[opendtv] NBC Looks Beyond TV for a Prime-Time Revival

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
 
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:

- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at 
FreeLists.org 

- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word 
unsubscribe in the subject line.

Other related posts: