The Convergence of The Live Web and Television

Change is constant, it is not bad

Disintermediation is a disruptive behavior which helps to drive change.   I worked for a long time in an industry that refused to embrace change and saw it's destructive effects first hand.  Watching this behavior from the inside, I was afforded a rare view of how businesses cope with rapid, disruptive change.

Even the most abecedarian perspective illuminates that you must embrace change.  I remember giving out the "Who Moved My Cheese" book to fellow senior management when it was first published.  The urgency around change was lost on them at that time. It allowed for others to grow businesses on the green fields that where now
wide open.

 
The Live-Web and Social Media are changing Television 

The long awaited convergence has really arrived. Twitter and the live-web are impacting television - specifically appointment based TV - in an important new way.

Yes, appointment-based TV is changing, but the shared experience has mushroomed into something much larger than that black and white picture of the family in the living room all sharing the same network television show while eating their TV Dinners.

With the live web now achieving critical mass, it is making TV interactive in ways not previously predicted.   The early Interactive TV scenarios had viewers predicting the outcome or changing plot lines, hitting little buttons on their remotes etc., but what has happened is much different.  We are conversing around the TV screen and interacting with each other.  Currently 10% of viewers are concurrently using social media technology while watching television.  I would venture that the numbers are even higher, and growing, with one screen driving to another very effectively.
    
Two great examples: Jay-Z's show at MSG on Fuse and the MTV's VMA's.  Both shows saw an impact on tune-in because the chatter online was so loud that you had to turn on the live show to see what everyone was talking about.  What was traditionally the discussion of post-show blogging and the next-day's water cooler had become a real-time experience.   This is the new value of the live web for broadcasters.

Digital pennies make Analog Dollars

In my opinion, the famous Jeff Zucker (NBCU) quote on digital pennies (now dimes) not replacing analog dollars looks at this equation from the wrong perspective.  The fact is, spending digital dimes now can positively impact analog dollars.

As an agency that worked both the Jay-Z and VMA programs, we had access to our own analytical data from live-web and social media data through Trendrr and were able to cull these insights faster and quickly demonstrate the model.

The fact is, the transition to digital takes a minute.  In the music industry it has taken 15+ years to reach the tipping point.  Disintermediation does not happen overnight and there are large opportunities during these conversions. Mr. Zucker's quote was correct if these transitions happen over night.  They do not.

TV's opportunity right now is to embrace, fuel, and enable viewers and their voices to turn others on to what turns them on.   Enabling this naturally (social media) is the most effective short term solution.

The conversion from one screen social media/ live web to the TV screen became evident to us through events, which we feel work best.  Award shows are a no-brainer, but when you think about it, everything is an event; some are micro events (plot lines and story arcs), some are large scale award shows, or season premiers/finales.

Feeding the conversation around the story arcs and events will lead to discussion and better ratings, which are the current drivers of meaningful revenue.  By the time TV reaches the tipping point, there will be so many trans-media behaviors taking place that the dimes will be multiple dollars not just replacement one-to-one dollars.
 
An hour-by-hour overlay comparing the conversation to the ratings spikes (above), bares this out nicely. I can say that for both programs we had the pleasure of working, increased discussion led to significant and measurable on-air ratings increases. 

One network saw a ratings increase 17% from the prior year and another achieved the most impressive in-market ratings had to date.  This is no longer my media intuition, it is measurable and quantifiable.

I have no doubt I will see a graph from one of the larger measurement services in the next six months around this subject.  Don't bother waiting, run and embrace the spending on live-web/social media now.  Networks and programmers, this movement is your industry's equivalent of what music went through with ringtones.  We have very few, if not only one shot at doing things right. 

The music industry got caught-up in trying to make short-term quarterly gains and took the money off the table in the worst ways with ringtones. They overcharged for them, implemented short-sighted reoccurring billing practices, and shot themselves in the foot by disenfranchising its consumers.   I am still laughing at the "ringles" product line that one major label heralded as the future.  - Really?, Really?

Networks do not start paying people to tweet around shows, do not start trying to game top trends, and do not listen to the inauthentic, old-world agency strategies and tactics that will not scale.   You have one shot of doing this right.

Be creative, listen, empower, enable, and embrace.  There are so many great examples of this already; in fact it is already happening without your marketing departments or advertising spends.