Comcast announced in late June that they will launch a version of their VOD channel, Fearnet, as a linear, ad-supported cable network. Fearnet’s VOD service is available in 28 million homes, and the linear, ad supported channel will expand its reach. Presumably, the ads and license fees will bring in more money, since the VOD service is available free to digital subscribers. This is a significant development. When Comcast launched Fearnet on Halloween 2006 they hailed the VOD-only channel as a new paradigm in cable service. The days of the linear network were numbered, since consumers wanted to consume their video on demand. Fearnet would be the first in a series of new VOD networks.

A funny thing happened on the way to this future. Linear cable networks continued to launch — news channels, local sports channels, foreign language channels, HD versions of current channels. There are groups looking for funding for several more. Instead of fading away, networks with limited distribution continued to expand. Satellite services like Direct TV and DISH made more networks available to homes and cable systems competed by adding more channels and creating their own proprietary channels. The VOD interfaces that cable networks put in homes turned out to require several clicks to find specific shows. Most consumers didn’t want to work that hard. It was so much easier just to see what was currently on your favorite channels than hunt for specific VOD programs.

Comcast further demonstrated the importance of networks and content last year when they bought NBC for its popular cable channels like USA, and the most old-fashioned dinosaur of them all– a broadcast network. Although an increasing number of people time shift their viewing of shows, they still rely upon networks to schedule programs at specific times so they can record them.

What does this mean for your program idea? It means that cable networks in the U.S. and around the world will be a viable market for the foreseeable future. Selling a program to a cable channel remains a good way to make money and increase your program’s visibility. That doesn’t mean you have to wait for a network to buy your show before you create some video for your web site. It does mean that you should consider a network sale as a viable part of your business plan. And if you’re dreaming of creating a new linear network don’t give up hope. It looks like they will be around for awhile.

Peter M. Gordon is a writer, public speaker, and media consultant in Orlando, FL.

As the Tour de France prepares to climb the Pyrenees, ratings are up while 2010 TDF numbers are down.

Crashes and injuries have forced 20 cyclists to drop out leaving only 178 riders in the race.  But riders’ pain seems to be Versus’ gain. Live morning race coverage on the channel has averaged 501,000 viewers and a .5 household rating through Stage 9 on July 13 — the best start for race coverage in the network’s 10-year history with the Tour.

The cable network also says unique users on its Tour de France Web site in the U.S. have increased 15% overall, while pages per user are up 22%. Unique users’ average time on the site is currently running 13% higher than a year ago.

Versus, like all media companies in big events, is touting its three-screen approach to this competition. In addition to cable and internet coverage, Versus is offering an iPhone app for its mobile component. The Tour app will offer video highlights, standings and route maps.

The three-screen approach just reached a new goal for media conglomerates to strive for with ESPN’s coverage of soccer’s World Cup. ESPN estimated that 132 million persons aged 2+ had consumed World Cup content in the U.S. across all of ESPN’s platforms. ESPN is promoting the notion of 3 with the new website, ESPN3.com. This website is all about watching live streaming sports online.

Sources: Versus, TV By The Numbers 7/7/2010
See also:

• re:Cycling TV 7/12/2010
• MediaPost 7/12/2010
• Rating The Race & The Riders 7/2/2010

Photo: Quickstep’s Sylvain CHAVANEL, Stage 7 on 7/10/2010. Credit:  ©PresseSports/B.Papon

New York, July 7 — Nielsen has announced organizational changes which will give set top box data greater visibility in the ratings company. In addition to announcing STB analyses from Charter systems in St. Louis, Greenville/Spartanburg, and Reno, Nielsen told clients about organizational changes designed to integrate STB data “formally within our existing audience measurement product leadership teams.”

The letter to Nielsen’s clients also announced that Matt O’Grady will be responsible for testing and incorporating STB data into Nielsen’s national and multi-platform products. Cheryl Idell will have integration responsibilities for local products.

Kantar (formerly TNS Media Research), Rentrak and TiVo have existing products and client bases already using these data. Rentrack’s Station Essentials product, using AT&T and Dish Network data, has been adding clients to its sec-by-sec no-demographics alternative to traditional NSI local market data. It’s not clear from the announcement if Nielsen is upping the ante or if they are just publicizing previous efforts.

The July 7 announcement was nuanced so as not to discredit the current local and national TV measurement services which serve all DMAs with a combination of people meters, household meters and paper diaries. “While STB data is incomplete on its own, we believe combining the stability and granularity afforded by this data with the representative quality of our panels will provide enhanced capabilities, analytics and insight,” says Nielsen’s Dave Thomas and Steve Hasker.

The new Nielsen tests will compare the ratings currency to STB data “to determine if the STB data can help supply greater fidelity to our ratings projections and enable more granular reporting, including to additional stations and regional networks.”

Arbitron is going high tech with their portable people meter rolling out a replacement for the 80’s-like pager-looking device with hardware that uses cell phone technology.

The new wireless PPM 360 technology will use a cellular network to collect data from Arbitron’s Portable People Meter (PPM) panel. PPM ratings using the existing cradle technology will be available in 50 markets for the Summer 2010 book.

“We have multiple solutions for data capture and retrieval,” says Arbitron spokesperson Jessica Benbow. “While this version is on a cell phone delivery system, the existing PPM technology retrieves data from the meter through a docking station and sends it to Arbitron through a landline or a cell modem depending on status of the household and the availability of cell coverage. That system will remain intact simultaneously as this system is deployed.”

Arbitron’s president says the enhanced PPM will liberate audience measurement from the home and make it easier to follow the mobile consumers. “This platform is designed to be an integrated component to our existing radio services and drive future innovation for media measurement,” says William Kerr, Arbitron President and CEO.

Arbitron has decided to keep the name of the cell phone carrier secret. Rollout plans for PPM 360 will be announced after field testing of the new system concludes at the end of 2010.

High Definition TV has been good to TV manufacturers, program producers and consumers. HD helps sell more high-end TVs to consumers who like the Big Picture and richer viewing experience. Now new research suggests there might be good HD news for media buyers and sellers, too.

A comprehensive study of commercial viewing to a dozen of the largest network TV advertisers suggests that commercial tuneaway is lower in HD households. Higher audience retention means bigger commercial ratings which might translate into future cha-ching for broadcast and cable ad sales executives.

A new Kantar Media study reports that viewers tune away from commercials about half as often on HD channels compared to the standard definition (SD) feed for the same network. Ad supported HD channels have an average tuneaway of 3.73 percent of commercial seconds compared to 6.8 for SD viewing.

The analysis is based on nearly 124,000 thirty second spots for advertisers in the automotive, communications, retail, QSR, insurance and prepared foods categories. October 2009 data from 100,000 set top boxes in Kantar’s DIRECTView sample were used for the analysis. The complete results will be presented at the Advertising Research Foundation AMS 5.0 conference in NYC on June 22-23.

Broadcast also benefits from HD. High Def broadcast channels have 31 percent less tuneaway compared to the same commercials on SD channels  (2.2 vs. 3.2).

“This may be another measure of engagement,” says Leslie Wood, president of Media Trust and a study co-author. “If a person is watching on the HD channel, they care more about their TV experience.”

The finding could also be a win for set top box providers.  “Return path data can provide important insights into consumers’ digital viewing behavior,” says George Shababb, president of Kantar Media Audiences. “The ability to isolate the tuneaway effect of HD versus SD is unique to these data,” he says.
Wood notes that it isn’t clear if HD makes people spend more time with commercials or if the household characteristics of HD homes  — such as income, family size, etc. — differentiate SD and HD commercial viewing. Either way, it’s good news. “Greater audience retention and its implied higher commercial rating are a powerful rationale for networks considering adding a HD feed,” she says.

Breakthrough research is nice – but actionable findings are what matters most to media buyers. “These data suggest that HD channels reach a more engaged viewer which can have repercussions for our advertisers,” says Kevin Moeller, partner and Insights Director at MediaCom. “If HD programming results in a more engaged viewer it will encourage media communications planning and buying teams to rethink media plans.”

Although these preliminary data suggest an additional payoff to networks’ HD investment, one sales veteran is cautious about cashing in.

“I am not wild about centering a sales effort on the potential of this incremental gain,” says Harvey Ganot, a partner at New Markets Now and former President of Advertising Sales at MTV Networks. Ganot says charging more for HD is a double-edged sword: if HD is worth more, does that mean standard definition is worth less? “Advertisers are getting the HD advantage for free now. Why would they want to pay more?” Logistical issues would also make an HD-only sales effort difficult. “Segmentation and micro-placement of schedules in an HD environment are time consuming and labor intensive tasks,” Ganot adds.

Higher HD commercial ratings may not justify bigger ad sales rates down the road. But if it helps justify networks’ continued investment in high def distribution and technology, it’s bound to help broadcast and cable CFOs sleep better at night.

Dave Zornow is president of TNG Research, a media research and applications development company in Nyack, NY. He is also co-author of the study, “Using Return Path Data to Understand Contextual Advertising Engagement on TV,” which will be presented at the ARF AMS Conference in New York on June 22.

The tables have been turned on the ratings business.

Predicting that “Nielsen should score big audience ratings on Wall Street,” the NYT thinks the private equity team which took the former VNU company private four years ago has done a good job — and will be rewarded with a successful IPO of up to $1.75 billion. Nielsen’s SEC filing says they plan to use the proceeds to reduce its $8.6 billion debt and “general corporate purposes.”

Here’s the “by the numbers” analysis of Nielsen’s numbers:

• Nielsen takes in about $4.8 billion in revenue each year from nearly 100 countries.
• In 2006,  former GE Exec David Calhoun and a group of private investment firms including Blackstone Group, The Carlyle Group and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts bought Nielsen from VNU for about $10 billion.
• Calhoun and company injected another $3 billion in capital into the business, buying up new properties like IAG, mobile measurement firm Telephia and video analytics company GlanceGuide. They also shed non-core assets like Nielsen EDI (sold to Rentrak) and a long list of venerable publications, closing Radio & Records and Editor & Publisher and selling Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter to e5 Global Media. According to the WSJ, Nielsen also cut 10% of their staff after the buyout.
• Nielsen earned about $1.3 billion last year compared to $879 million four years ago.

Where the NYT is bullish on Nielsen’s IPO prospects, a skeptical WSJ calls “bullsh1t.” Noting that Nielsen was acquired in a pre-Twitter and Facebook(-dominant) world where they now trail comScore in Internet measurement, the Wall Street Journal’s Michael Corkery blogs that “anytime savvy investors – such as KKR, Blackstone and Carlyle Group – are selling out in a volatile stock market — potential investors should be asking themselves why.”

At the end of the day, Van Morrison may have the last word on the success of Nielsen’s planned IPO.

In the song “Wild Night,” Morrison writes “…and all the girls walk by dressed up for each other.” If you substitute private equity firms for girls you get some insight into how The Street views Nielsen’s IPO. “An initial offering that comes close to doubling their money would also help dispel criticism that buyout firms are nothing more than undertaxed financial engineers,” says the New York Times.

If anyone has a reality show treatment called “Pimp My Ratings Company” in the works, this would be a great time to do some lunches.

The ways people are consuming content on new video platforms remind me of how I sometimes eat one of my favorite foods – shrimp fried rice.

Traditional linear TV is consumed the way fried rice is intended to be eaten.  The rice, the veggies and the shrimp or chicken or whatever meat is at hand are consumed together.  However, online clips and on-demand video in general tend to promote a bit of cheating.  It’s like those occasions when I’m not all that hungry, and after a few bites I find myself starting to skip over the vegetables and rice, seeking out the shrimp and just eating those.

Think YouTube, and here we are hunting out a clip of one particular segment we like from a TV show, the rest of which didn’t impress us.  And we certainly don’t want to see all of those commercials that ran in the program.  So we go online and find a clip of what we want.  Yum, tasty shrimp!

Even if we watch a full episode of a program on cable on-demand or on Hulu or a network website, we’re still enjoying a distilled version with few, if any, commercials.  An hour long show often magically becomes a 45-minute experience.  And if the streaming software allows it, we may skip around in that and watch only the program segments that particularly interest us.  It’s not just the cable or broadcast network ads that vanish.  Those couple of minutes or more from each hour that the cable systems sell to local advertisers are gone, along with the local inserts in broadcast shows sold by your local affiliated stations.

Lots of people make their living selling these local availabilities.  You can hardly blame them if they feel threatened by digital technology.  There are new revenue opportunities, but there may be periods of starvation before we can develop them to the point of company and personal profit.  For example, “dynamic” on-the-fly commercial insertion in on-demand TV offerings at either the network or local level is still more a promise than reality.  And we haven’t even touched on the effects of DVRs in the viewing mix.

Meanwhile, audiences are learning to skim the cream and pitch out the skim milk.  Pass the shrimp.

Paul Rule is President of Marquest Media Research.

At the 1964 World’s Fair, AT&T introduced a new product that combined the telephone and television into a surefire hit for businesses and consumers. Three million Picturephones were predicted to be in use by the 1980’s. Instead of Picturephones, we now remember the 80’s by a different cultural failure: disco music.

AT&T is estimated to have spent up to $500 million developing the Picturephone. Why wouldn’t you want to see the person to whom you were speaking? If facial expressions weren’t important, why did those thoughtful Internet pioneers invent all of those emoticons to express what words alone couldn’t do? AT&T failed partially because they charged $21 a minute for the bandwidth hungry picture phone in a pre-fiber, barely satellite communications age. Today we can do it for free via iChat or Skype — but even free hasn’t made consumers want to be heard and be seen.

Last week Google announced a new service which will join two commonly used communications technologies. Google TV will marry TV with search to improve the consumer experience and, in Google’s words, “change the future of television.” Anyone who has ever tried to use a remote control to text search a TV interactive program guide can see the possibilities of searching “all of your channels, recorded shows,  YouTube and other Websites” in one place.

Long before the industry anointed  “convergence” as the holy grail of media synergy, AT&T learned that consumers can be a fickle bunch. Google, a dominant communications company of the 21st century, might want to take a history lesson from AT&T, which was the largest communications company of the 20th century.

Google and their technology partners hope to sell new TVs (from Sony) or new HDMI-connectible set top boxes (from Logitech) to merge your desktop and set top digital words. Google TV Product Lead Rishi Chandra says Google TV will let viewers use the voice search feature of Android phones to query Google TV. NewTeeVee.com provided a play-by-play of the new service as demoed at the Google I/O conference. First, Chandra searched for live TV content and scheduled TV programming to program a DVR.

Then he searched for House, and Google TV returned search results Hulu, Fox.com and Amazon. Clicking on the Amazon search result led to the website of Amazon’s VOD service. The search bar can also be used to directly input urls and search saved bookmarks. “It’s just as easy to go to any site on the web as it is to go to any channel on your television,” says Chandra.

Google’s business model is to make money by bringing search to TV and extending the reach of advertising through Adwords. In an interview on the Fox Business Channel, Google CEO Eric Schmidt says that because Google TV seamlessly combines TV and computers, “we know a lot more about what people are doing and can make more relevant television advertising  — which should be worth alot of money.”

Will Google succeed where AT&T once failed and Apple TV and Microsoft’s Media Center have stalled? There’s only one way to end an article that talks about almost 50 years of TV and technology: Stay tuned.

Sources: DavidZondy.com, Porticus.org, Google TV, NewTeeVee.com, Digital Daily, Fox Business Channel, BobLucky.com

See Also: Engadget, timeline.com, BusinessInsider.com

Justin Halpern, whose twitter feed, “S*** my Dad Says”, will become a sitcom on CBS’ fall schedule. There’s a lot we can learn from Justin’s story.

Justin was an aspiring screenwriter who moved back home to San Diego in his late twenties after his screenplay did not become a movie. Although he had a job writing for maxim.com, his dream of making it in Hollywood was dead. While living at home he started writing down his father’s words of wisdom and posting them on Twitter (119 posts so far). His dad’s witty and sometimes profane thoughts became very popular, and eventually a production company came calling.

Justin’s story shows the extraordinary opportunity you have to get your idea directly to the audience. Twitter, Facebook, you tube, and other web outlets give you the chance to tell your story. If your work strikes a chord out there, you may be able to move it to the more traditional media that can pay you significant money for it.

Here are two lessons from Justin’s story that are particularly important for you. First, create something. If Justin hadn’t written down his father’s words in the first place, nothing would have happened. Don’t wait for everything to be perfect: just get going.

Second, create for multiple platforms. S*** my Dad Says” is a twitter idea that became a tv sitcom. Do you have a movie idea that can also be a novel? Try writing the novel first. Perhaps you’ll find a publisher, but you can also self-publish. If you have a popular novel, the film and television rights will pay you more.

Whatever you’re creating, get started today. Moving from conception to creation to publication can take months or years. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll get done.

Peter M. Gordon is a writer, public speaker, and media consultant in Orlando, FL.

How long does it take for a format or technology to migrate from one medium to another?  Take wide-screen pictures for instance.  In the early 1950s they were in your neighborhood movie house.  Only a half-century later, wide-screen TVs were on display at your local electronics emporium.  I have a feeling 3D is going to move a lot faster than that.

3D was around in the early 1950s too, but not seriously.  Used mostly in low-budget novelty films, audiences considered it a joke and it soon vanished.  One of the first was Bwana Devil, a jungle epic with spears thrown directly at the audience for shock value.  It was perhaps best known for its ad slogan “A lion in your lap.”

This time the studios are very serious about 3D.  They’ve discovered a gold mine.  Witness Avatar and Alice in Wonderland.  And the TV set makers aren’t sleeping through it.  They’re pushing their own 3D systems.

The cinema 3D technology is essentially an improved version of the 1950s spear-tossing films in that the glasses worn by the audience are “passive.” They contain a lens material that filters out the portion if the picture each eye is not supposed to see.  The new TV systems tend to use “active” glasses, mechanical devices that open and close shutters rapidly to admit the proper images for each eye.

How long before 3D is an everyday item for the home?  I’m guessing less than 10 years.  Expect the consumer electronics marketers to position it as necessary for “true HDTV.”  That lion is coming to your living room.  Don’t let it scratch-up your furniture.

Paul Rule is President of Marquest Media Research.