Turner Classic Movies, TCM, is running a seven-part series called "Moguls and Movies," a history of the movie industry. Last night, they ran a episode on the encroachment by television in the 1950s on the movie industry's near monopoly as mass entertainment entity. "Movies are dead" was the near universal cry.
Today, 60 years or so later, people have been chiming similar death knells for television. "People no longer watch," the online luddites have claimed. "Everything is zapped and DVR'd" others trumpet.
Today "The New York Times" reported that TV, according to Steve King, chief executive at the ZenithOptimedia media division of the Publicis Groupe "is, by his estimates, still gaining share of the overall advertising market, he added, to 40.7 percent in 2010, from 37 percent in 2005." This is not the last breath, in other words, of a dying media.
My points in all this are simple.
1. Get your facts before you make a proclamation.
2. Things don't die that easily.
3. Never trust anyone who issues grand proclamations.
4. People like TV--they even like commercials when they're well-wrought.
5. Tweets, Facebook "likes" and 300x250 pixel banners don't build brands.
6. I've still yet to have a conversation about a brand.
