Fox launched its terrestrial superstation, Movies!, on Memorial Day with the following line-up.
8:00AM / Take a Hard Ride
10:10AM / House of Bamboo
12:20PM / Backlash
2:25PM / Michael Shayne: Private Detective
4:10PM / The Man Who Wouldn't Die
5:45PM / Jumpin' Jack Flash
8:00PM / High Anxiety
10:05PM / Silent Movie
The channel is a collaboration with Weigel Broadcasting and there's definitely a Neal Sabin touch with lots of dog whistles for movie lovers (Goldsmith, Fuller, Sturges, Brooks), widescreen format and an emphasis on the pretty-good but hard-to-catch (Emperor of the North is playing muted as I write this). The channel also introduces the welcome practice of not editing for length.
Looking through the schedule for the next few days, I see a number of interesting titles, more than I'll have time to watch. I also see indications that a great deal thought went into scheduling, making NBC's COZI secure in its position as worst run terrestrial superstation.
When I rescanned my channels to pick up Movies!, four other new channels also showed up, including what appears to be a new subchannel from the CBS affiliate. At present, it simply rebroadcasts the same programming as the main channel, but if they really have gone from broadcasting one channel to broadcasting two, it would seem to indicate that CBS is at least considering jumping into the terrestrial market (which would mean that all four of the big four networks would have terrestrial-only channels).
In the past week I also noticed an LA company that sells and installs outdoor antennas has launched a fairly sizable ad campaign. Along similar lines, I recently started seeing store windows in East and Central LA carrying a wide selection of motorized and/or amplified indoor antennas.
As we've mentioned before, there are two wildly divergent pictures of the state of over-the-air television: healthy and growing according to the 2012 Ownership Survey and Trend Report; or small and shrinking according to Nielsen. It appears that pretty much everybody with first hand knowledge and skin in the game (networks, broadcasters, regional media players, retailers, manufacturers) are putting their money on the first scenario, while the only prominent backers of Nielsen appear to be reporters for the New York Times and Reuters.
Noah Smith recently observed that trivial bets do not necessarily reveal beliefs. That's true, however the multimillion dollar ones do indicate a certain level of sincerity.
Showing posts with label Weigel Broadcasting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Weigel Broadcasting. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Tale of two ad campaigns
[I've been meaning to write more about the business approaches of terrestrial superstations for a while now though I didn't mean to write quite so much -- damned thing got away from me.]
Back in my college teaching days, I produced and edited some videos to accompany an algebra book. They were terrible, crime-against-humanity bad, but they paid off the remainder of my car loan and, along with a few other projects, they gave me a lifelong appreciation of how much or how little work goes into what you see on TV.
Of course, most of my projects were easy to put together, just cut from the instructor to the steps of the problem. There was seldom much doubt about what shot to use or which one went where. The hard part comes when you have hours of footage and you have to decide which shots to use and which order to put them in.
This under-the-hood perspective throws an interesting light on the difference between the promos of Weigel Broadcasting's METV and those of NBCUniversal's COZITV and the way those promos reflect the strengths of the first company and the weaknesses of the second.
METV specializes in promos that link clips from different shows together either stylistically, thematically or to form a narrative. In order to do this you can spend a tremendous number of man hours combing through different shows looking to find something useful or you can find people with extensive knowledge of the shows in question and spend merely a large number of man hours.
The thing that jumps out at me about there promos (beyond the sheer number, most apparently done by the prolific Joe Dale) is the aptness of the clips. Consider this ad built around the two definitive Bob Newhart bits, the therapy session and the phone call (Here's the backstory). Each clip has to work on two levels, flowing smoothly into the gag while promoting the brand.
(On a strictly technical grounds, the sound editing is also quite good. I count audio from six different sources recorded in three different decades and extensively resequenced. This was not an easy mix.)
I also liked the sound editing on this one.
This is a good time to step back and make a point about marketing. Advertisements have got to work with a company's brand. In the case of METV, this means presenting the channel as sort of a TCM for television lovers, a place with both a high variety of titles (over fifty a week) and a high number of well-remembered shows. This promo emphasizes the variety.
(also a lot of nice editing here)
The other side of the brand is the appeal to fans and connoisseurs. Many of the ads work best if you know the context of the clips.
At the risk of being repetitive, hard core fans are the target audience and the promos do a beautiful job playing to them. For example, if you were to ask fans of the Mary Tyler Moore Show to list favorite Sue Ann moments, most of them would be represented here:
This also brings up one final point. METV faces an interesting branding challenge. One of their main selling points is variety, expressed in the number of shows aired a week, the frequent changes in line-up and the special features like the Sunday Showcase, a themed three hour block that often features shows not currently on the schedule. For reasons far to complex to go into now, both research and experience have shown that too much choice can actually push customers away while brand identity is built on repetition. In other words, variety is good but you can't build you ad campaign around it.
If you'll forgive the mixed metaphor, METV addresses this by marketing certain shows as anchors and flagships. Anchors are relatively permanent fixtures in the line-up (Rawhide will come and go; Gunsmoke will always be there). They are also shows you would expect to see on a classic TV channel, Twilight Zone, Perry Mason, Rockford, Columbo, I Love Lucy, and the like.
The flagships are the face of the channel. They run in prime time. They are promoted with elaborate ads...
...some featuring interviews and short sketches with the original stars.
(Asner's picture is a nice touch)
The point is to find shows that are well known and well remembered and are associated with the qualities you want people to associate with your brand. The three shows Weigel chose, Mary Tyler Moore, Dick Van Dyke and Bob Newhart, were almost ideal for this purpose.
Here's Carl Reiner's assessment of one of these promos:
I apologize for going through this at such length but there's more to this story than just a TV channel with a knack for cutting clever spots. Weigel is an independent broadcasting company that is succeeding because it has a smart strategy, a superior product and a deep understanding of and respect for its viewers, but that success is only possible because of the way digital broadcasting opened up the market.
One of the many reasons to object to the current push to kill over-the-air television is that it further protects huge media companies like Disney and Viacom from healthy competition. To see just how bloated some of those behemoths can be, take a look at NBCUniversal's recently launch terrestrial superstation, CoziTV. The contrast is telling.
Weigel is a story of a small, nimble company doing a lot with a little. COZITV is a story of a huge, slow-moving company doing a little with a lot.
COZI often has a terribly cheap feel, with annoying infomercials and some of the worst quality prints of public domain shows that I've ever seen broadcast, but if you look closely you'll realize that much of the programming is surprisingly expensive. They air multiple original reality shows. Programs like Magnum are still reasonably popular (and thus not in the bargain bin). Many of the movies shown (like Soderbergh's Out of Sight, Far from Heaven and the remake of the Producers) still fall in the 'major motion picture' category. Their "I Love the Eighties" inspired debut special actually featured fairly well-established comics (including one who did frequent bits on Best Week Ever).
But for all that, the on-air promotions are stunningly ineffective, having all the telltale signs of executives so clueless they don't even know they're clueless. There is no indication that anyone involved thought about what the brand should be or how to build it or who the target audience is supposed to be.
Unlike METV and its constant stream of promos, COZI spent a lot on a few spots that left all of their movies and much of their series line-up unpromoted. Furthermore, the choices of what gets covered are often inexplicable. For example, the Monday night prime time line up consists of George Peppard in Banacek and Rock Hudson in McMillan and Wife. Banacek is one of their most heavily promoted shows; McMillan appears to have no coverage whatsoever. We could go back and forth about the merits of the two shows, but the business case here is exceptionally clear: while both shows were originally part of a rotating format that resulted in very short seasons, McMillan had a six year run and racked up an acceptable 40 episodes; Banacek ran for two and had 17. With a handful of exceptions like Fawlty Towers, you simply cannot use a series with a less than 30 episode run as a tentpole (particularly not a show that wasn't that popular to begin with). Add to that the fact that Hudson's films (being part of the Universal catalog) are prominently featured on COZITV and the decision makes even less sense.
This is not an isolated case. At least one other prime time series (the Bold Ones, another revolving series starring, among others, Leslie Nielsen, Burl Ives, and Hal Holbrook) is left out as are shows like I Spy and Alias Smith and Jones and the Canadian imports, the Border and the Collector (both action dramas). Nor do the rest of shows that do get covered hold together. Action shows are mixed with schmaltzy family dramas like Highway to Heaven and Marcus Welby that don't even run in prime time.
But what really strikes me here is how the promos that actually got made fail as promos. They aren't very funny and, more to the point, when they aren't funny they generally aren't anything. Just minimally edited clips that can serve as set-ups for punchlines that pop up on the side of the screen or are interjected by VH1 style talking heads. I started to embed a few examples but I don't like COZI's embed format so here are some linked descriptions:
Banacek is having a picnic with a woman. His car phone rings and his chauffeur starts to wave him over.
Punchline: "He needs a car with a longer cord."
Magnum is playing baseball. His friend Rick takes a line drive to the crotch. The woman who had hit the ball sees him collapse and asks, "is it your stomach?"
Punchline: "Stomach? Try a little lower."
Some of the spots are funnier than these examples but none are any good at their primary purpose. They don't build brand, they don't build viewer loyalty and since only a handful of shows get all the promotion, they don't even help to build awareness.
The executives at COZI don't understand how to promote and brand a terrestrial station. They are obviously clueless about scheduling. They don't know how to put together line-ups. They have little interest in their product and a vague feeling of contempt toward their viewers. They are, in any number of ways, the anti-Weigel.
It is worth noting that upon deciding to move into the terrestrial market, the Fox Entertainment Group (which is, as a rule, waaaay smarter than NBC) decided to take the exact opposite approach.
There's a bigger point here about how bloated and out of touch big companies can get and about the importance of opening up markets to small independent players, but this post is already far too long so that will have to wait for another day.
Back in my college teaching days, I produced and edited some videos to accompany an algebra book. They were terrible, crime-against-humanity bad, but they paid off the remainder of my car loan and, along with a few other projects, they gave me a lifelong appreciation of how much or how little work goes into what you see on TV.
Of course, most of my projects were easy to put together, just cut from the instructor to the steps of the problem. There was seldom much doubt about what shot to use or which one went where. The hard part comes when you have hours of footage and you have to decide which shots to use and which order to put them in.
This under-the-hood perspective throws an interesting light on the difference between the promos of Weigel Broadcasting's METV and those of NBCUniversal's COZITV and the way those promos reflect the strengths of the first company and the weaknesses of the second.
METV specializes in promos that link clips from different shows together either stylistically, thematically or to form a narrative. In order to do this you can spend a tremendous number of man hours combing through different shows looking to find something useful or you can find people with extensive knowledge of the shows in question and spend merely a large number of man hours.
The thing that jumps out at me about there promos (beyond the sheer number, most apparently done by the prolific Joe Dale) is the aptness of the clips. Consider this ad built around the two definitive Bob Newhart bits, the therapy session and the phone call (Here's the backstory). Each clip has to work on two levels, flowing smoothly into the gag while promoting the brand.
(On a strictly technical grounds, the sound editing is also quite good. I count audio from six different sources recorded in three different decades and extensively resequenced. This was not an easy mix.)
I also liked the sound editing on this one.
This is a good time to step back and make a point about marketing. Advertisements have got to work with a company's brand. In the case of METV, this means presenting the channel as sort of a TCM for television lovers, a place with both a high variety of titles (over fifty a week) and a high number of well-remembered shows. This promo emphasizes the variety.
(also a lot of nice editing here)
The other side of the brand is the appeal to fans and connoisseurs. Many of the ads work best if you know the context of the clips.
(God, Mumy was creepy)
And I'm not sure the following works at all if you don't know the twists being spoiled.At the risk of being repetitive, hard core fans are the target audience and the promos do a beautiful job playing to them. For example, if you were to ask fans of the Mary Tyler Moore Show to list favorite Sue Ann moments, most of them would be represented here:
This also brings up one final point. METV faces an interesting branding challenge. One of their main selling points is variety, expressed in the number of shows aired a week, the frequent changes in line-up and the special features like the Sunday Showcase, a themed three hour block that often features shows not currently on the schedule. For reasons far to complex to go into now, both research and experience have shown that too much choice can actually push customers away while brand identity is built on repetition. In other words, variety is good but you can't build you ad campaign around it.
If you'll forgive the mixed metaphor, METV addresses this by marketing certain shows as anchors and flagships. Anchors are relatively permanent fixtures in the line-up (Rawhide will come and go; Gunsmoke will always be there). They are also shows you would expect to see on a classic TV channel, Twilight Zone, Perry Mason, Rockford, Columbo, I Love Lucy, and the like.
The flagships are the face of the channel. They run in prime time. They are promoted with elaborate ads...
...some featuring interviews and short sketches with the original stars.
(Asner's picture is a nice touch)
The point is to find shows that are well known and well remembered and are associated with the qualities you want people to associate with your brand. The three shows Weigel chose, Mary Tyler Moore, Dick Van Dyke and Bob Newhart, were almost ideal for this purpose.
Here's Carl Reiner's assessment of one of these promos:
I apologize for going through this at such length but there's more to this story than just a TV channel with a knack for cutting clever spots. Weigel is an independent broadcasting company that is succeeding because it has a smart strategy, a superior product and a deep understanding of and respect for its viewers, but that success is only possible because of the way digital broadcasting opened up the market.
One of the many reasons to object to the current push to kill over-the-air television is that it further protects huge media companies like Disney and Viacom from healthy competition. To see just how bloated some of those behemoths can be, take a look at NBCUniversal's recently launch terrestrial superstation, CoziTV. The contrast is telling.
Weigel is a story of a small, nimble company doing a lot with a little. COZITV is a story of a huge, slow-moving company doing a little with a lot.
COZI often has a terribly cheap feel, with annoying infomercials and some of the worst quality prints of public domain shows that I've ever seen broadcast, but if you look closely you'll realize that much of the programming is surprisingly expensive. They air multiple original reality shows. Programs like Magnum are still reasonably popular (and thus not in the bargain bin). Many of the movies shown (like Soderbergh's Out of Sight, Far from Heaven and the remake of the Producers) still fall in the 'major motion picture' category. Their "I Love the Eighties" inspired debut special actually featured fairly well-established comics (including one who did frequent bits on Best Week Ever).
But for all that, the on-air promotions are stunningly ineffective, having all the telltale signs of executives so clueless they don't even know they're clueless. There is no indication that anyone involved thought about what the brand should be or how to build it or who the target audience is supposed to be.
Unlike METV and its constant stream of promos, COZI spent a lot on a few spots that left all of their movies and much of their series line-up unpromoted. Furthermore, the choices of what gets covered are often inexplicable. For example, the Monday night prime time line up consists of George Peppard in Banacek and Rock Hudson in McMillan and Wife. Banacek is one of their most heavily promoted shows; McMillan appears to have no coverage whatsoever. We could go back and forth about the merits of the two shows, but the business case here is exceptionally clear: while both shows were originally part of a rotating format that resulted in very short seasons, McMillan had a six year run and racked up an acceptable 40 episodes; Banacek ran for two and had 17. With a handful of exceptions like Fawlty Towers, you simply cannot use a series with a less than 30 episode run as a tentpole (particularly not a show that wasn't that popular to begin with). Add to that the fact that Hudson's films (being part of the Universal catalog) are prominently featured on COZITV and the decision makes even less sense.
This is not an isolated case. At least one other prime time series (the Bold Ones, another revolving series starring, among others, Leslie Nielsen, Burl Ives, and Hal Holbrook) is left out as are shows like I Spy and Alias Smith and Jones and the Canadian imports, the Border and the Collector (both action dramas). Nor do the rest of shows that do get covered hold together. Action shows are mixed with schmaltzy family dramas like Highway to Heaven and Marcus Welby that don't even run in prime time.
But what really strikes me here is how the promos that actually got made fail as promos. They aren't very funny and, more to the point, when they aren't funny they generally aren't anything. Just minimally edited clips that can serve as set-ups for punchlines that pop up on the side of the screen or are interjected by VH1 style talking heads. I started to embed a few examples but I don't like COZI's embed format so here are some linked descriptions:
Banacek is having a picnic with a woman. His car phone rings and his chauffeur starts to wave him over.
Punchline: "He needs a car with a longer cord."
Magnum is playing baseball. His friend Rick takes a line drive to the crotch. The woman who had hit the ball sees him collapse and asks, "is it your stomach?"
Punchline: "Stomach? Try a little lower."
Some of the spots are funnier than these examples but none are any good at their primary purpose. They don't build brand, they don't build viewer loyalty and since only a handful of shows get all the promotion, they don't even help to build awareness.
The executives at COZI don't understand how to promote and brand a terrestrial station. They are obviously clueless about scheduling. They don't know how to put together line-ups. They have little interest in their product and a vague feeling of contempt toward their viewers. They are, in any number of ways, the anti-Weigel.
It is worth noting that upon deciding to move into the terrestrial market, the Fox Entertainment Group (which is, as a rule, waaaay smarter than NBC) decided to take the exact opposite approach.
There's a bigger point here about how bloated and out of touch big companies can get and about the importance of opening up markets to small independent players, but this post is already far too long so that will have to wait for another day.
Friday, April 26, 2013
Free TV blogging -- betting against Felix Salmon
[Update: Andrew Gelman joins the conversation and, as usual, brings with him a fantastic comment section. Felix Salmon sites this Nielsen study to support his case. Rajiv Sethi (who was possibly the first major blogger on this beat) joins in. I'm still the only one talking about terrestrial superstations, but the night's still young so you never know.]
If you've been reading the last few posts, you know that Felix Salmon has weighed in on the free TV debate and that I find myself in the very unusual position of disputing pretty much everything he says (it is far more common for me to be completely in agreement). I'll be addressing the cost of Salmon's policy recommendations (born disproportionately by minorities and the poor) and questioning the economic implications later. Right now I want to focus on some disputed facts and assumptions.
In the post Salmon is dismissive of the claim that there are fifty million over-the-air television viewers:
Let's assume Salmon's right and put ourselves in the position of a Fox or NBC executive who has to decide whether or not to create a new broadcast network. We can be reasonably confident that the executives have access to reliable data (particularly the Fox executive if the deal with Weigel included a look at some numbers from ThisTV and METV).
You find, given our premise, that the total over-the-air audience is, say, forty million, the technology is obsolete and entire medium will probably be gone in a few years. At this point, it's hard to imagine you'd proceed with an expensive, time-consuming project that is likely to be an embarrassing failure but the situation actually gets worse.
You are looking at launching an advertiser-driven, English-language station but the OTA market is disproportionately poor and immigrant (I get programming in over a half dozen languages); the maxim relevant audience for your station now drops to maybe thirty million and there's more bad news. You're going to have to share that thirty million with a crowded field of competitors. A major market will have dozens of OTA channels including multiple PBS channels, This, ME, Antenna, Bounce, RTV, three ION channels and various independents.
Given Salmon's assumptions about the size and trajectory of this market, there is simply no way NBC or Fox would have gone ahead with these channels. They couldn't possibly recoup their start-up costs before OTA is phased out. Put bluntly, both NBC and Fox are betting against Salmon's position.
Obviously this is not conclusive, but it's a strong piece of evidence and it's consistent with what we've seen elsewhere. It's also consistent with GfK's numbers.
There's more to come on this. There are many aspects to this story and I'll try to get to as many as I can but I've been looking at this for a long time from a lot of different angles and from every angle it looks to me like OTA is a promising technology supporting an innovative and growing industry, serving important economic and social roles.
The technology is doing fine in the marketplace. It's lobbyists who are likely to kill it.
If you've been reading the last few posts, you know that Felix Salmon has weighed in on the free TV debate and that I find myself in the very unusual position of disputing pretty much everything he says (it is far more common for me to be completely in agreement). I'll be addressing the cost of Salmon's policy recommendations (born disproportionately by minorities and the poor) and questioning the economic implications later. Right now I want to focus on some disputed facts and assumptions.
In the post Salmon is dismissive of the claim that there are fifty million over-the-air television viewers:
The 50 million number, by the way, should not be considered particularly reliable: it’s Aereo’s guess as to the number of people who ever watch free-to-air TV, even if they mainly watch cable or satellite. (Maybe they have a hut somewhere with an old rabbit-ear TV in it.)And he strongly suggests the number is not only smaller but shrinking. By comparison, here's a story from the broadcasting news site TV News Check from June of last year (if anyone has more recent numbers please let me know):
According to new research by GfK Media, the number of Americans now relying solely on over-the-air (OTA) television reception increased to almost 54 million, up from 46 million just a year ago. The recently completed survey also found that the demographics of broadcast-only households skew towards younger adults, minorities and lower-income families.OTA can be tricky to measure -- unlike cable, there's no way of telling who has an old set of rabbit ears -- but we can look at other indicators and see which set of assumptions they are consistent with. Specifically consider the recent decisions of NBC and Fox to launch dedicated OTA channels this year
Let's assume Salmon's right and put ourselves in the position of a Fox or NBC executive who has to decide whether or not to create a new broadcast network. We can be reasonably confident that the executives have access to reliable data (particularly the Fox executive if the deal with Weigel included a look at some numbers from ThisTV and METV).
You find, given our premise, that the total over-the-air audience is, say, forty million, the technology is obsolete and entire medium will probably be gone in a few years. At this point, it's hard to imagine you'd proceed with an expensive, time-consuming project that is likely to be an embarrassing failure but the situation actually gets worse.
You are looking at launching an advertiser-driven, English-language station but the OTA market is disproportionately poor and immigrant (I get programming in over a half dozen languages); the maxim relevant audience for your station now drops to maybe thirty million and there's more bad news. You're going to have to share that thirty million with a crowded field of competitors. A major market will have dozens of OTA channels including multiple PBS channels, This, ME, Antenna, Bounce, RTV, three ION channels and various independents.
Given Salmon's assumptions about the size and trajectory of this market, there is simply no way NBC or Fox would have gone ahead with these channels. They couldn't possibly recoup their start-up costs before OTA is phased out. Put bluntly, both NBC and Fox are betting against Salmon's position.
Obviously this is not conclusive, but it's a strong piece of evidence and it's consistent with what we've seen elsewhere. It's also consistent with GfK's numbers.
There's more to come on this. There are many aspects to this story and I'll try to get to as many as I can but I've been looking at this for a long time from a lot of different angles and from every angle it looks to me like OTA is a promising technology supporting an innovative and growing industry, serving important economic and social roles.
The technology is doing fine in the marketplace. It's lobbyists who are likely to kill it.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
The Me Generation -- re-updated
Blogger apparently really dislikes PDFs so I removed the embed but you can find the original here (you might want to check out some of the other press releases as well).
Here's the subject line:
(and at the risk of saying you-know-what, I told you to keep an eye on Weigel)
Here's the subject line:
Me-TV adds seven new affiliatesAt the risk of putting too fine a point on a dead horse, this is consistent with a growing market and a sound business model.
Classic TV network now clears 89% of the U.S.
(and at the risk of saying you-know-what, I told you to keep an eye on Weigel)
Terrestrial Superstations
Normally, I have to work hard to find something to criticize in a Felix Salmon post. With this one, I'm having to work hard to lay the groundwork so I can spell out all of the problems.
When US television went digital, the new platform didn't just allow you to get HD video over a set of rabbit ears, it also allowed TV stations to broadcast multiple subchannels. This has created all sorts of interesting changes in the television landscape (for example, your PBS station is now probably putting out four times the programming). One area of particular relevance to this discussion is the appearance of general interest stations created specifically for the new technology.
The idea of using digital subchannels to launch a TBS style superstation seems to have originated with Weigel Broadcasting, a well-respected regional player noted at the time for being Chicago's last independent television broadcaster. (Both Weigel and Chicago figure prominently in this story.)
Weigel's ThisTV (a partnership with MGM) was up and broadcasting the day American television went digital. Here's what I said about the concept a couple of years ago.
I've written a great deal about Weigel and I have a lot more on the to-do pile. The company is one of my favorite examples of a well-run business but for the purposes of this story, the pertinent factors are: Weigel is an innovative with a good track record; it moves as decisively as any company I've ever seen; it is the most important player in the digital television landscape (as you'll see later).
Skip forward a couple of years and the follow-the-data approach starts to get interesting. The company with the most complete information (Weigel, obviously) announces another, more ambitious superstation called METV, a classic TV channel built around old but prestigious shows like Mary Tyler Moore, Columbo and the Twilight Zone (making very limited use of block programming to allow airing of fifty different programs a week) and promoted a surprising elaborate campaign. In-character station ads featured Betty White as Sue Ann Niven, Ed Asner as Lou Grant, Carl Reiner as Alan Brady and Bob Newhart as Bob Hartley.
The company that arguably had the second best information and experience was Weigel's long-time competitor, the Tribune Company's WGN. Tribune had data from its stations (including KTLA which carried ThisTV in the Los Angeles market), experience with one of the first and most successful cable superstations and finally the inevitable back channel communication you would expect from Chicago's famed television community. It is not a coincidence that Tribune launched its terrestrial superstation, AntennaTV about the same time METV went on the air.
After LA and New York, the two most important television towns are Chicago and Atlanta so it's not surprising that the next terrestrial superstation came from Atlanta. A few months after the launch of AntennaTV, Andrew Young and Martin Luther King III founded BounceTV as an over-the-air alternative to BET.
This is a good place to stop and note something interesting about all of these terrestrial superstations. Neither ThisTV, METV, BounceTV nor AntennaTV have regularly scheduled infomercials. This is a business model built on program driven advertising and we are going on five years of data that seems to say that it works.
2013 continues the trend of more investment on terrestrial television by bigger players. A few months ago NBCUniversal unveiled COZITV. COZI is the only terrestrial superstation with infomercials but, like Bounce, it also has original programming [link added].
And now there's this:
When US television went digital, the new platform didn't just allow you to get HD video over a set of rabbit ears, it also allowed TV stations to broadcast multiple subchannels. This has created all sorts of interesting changes in the television landscape (for example, your PBS station is now probably putting out four times the programming). One area of particular relevance to this discussion is the appearance of general interest stations created specifically for the new technology.
The idea of using digital subchannels to launch a TBS style superstation seems to have originated with Weigel Broadcasting, a well-respected regional player noted at the time for being Chicago's last independent television broadcaster. (Both Weigel and Chicago figure prominently in this story.)
Weigel's ThisTV (a partnership with MGM) was up and broadcasting the day American television went digital. Here's what I said about the concept a couple of years ago.
ThisTV has caught on to the fact that the most interesting films are often on the far ends of the spectrum and has responded with a wonderful mixture of art house and grind house. Among the former, you can see films like Persona, the Music Lovers and Paths of Glory. Among the latter you'll find American International quickies and action pictures with titles like Pray for Death. You can even find films that fit into both categories like Corman's Poe films or Milius' Dillinger.Of course, the other great insight was that movies on the far end of the spectrum tend to be cheaper.
I've written a great deal about Weigel and I have a lot more on the to-do pile. The company is one of my favorite examples of a well-run business but for the purposes of this story, the pertinent factors are: Weigel is an innovative with a good track record; it moves as decisively as any company I've ever seen; it is the most important player in the digital television landscape (as you'll see later).
Skip forward a couple of years and the follow-the-data approach starts to get interesting. The company with the most complete information (Weigel, obviously) announces another, more ambitious superstation called METV, a classic TV channel built around old but prestigious shows like Mary Tyler Moore, Columbo and the Twilight Zone (making very limited use of block programming to allow airing of fifty different programs a week) and promoted a surprising elaborate campaign. In-character station ads featured Betty White as Sue Ann Niven, Ed Asner as Lou Grant, Carl Reiner as Alan Brady and Bob Newhart as Bob Hartley.
The company that arguably had the second best information and experience was Weigel's long-time competitor, the Tribune Company's WGN. Tribune had data from its stations (including KTLA which carried ThisTV in the Los Angeles market), experience with one of the first and most successful cable superstations and finally the inevitable back channel communication you would expect from Chicago's famed television community. It is not a coincidence that Tribune launched its terrestrial superstation, AntennaTV about the same time METV went on the air.
After LA and New York, the two most important television towns are Chicago and Atlanta so it's not surprising that the next terrestrial superstation came from Atlanta. A few months after the launch of AntennaTV, Andrew Young and Martin Luther King III founded BounceTV as an over-the-air alternative to BET.
This is a good place to stop and note something interesting about all of these terrestrial superstations. Neither ThisTV, METV, BounceTV nor AntennaTV have regularly scheduled infomercials. This is a business model built on program driven advertising and we are going on five years of data that seems to say that it works.
2013 continues the trend of more investment on terrestrial television by bigger players. A few months ago NBCUniversal unveiled COZITV. COZI is the only terrestrial superstation with infomercials but, like Bounce, it also has original programming [link added].
And now there's this:
Movies! is an upcoming American digital multicast television network, that will feature an emphasis in its programming on feature films. The network will be a joint venture between Chicago-based Weigel Broadcasting and the Fox Entertainment Group subsidiary of News Corporation, and will be available in the United States through the digital subchannels of broadcast television stations, as well as on select cable systems. Movies! will broadcast 24 hours a day in 480i widescreen standard definition.I have limited this post to commercial, general interest, English language stations created specifically for digital broadcasting. That's a small sliver of what's available over the air but it does, pretty much conclusively, show that the model is viable and that, unlike so many recent tech and media fads, the more data comes in, the more interested serious players get.
Friday, October 7, 2011
Free TV blogging -- Why Weigel Broadcasting may be the best business story that no one's covering -- part I
[I should start with the disclaimer that all of the information I have about Weigel comes from two sources: Wikipedia and way too many hours of watching television. It's entirely possible that a competent journalist could discover that the truth here is something entirely different, but if competent journalists were paying attention I wouldn't be writing these posts.]
Though the improvement in picture and sound got most of the attention, another aspect of the transition to terrestrial digital was arguably more important, particularly for broadcasters: under the new technology, each station could broadcast multiple subchannels. The situation was analogous to the TV landscape thirty years earlier when cable and satellite stations were exploding on the scene. It's not surprising that someone would try to create the broadcast equivalent of superstations like TBS. What is surprising is who was able to get a channel up and running before any of the competitors were out of the gate.
The name of the channel was ThisTV. It was produced by a regional broadcasting called Weigel, best known for operating the last independent station in Chicago and being the home of the cult favorite Svengoolie -- last of old time horror hosts. Weigel had a content deal with MGM which was not nearly as impressive as it sounds -- Turner had bought out the classic MGM library years earlier -- but MGM still had a lot of films including the catalog of American International, the studio responsible for virtually every drive in movie you can think of from the late Fifties through the early Seventies.
Access to all those AIP films probably had a lot to do with the unique ThisTV brand. Here's how I summed it up earlier:
This mix was in place from the very beginning. The station officially debuted on November 1, 2008 with Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It but many stations started carrying it a day earlier to take advantage of a day of cheesy Halloween horror films. It was a formula that made a virtue out of cheapness (rarely seen auteur films and drive-in movies both have the advantage of not costing much) and it produced a format that's been running smoothly with remarkably few adjustments for almost three years.
For a small player to identify a new market, develop a concept, negotiate the necessary deals with a content provider (MGM), line up affiliates, make the countless other arrangements that accompany a major launch and to be up and running with a quality product when the support technology first comes online is an impressive accomplishment. But it gets better.
So far we have a solid business story -- small yet nimble company with some good ideas beats big, well-established competitors into a new market. Not exactly the most original piece of journalism but certainly good enough for the front page of the business section. However the story doesn't stop there. Weigel didn't just beat its big and well-financed competitors; it lapped them. Before the next entrant, Tribune/WGN, was able to get its station, AntennaTV on the air, Weigel managed to launch a second channel, the ambitious classic television station, METV. If this weren't enough, AntennaTV is the only one of the three to look slapped together despite having taken far longer to make it to the air (of course, we have no way of knowing how long it took Tribune to see the opportunity and how long it took them to act on it but either way Weigel looks good by comparison).
To put this in context, at least half of this story takes place after the collapse of '08, a downturn that hit advertiser-based businesses particularly hard. Furthermore, the story occurs in an industry that a large number of lobbyists and at least a few pundits were literally trying to kill. There had even been a New York Times op-ed calling for the government to eliminate over the air television and sell off the spectrum.
One of the great memes of the Great Recession has been that uncertainty paralyzes businesses. Even the possibility of a tax increase or some additional regulation -- both extremely mild by historical standards -- are enough to bring the economy to a standstill, but here's a market filled with unknowns under a credible threat of annihilation and we can still find a company like Weigel moving aggressively to establish dominance of it.
That's the other side of uncertainty. It allows companies to substitute boldness and decisiveness for money and market position and take advantage of opportunities that would otherwise be out of their reach.
[also posted at MippyvilleTV]
Though the improvement in picture and sound got most of the attention, another aspect of the transition to terrestrial digital was arguably more important, particularly for broadcasters: under the new technology, each station could broadcast multiple subchannels. The situation was analogous to the TV landscape thirty years earlier when cable and satellite stations were exploding on the scene. It's not surprising that someone would try to create the broadcast equivalent of superstations like TBS. What is surprising is who was able to get a channel up and running before any of the competitors were out of the gate.
The name of the channel was ThisTV. It was produced by a regional broadcasting called Weigel, best known for operating the last independent station in Chicago and being the home of the cult favorite Svengoolie -- last of old time horror hosts. Weigel had a content deal with MGM which was not nearly as impressive as it sounds -- Turner had bought out the classic MGM library years earlier -- but MGM still had a lot of films including the catalog of American International, the studio responsible for virtually every drive in movie you can think of from the late Fifties through the early Seventies.
Access to all those AIP films probably had a lot to do with the unique ThisTV brand. Here's how I summed it up earlier:
Weigel are the people behind ThisTV and the exceptionally good retro station MeTV (more on that later). ThisTV is basically a poor man's TCM. It can't compete with Turner's movie channel in terms of library and budget -- no one can (if my cable company hadn't bumped TCM to a more expensive tier I never would have dropped the service), but it manages to do a lot with limited resources using imagination and personality. As a movie channel, it consistently beats the hell out of AMC.
ThisTV has caught on to the fact that the most interesting films are often on the far ends of the spectrum and has responded with a wonderful mixture of art house and grind house. Among the former, you can see films like Persona, the Music Lovers and Paths of Glory. Among the latter you'll find American International quickies and action pictures with titles like Pray for Death. You can even find films that fit into both categories like Corman's Poe films or Milius' Dillinger.
If I ran a TV station, I would definitely combine Bergman and ninjas. I would not, however, run Mario Bava's feature length pulp magazine cover, Planet of the Vampires from twelve till two. Some of us have to get up in the morning.
This mix was in place from the very beginning. The station officially debuted on November 1, 2008 with Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It but many stations started carrying it a day earlier to take advantage of a day of cheesy Halloween horror films. It was a formula that made a virtue out of cheapness (rarely seen auteur films and drive-in movies both have the advantage of not costing much) and it produced a format that's been running smoothly with remarkably few adjustments for almost three years.
For a small player to identify a new market, develop a concept, negotiate the necessary deals with a content provider (MGM), line up affiliates, make the countless other arrangements that accompany a major launch and to be up and running with a quality product when the support technology first comes online is an impressive accomplishment. But it gets better.
So far we have a solid business story -- small yet nimble company with some good ideas beats big, well-established competitors into a new market. Not exactly the most original piece of journalism but certainly good enough for the front page of the business section. However the story doesn't stop there. Weigel didn't just beat its big and well-financed competitors; it lapped them. Before the next entrant, Tribune/WGN, was able to get its station, AntennaTV on the air, Weigel managed to launch a second channel, the ambitious classic television station, METV. If this weren't enough, AntennaTV is the only one of the three to look slapped together despite having taken far longer to make it to the air (of course, we have no way of knowing how long it took Tribune to see the opportunity and how long it took them to act on it but either way Weigel looks good by comparison).
To put this in context, at least half of this story takes place after the collapse of '08, a downturn that hit advertiser-based businesses particularly hard. Furthermore, the story occurs in an industry that a large number of lobbyists and at least a few pundits were literally trying to kill. There had even been a New York Times op-ed calling for the government to eliminate over the air television and sell off the spectrum.
One of the great memes of the Great Recession has been that uncertainty paralyzes businesses. Even the possibility of a tax increase or some additional regulation -- both extremely mild by historical standards -- are enough to bring the economy to a standstill, but here's a market filled with unknowns under a credible threat of annihilation and we can still find a company like Weigel moving aggressively to establish dominance of it.
That's the other side of uncertainty. It allows companies to substitute boldness and decisiveness for money and market position and take advantage of opportunities that would otherwise be out of their reach.
[also posted at MippyvilleTV]
Monday, June 20, 2011
Weekend Blogging -- Free TV edition
As you might have noticed, broadcast TV is a recurring topic at OE (for reasons too involved to pursue at the moment). Weigel Broadcasting is shaping up to be the Turner of this new media world. Here are some thoughts on Weigel's ThisTV:
ThisTV has caught on to the fact that the most interesting films are often on the far ends of the spectrum and has responded with a wonderful mixture of art house and grind house. Among the former, you can see films like Persona, the Music Lovers and Paths of Glory. Among the latter you'll find American International quickies and action pictures with titles like Pray for Death. You can even find films that fit into both categories like Corman's Poe films or Milius' Dillinger.
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