TVB

While television busies itself with the most technology-forward ways to connect with viewers using things like mobile DTV, DVRs and VOD, sometimes it’s important to remember those things that reach people beneath the innovations. Although it might just seem like a minor detail, music can stimulate familiar emotions within someone’s unconscious mind. So introducing the appropriate local music that speaks to a community is a simple element that can prove to be the difference between connecting with them and being overlooked.

There was an entire generation of American heroes who were left ignored and unhonored as they came home from a war when our veterans weren’t as readily revered. The heroes of the Vietnam War came home to a much different political reality than exists now. The North Carolina Association of Broadcasters made sure that the Vietnam veterans finally heard those cheers that had so long been delayed.

Valari Staab, president, NBC Owned Television Stations: “As consumers rely more and more on time-shifted viewing, we strongly believe that live-plus-same-day ratings data best reflects how people watch television today and should be adopted as the minimum standard for local viewing measurement.”

The group says data from this past TV season confirms a February analysis that found that live-plus-same-day ratings most closely represent national C3 estimates, while live-only results are moving further away from C3 averages.

Obamacare, with its goal of insuring 30 million Americans, is on the way. In connection with it, insurance companies and others could generate an extra $1 billion in ad revenue for TV stations. Such categories with an inclination to spend locally don’t come along every day so broadcasters need to get up to speed and get up to speed fast. They need to identify the advertisers in their markets and get their foot in the door.

When you look at the results of the past television season, you might just find something interesting. It looks very much like last year. And the year before that, and the year before that, and before that and so on. Over 90% of the top 200 adults 25-54 primetime programs airing during this season were on broadcast.

Steve Lanzano, TVB president-CEO, says the huge increase in viewers of TV station news coverage during the week of the Boston Marathon bombings and manhunt are a vivid reminder that “serving the local community is a priority of every local broadcast station and it is clear that when viewers need to rely on their television stations for timely and accurate information, local TV broadcasters deliver for them.”

On April 22, the trade association will relocate to 120 Wall Street, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10005-3908. Phone numbers and email addresses will not change.

While there’s still some resistance from media buyers, live-plus-same-day ratings for local measurement finds growing acceptance in top markets. Today, according to TVB, about 75% of ad buys in Nielsen’s top 25 markets with Local People Meters markets are negotiated using live-SD ratings. “At a bare minimum, we believe that local viewing should be measured including DVR viewership,” says Valari Staab, president of NBC Owned Television Stations. “Our local measurement should reflect the way people watch TV today.”

Now that Kristen Bell, Rob Thomas, and the entire Veronica Mars universe have learned just what a mobilized fan base can do for a TV franchise, are we looking at the gestational period of a new world order of post-television crowdsourcing? This reinforces Nielsen’s recent findings of the symbiotic relationship between television and Twitter. Clearly, television resonates with fans well beyond cancellation; the media life of a program can last well beyond its broadcast life.

Network scatter CPMs reflected markedly steeper increases from the 2013 first quarter to the 2013 second quarter, as the average daypart costs rose 32% for adults 25-54, while spot TV CPMs increased only 10% over the same period, according to TVB analysis of SQAD data.

TV stations need to use their strong website traffic as a sales tool to attract more dealer business. Now more than ever, local auto dealers are in need of trusted advisers who can act as local media consultants to guide dealers toward the right mix of media allocations and tactics to drive more sales. In addition, stations need to fend off growing competition from Google.

Recently Yahoo ran an article titled “Watch Walter Cronkite Tour a 21st-Century Home in 1967” that included three embedded videos of “the most trusted man in America” demonstrating what life would likely be in our homes of the future. It’s interesting viewing, to be sure. In broad strokes, you might recognize themes that we’ve met in Cronkite’s future. But in this 1960’s vision of the future, their imagination was limited. The real future is much more interesting.

The fact that there are companies — not a company, but companies — that specialize in monitoring social media chatter about television should tell you something about the dominance of traditional television in our culture. After consulting with several digital research specialists, it turns out that television is the only category that has specialized social media tracking services just for a single industry.

YouTube, the website synonymous with any online video, is looking to evolve. If you’re the biggest player in a limited market, what do you do? Well, you expand. For YouTube, you explore the idea of building a new channel portfolio, one that has such high quality and unique content that you’re able to charge a subscription fee for it. But in YouTube’s case, they’re probably better off staying where they are. We already have a subscriber paid niche player with limited vertical draw across thousands of different lightly viewed channels. We call that cable.

Talk is cheap. Television networks are not. Mark Cuban, billionaire, is one of the rare few that can afford both. And he’s proven his affinity for each by recently speaking at NATPE, about many topics, among them his AXS TV network and his belief in the power of television in our society. So why should we pay so much attention to what the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks has to say about TV? Well, he made his fortune in the dot-com boom, selling his Internet radio business to Yahoo. So perhaps this Internet radio guy might have learned some valuable lessons about long-term success and taking his business to the next level—by investing in broadcast television.

A TVB study of Nielsen data finds that in the 30 markets where a regular season game was simultaneously offered on both a local TV station and one of the cable nets, the average household broadcast rating exceeded the cable network rating by 74%.

Don Seaman, TVB’s manager, marketing communications, says that while it made sense for Lance Armstrong to choose TV as the place to do damage control and brand rebuilding, why on cable? “It’s almost as if you wanted to keep people from seeing you talk about this. Your bombshell mea culpa held so much national interest that an episode of Moonshiners on Discovery had a higher A25-54 rating that week. Comparing your appearance to broadcast would be even less fair than your competing against all of those other unwitting cyclists.”

Jack Poor, TVB’s  VP of political research and analysis summarizes TVB’s analysis of the 2012 presidential election and found that TV stations captured over 80% of total television spending in the political category, far outpacing local and national cable and often at a higher relative value of costs to impressions. In fact, it is projected that stations maintained their 85% share of the local TV total.

Leveraging the most effective media strategy is not something to be trifled with in such a high-stakes game as winning the presidency of the United States. It takes careful planning, a keen understanding of local markets and a strategic base of local broadcast television to deliver the highest prize in the land.

How great of a holiday-retail feel good story is this? Manufacturers increase production of the tablets, retailers enjoy moving lots of tablets out the door, gifters feel really generous, gift recipients get another avenue to purchase more goods and services along with a powerful entertainment and information device, and advertisers get another state-of-the-art screen to reach LOTS more consumers. It’s an example of the Great Circle of modern consumerism.

In the ninth annual Project Roadblock campaign, new Ad Council and NHTSA PSAs illustrate the financial consequences of buzzed driving. The campaign will begin airing on TV stations on Dec. 26.

Has there ever been a more crystal-clear example than Hurricane Sandy of why it’s so imperative to keep exploring improvements in media measurement? The reality is that we’re in a data-centric world with media options growing all the time. It’s necessary that our measurement capabilities continue to keep in step. And it’s not just because of a random natural act, but because we can’t measure the media of the future with technologies of the past.

Local TV stations continue to tout their advertising strength and sales performance for automakers — something it will need headed into 2013. TVB, the TV stations’ advertising marketing group, says TV continues to be the best driver of automotive marketers — and local TV stations the biggest ad category.

To make sure the anti-drunk driving message sinks in, the Ad Council, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the TVB and local TV broadcasters are banding together for the ninth annual Project Roadblock anti-drunk driving series of PSAs. This year’s Project Roadblock initiative is called “Project Roadblock: Local TV Puts the Brakes on Drunk Driving” and will run during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

In the first week six weeks of the new season, the time-shifted portion of the broadcast TV audience in LPM markets shows surging local trends, according to TVB’s analysis of Nielsen data.

During the beginning of this month, it became eminently clear to millions of Americans in the Northeast that at least one part of the future can’t come soon enough — mobile digital television. Mobile DTV doesn’t use mobile cellular service. It uses over-the-air TV signals only, formatted specifically for mobile devices — smartphones, tablets and laptops.What’s more, during events such as Hurricane Sandy, broadcasters weather the storm well. They never stopped broadcasting, even when absorbing a direct hit by a major hurricane. So viewers equipped with mobile DTV devices won’t lose their TV news lifeline.

Local broadcast television CEOs are looking to the future of media with vigor and excitement. Local broadcast television isn’t tomorrow’s shiny new thing, it’s today’s beacon into the future.

TVB says examining Nielsen numbers shows ad-supported cable channels posted year-over-year decreases in the primetime daypart across households, persons 2-plus and adults 25-54 in both the summer and regular season of 2011-12. And in the first week of the new season, the time-shifted portion of broadcast TV audience rivals total viewers of cable TV’s top shows .

Knowing how hospitals operate, what issues they confront and what their marketing needs are will help you sell them on TV. Just beware of their innate suspicion of media and of the CFO who believes that advertising dollars are wasted dollars. And, by the way, at the hospital, CMO stands for chief medical official, not chief marketing officer.

TVB president and CEO Steve Lanzano warns that reducing TV ad spending to try other platforms could have dire consequences for political campaigns. Television, he says, has more reach, time spent viewing and impact than any other platform. And the idea that viewers are abandoning TV for online video just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

A study of affluent consumers commissioned by TVB finds that 64% cite TV as the main driver of awareness and 39% for actual purchasing. The numbers are even stronger for the auto category – 70% awareness and 43% for purchasing.

In his remarks kicking off the TVB Forward conference Wednesday, TVB President Steve Lanzano challenged a recent story by Henry Blodget, the disgraced research analyst-turned blogger, who declared that the TV industry was headed toward collapse.

Citi researcher Itay Michaeli warns that a number of factors are holding back a total rebound in automotive sales. “The recovery should not be taken for granted. It’s not a matter of when. It’s a matter of if.”

Wells Fargo Securities media expert Marci Ryvicker says she’s bullish on the staying power of broadcast television, which stands apart from other media by offering the local news and programming viewers want. “I don’t think it’s replaceable.”

Bill Koenigsburg, president-CEO of Horizon Media, says stations need to know which shows are “most relevant and most important when making product placement purchases,” he says. “If you can figure that out than you’re building in much bigger value proposition to your inventory.”

A new report, released at the TVB Forward Conference ’12, shows that news on TV stations in the top markets dwarf the five major cable news networks’ national and in-market audiences.

TVB’s latest analysis says viewers of local early and late news in the top 10 markets more closely mirrors America’s voters, with 32% of its viewership coming from the core voter demographic of 35-54.

There were a lot of lessions learned from the London Games, including that Olympic viewing had very interesting patterns at the local level. It was easily the most talked about topic on social media during its two weeks, reinforcing the evidence that TV content is the most social topic. People not only voraciously watched on television, but also inundated social media with what they were watching. People crave a shared experience, and television is the biggest one that there is, especially when it’s something we all rally around, like the Olympics.

Former Turner research exec Stacey Lynn Schulman brings more than 23 years of research experience to the newly created position of SVP, chief research officer at the local TV advertising trade association.