tax rates on paper and ink. The study’s authors cited state and federal tax breaks worth at least $900 million. The report advocates increased government funding for public broadcasting and a few other general measures, but no specific steps to aid print media. “It doesn’t come up with answers,” Mr. Cowan said. “We hope that it helps to reframe the debate.”
Media Decoder
Apple Launches Text-sharing Device, the CoTex
Absorbs Heavy Flow of Data, Says Jobs
CUPERTINO (The Borowitz Report) – In the same week that it launched its much-touted iPad, Apple introduced its latest game-changer to the tech marketplace, a text-sharing device called the CoTex.
“There are a lot of texting devices out there that can absorb data,” said Apple founder Steve Jobs. “But nothing absorbs more than a CoTex.”
Mr. Jobs said that when used in conjunction with Apple’s just-released mobile device, the AllWays StayFree, “the CoTex has what it takes to handle a heavy flow of information.”
When asked about the flurry of new products that Apple has released at the end of January, Mr. Jobs mused, “I guess it’s that time of the month.”
Elsewhere, a new poll shows that 90 percent of Republicans who did not hear President Obama’s State of the Union address disagreed with it.
The Borowitz Report ------------------------------------ The Marketing Ideanet is a free idea sharing newsletter published by 602 Communications. We are a TV training and consulting company that specializes in improving front-line news and marketing skills. Check out thousands of cutting edge examples at our web site. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.
Sent via TVSpy's email servers. Visit TV Spy's Marketing Matters.
Graeme Newell
602 Communications
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(919) 217-4438
Web Site
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