[opendtv] NBC Looks Beyond TV for a Prime-Time Revival
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: OpenDTV Mail List <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 16 May 2006 08:53:33 -0400
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/16/business/media/16adco.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
May 16, 2006
Advertising
NBC Looks Beyond TV for a Prime-Time Revival
By STUART ELLIOTT
NBC, eager to improve its ratings and advertising sales, is counting
on digital media as much as television for a comeback in the 2006-7
season.
In a two-hour presentation yesterday to advertisers and agencies at
Radio City Music Hall, executives at NBC, which is finishing fourth
again in ratings for the 2005-6 season, emphasized the breadth and
depth of their digital offerings as they talked up the prospects of
their new dramas and sitcoms.
The NBC presentation kicked off what is called the upfront week, when
the big broadcasters offer previews of their prime-time lineups ahead
of the fall season.
"No longer is content just for the television screen," said Jeff
Zucker, chief executive at the NBC Universal Television Group, part
of the NBC Universal unit of General Electric.
"We have put a ton of thought and a ton of effort into the digital
world," Mr. Zucker told a theater filled with marketers and
advertising agency employees and executives. "We want to be your
digital partner."
Analysts are calling this upfront week a watershed because the
broadcast networks are significantly expanding their presence in the
new media, whether through Webisodes, video downloads, podcasts or
mini- series created for cellphones.
Commercial time is being sold for much of the additional content,
which Mr. Zucker acknowledged by telling the agencies and
advertisers, "We want to make it easy for you to solve your needs
using our content."
So lengthy was the list of new-media opportunities described - "we
have more than 100 ideas, ready to go," Mr. Zucker said - that some
members of the audience grew restive, wondering when Kevin Reilly,
president at NBC Entertainment, would return to discuss the
prime-time schedule.
These are some of the initiatives outlined by Mr. Zucker, all
intended to complement the new and returning series on the schedule:
¶A broadband comedy channel (dotcomedy.com), offering computer users
archives of shows like "Leave It to Beaver" and a chance to create
their own content to podcasts. The Web site will also help promote
sitcoms like "My Name Is Earl" and "The Office" as well as "Saturday
Night Live" and NBC's late-night lineup.
¶A broadband preview channel (nbcfirstlook.com), where episodes of
new series will make their debuts before they arrive on NBC.
¶Thirty Webisodes of the returning sitcom "The Office" that will
appear beginning in the summer on the NBC Web site (nbc.com).
¶An online contest, also on nbc.com, for viewers of the returning
drama "Law & Order: Criminal Intent," who can study clues about the
murder in each episode before the episode appears on TV. The contest
prize will be "determined by whoever would like to sponsor it," Mr.
Zucker said, drawing laughter.
¶An animated digital comic book based on characters and plot lines
from "Heroes," a drama series being scheduled for 9 p.m. Mondays.
"Heroes," featuring young actors like Ali Larter and Milo
Ventimiglia, is one of six dramas that NBC will add to its prime-time
lineup for 2006-7. The others are "The Black Donnellys," "Friday
Night Lights," "Kidnapped," "Raines" and "Studio 60 on the Sunset
Strip."
The dramas will be "the cornerstones of the new fall schedule," Mr.
Reilly said.
For two decades, NBC was known for its sitcoms like "Cheers,"
"Frasier" and "Friends." But the recent precipitous decline in
ratings and ad sales is leading the network to try Plan B, the
dramatic genre. NBC tried a smaller-scale version of the strategy for
2005-6, but those dramas failed to catch on.
The new dramas "are much better than what they've had," said Shari
Anne Brill, a vice president and programming director at Carat USA in
New York, a media agency that is part of the Carat unit of the Aegis
Group. She singled out "Friday Night Lights," based on the book and
movie of the same name, with Kyle Chandler ("Homefront," "Early
Edition") as a high school football coach in a Texas town.
NBC is adding four sitcoms: "Andy Barker, P.I.," "The Singles Table,"
"30 Rock" and "20 Good Years."
The similarity in subject matter between "Studio 60" and "30 Rock" -
both are about a TV series strongly evocative of NBC's own "Saturday
Night Live" - made for some good-natured ribbing.
"Every year, an idea comes along that is so unique, NBC has only two
of them," said Alec Baldwin, a cast member of "30 Rock."
Here is a look at some of the other highlights, lowlights and
sidelights of the opening day of the upfront week.
A TIVO VOTE For the first time during an upfront week, a large
agency company has made a deal with TiVo, the digital video recorder
company. Interpublic Media, a division of the Interpublic Group of
Companies, announced an agreement to buy advertising on behalf of
clients of its media agencies like Initiative and Universal McCann.
The agreement is "a seven-figure deal," said Mark Rosenthal, chairman
of the Interpublic Media in New York, declining to be more specific.
It offers "an opportunity for all our agencies' clients, and several
have signed on already," he added, again declining to provide details.
The deal, which includes TiVo features like interactive commercials,
is indicative of the increasing interest among advertisers in
expanding beyond traditional media like broadcast television to
digital venues like D.V.R.'s, Web sites, iPods and cellphones. The
deal with TiVo, Mr. Rosenthal said, is the first of several to come
between Interpublic Media and "other providers of new marketing
solutions."
GEE WHIZ? NO, G4 Each year during the upfront week, which is devoted
to elaborate presentations by the broadcast networks, some cable
networks seek to take advantage of the attention that Madison Avenue
gives to television. Yesterday, it was G4, a cable network owned by
the cable giant Comcast, which sought to capture the eyes of media
executives with an elaborate stunt.
The stunt involved a flatbed truck that drove around Manhattan,
outside the offices of media agencies like OMD, part of the Omnicom
Group. Four young men were duct-taped to the truck, meant to
demonstrate the "stickiness" of G4's programming for the elusive
younger-male viewer.
"Two of them had video iPods," said Neal Tiles, president at G4, who
is based in Santa Monica, Calif., to make the point that "six of our
shows are in the top 25 in iTunes."
BYE-BYE, UPFRONT? Even as the upfront week for the 2006-7 broadcast
season got under way, a group of major advertisers began exploring an
alternative to the upfront.
The advertisers, all members of the Association of National
Advertisers, an industry trade organization, are developing a pilot
project for an electronic marketplace that would handle the buying
and selling of commercial time. The advertisers exploring the auction
model include giants like Hewlett-Packard, the Masterfoods division
of Mars, Microsoft, the Lexus division of Toyota Motor Sales USA
and Wal-Mart Stores.
Robert D. Liodice, president and chief executive of the advertiser
association, said it would work with the member group to consider
developing a system to be called the Online Media Exchange.
"We need to see if there's consensus among advertisers that
implementing a digital exchange will indeed benefit the industry as a
whole," Mr. Liodice said. The trade publication Advertising Age,
which reported the formation of the member group last week, said that
major marketers like Kellogg and Procter & Gamble opposed the idea.
The leader of the exploration into an upfront alternative is Julie
Roehm, senior vice president for marketing communications at
Wal-Mart, who has long advocated a stock exchange model for buying
and selling commercial time. Ms. Roehm is asking 10 members of the
advertiser association to contribute $50 million to study an
auction-type online trading system.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
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