Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Watching television.

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.

4 comments:

Tore Claesson said...

All you point out is true. However, it is a fact that my kids, and their friends, do indeed zap past the commercials when viewing their favorite programs. (As we grown-ups do as well.) It is not that they dislike ads as such. They dislike the repetition of the same ads over and over again, the all too frequent breaks, wasting their time, disrupting what they're REALLY watching. Living on the east coast in an affluent town near Manhattan we may not be representative of the US on the whole. TV viewer ship may still go up. Either way it will always remain high. But with easier to use DVRs more zapping may start to happen countrywide. Few people are interested in advertising after all. Which is why we're not exactly engaging in talk about brands online either. Interesting, funny, smart, informative TV spots in MODERATE DOSES, not brainwashbreaks every 10 minutes, will likely remain one of the strongest branding tools.

Anonymous said...

Television content..movies, series, shows, episodic content.. is on the rise. Cable, the networks are not.

The content is what people want not the delivery system. Or the Ads.

Adam C

Tim Parry said...

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Great, effective TV commercials ARE content. They've always been.

Anonymous said...

commercials are great content? what are you and don draper smoking/