What's Fascinating About Research?!?!

Cross posted from my other blog at: http://floridaresearchgroup.wordpress.com/

I just finished listening to an American Marketing Association (AMA) webinar entitled “What’s Fascinating About Market Researchers”. Led by Mike Brown, the VP of Marketing at YRC Worldwide (his Brainzooming Blog can be found here) and Sally Hogshead, author of “Radical Careering”.

Sally’s new book about Fascination (Available on Amazon Here) Mostly applies to how companies use the concept of fascination to market their products, but the speakers attempted to make it applicable to how market researchers “sell” their research insights up the ladder to executive management.

In a way, as a Director of Research, I am responsible for creating a brand around myself so that my managers, co-workers and clients trust what I have to say and put my ideas and insights into action. For researchers, the heart of what we do is answering questions. However, early on in my career, I’ve experienced many times where the answers I provided were discarded or discredited. Many times, to my delight, I often found my exact insights discovered by research turned out to be true, but it was to no avail for my company. Over time, I’ve learned how to position and brand myself as a trusted source of information, leading my “clients” (that is, my co-workers, managers and sales clients) to be more willing to accept my insights and research on site.

How can a market researcher develop that trust, and thus develop their brand? This webinar did have some interesting insights. The main point I jumped onto was the concept of fascination, which, when it comes down to it, fascination is a way of captivating your audience’s attention so that your message is heard. Why is this necessary in this day and age? Because people are overwhelmed and distracted. We are offered too much choice in our lives, from products to buy to the ways we can choose to spend our time. One study by the BBC News revealed that, due to web browsing, the average attention span of an adult has diminished from 20 minutes to 9 seconds (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1834682.stm). Nine seconds is roughly the same attention span as a goldfish.

For researchers, our key job is too wade through mounds of data to provide answers to questions. Our “clients” asking those questions do NOT need any more data in their lives. In this ADD World we live in, I believe the less is more approach is more effective. The most talented research directors I know have the ability to wade through the mounds of data to find that ONE piece of data that answers the question, and present it in a way to the question asker in a way that earns their attention and commands their respect. Knowing that my senior manager’s mind is being pulled in a thousand different ways, I have use my 9 seconds of attention time to fascinate and captivate my reader so that they will HEAR the answer to their question, REMEMBER the answer and insights and insight ACTION on their part.

Later on, I use another blog post to go through the seven triggers for fascination, and how they apply to marketing and the media world, so keep checking back. Apparently, I’ve only got 9 seconds of your attention, so short and sweet and directly to the point is where I need to be!

PS. If you are interested in viewing this FREE webinar offered by the AMA, visit http://www.marketingpower.com/ResourceLibrary/Pages/Webcasts/Whats_Fascinating_About_Market_Researchers_072109.aspx and click “View this Content”.

My Favorite Media Research Related Quotes

Cross posted from my other blog at: http://floridaresearchgroup.wordpress.com/

“Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought.” (Albert Szent-Gryorgyi)

“The trouble with research is that it tells you what people where thinking about yesterday, not tomorrow. It’s like driving a car using a rearview mirror.” (Bernard Loomis)

“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.” (J.R.R. Tolkien)

“Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind.” (Marston Bates)

“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.” (Zora Neale Hurston)

“To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism, to steal ideas from many is research.” (Unknown)

“Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.” (Wernher Von Braun)

“Do not put your faith in what statistics say until you have carefully considered what they do not say.” (William W. Watt)

“Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.” (Mark Twain)

“The most important word in the vocabulary of advertising is TEST. If you pretest your product with consumers, and pretest your advertising, you will do well in the marketplace.” (David Ogilvy)

“You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.” (Naguib Mahfouz)

“Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.” (David Ogilvy)

“Advertising research is one-half frustration, one-half exclamation point, and one-half question-mark. If this adds up to more than 100 percent, it proves that mathematics and research sometimes gives confusing results.” (Michael P. Ryan, of Allied Chemical Corp, 1968)

“Searching is half the fun: life is much more manageable when thought of as a scavenger hunt as opposed to a surprise party.” (Jimmy Buffett)

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” (Carl Sagan)

Social Media Gold Star Goes to Mountain Dew

Somebody did their research on this one. Mountain Dew decided against the typical media campaign trying to reach Men 18-34 and realized that a select subgroup of society are rabid Mountain Dew fans, and not limited by sex or age.

This subgroup? Gamers. Historically, nearly every gamer I've ever known has been a raging fan of highly caffeinated drinks - from Mountain Dew to Red Bull to Bolt to Ballz.

Mountain Dew recently launched an amazing social media marketing partnership with one of the big behemoths of the online gaming world: World of Warcraft (aka WoW). For those of you not familiar, World of Warcraft is an online fantasy game with more than 11.5 million monthly subscribers. WoW is estimated to hold a 62% share of the massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) market.

Within WoW, there are two factions: Alliance and Horde. The fight between the two factions can get vicious, and Mountain Dew is taking advantage of this competition to promote their product in a big way. Mountain Dew launched two new colored Mountain Dew Drinks, with each color corresponding to either Horde or Alliance. It is a race to the end to see which side can purchase more product, and an online website tracks who is "winning" at any particular moment (http://www.mountaindewgamefuel.com/).

In addition, the partnership uses social media to generate its own viral buzz. Players can win prizes for recruiting new players into the site, as well as for clicking through to the Mountain Dew Facebook page or Twitter feed, watching a video, sharing links on their own Facebook pages, or actually clicking on Mountain Dew banner ads on a number of various websites.

The partnership extends even into the game of World of Warcraft itself. By playing the Mountain Dew game, WoW players can earn exclusive in-game items found nowhere else. And although I myself do not like drinking Mountain Dew, I found myself even sharing a link through to the Mountain Dew World of Warcraft site on my own Facebook page, simply because I wanted that in-game exclusive item. Once that shows up in my newsfeed, all of my friends (many of which are both hardcore Mountain Dew drinkers and hardcore World of Warcraft players) will see and potentially buy this product.

In my mind, this is a perfect combination of the right product, with the right audience, using social media in the way it was meant to be used. Gold Social Media Star to Mountain Dew and World of Warcraft.

Not TV Research, But Still An Interesting Perspective on Newspapers

Source is SNPA (Southern Newspaper Publishers Association)





Commentary
Newspapers are Fact-Checked, Hand-Delivered, No Pop-up Ads – What's Not to Love?
In his last moments as editor of USA Today before moving to the No. 2 spot at the Newseum, Ken Paulson offered his insights at the inauguration of the National Press Club's new president. Paulson congratulated the Club for choosing Donna Leinwand as its leader for 2009 and discussed the situation of the newspaper industry. This column is reprinted from the Web site of the National Press Club.

I do think there's room for some perspective. Yes, it's true that there have been significant layoffs at America's newspapers, but there have also been huge layoffs at Home Depot, and no one is predicting the demise of hammers.

You have to separate the troubled economy from the special challenges facing the news industry, and it's important that we not undervalue the power of print.

I can certainly understand why newspapers are not viewed as trendy. After all, they were really the iPods of 1690.

But humor me, and consider this alternate history: Imagine if Gutenberg had invented a digital modem rather than a printing press, and that for centuries all of our information had come to us online.

Further, imagine if we held a press conference announcing the invention of an intriguing new product called the “newspaper.”

That press conference might go something like this:

“We're pleased to announce a new product that will revolutionize the way you access information. It will save you time and money and keep you better informed than ever before.

“Just consider the hours you've spent on the Internet looking for information of interest to you. We've hired specialists who live and work in your hometown to cull information sources and provide a daily report tailored to your community, your friends and your neighbors.

“We also know that you sometimes wonder whether you can trust the information you see online. We plan to introduce a painstaking new process called 'fact-checking' in which we actually verify the information before we pass it along to you.

“In addition to saving time online, you'll also save money. You won't need those expensive color ink cartridges or reams of paper because information will be printed out for you in full color every day.

“You’ll also save money on access charges and those unpleasant fights over who gets time on the computer because this product will be physically delivered to your home at the same time each day, for less than what you would tip the guy from Pizza Hut.

“You worry about your kids stumbling across porn on the Internet, but this product is pre-screened and guaranteed suitable for the whole family.

“And in a security breakthrough, we guarantee newspapers to be absolutely virus-free, and promise the elimination of those annoying pop-up ads.

“It's also the most portable product in the world, and doesn’t require batteries or electricity. And when the flight attendant tells you to turn off your electronic devices, you can actually turn this on, opening page after page without worrying about interfering with the plane's radar.

“To top it all off, you don't need a long-term warranty or service protection program. If you're not happy with this product on any day, we'll redesign it and bring you a new one the next day.”

I can see the headlines now: "Cutting-edge newspapers threaten Google’s survival.”

My point, of course, is that newspapers remain an extraordinary information bargain, and we shouldn't be selling them short or lose sight of the qualities that make American journalism so critical to our democracy.

Digital TV Research

I've been doing a lot of research lately on the upcoming digital television transition in February 2009. There's been a lot of articles lately on the subject, with people trying to gauge the potential impact. Nielsen even submitted US estimates on unready homes, and provided sample estimates for LPM markets. Although these sample estimates are not balanced to any universe estimates, they are estimates, but it gives us an insight to potential impact.

Nielsen places TV households into three categories: Completely Ready (all televisions in the home are digital), Partially Unready (some of the televisions in the home are analog only) and Completely Unready (all televisions in the home are analog only). Nationally, 12.6% of homes are Partially Unready, and 9.4% of homes are Completely Unready. The Tampa-St. Petersburg DMA over-indexes the U.S. average for Partially Unready homes, but under-indexes for Completely Unready Homes.

I'm trying however, to isolate exact how much MY station will be impacted by the switchover. Its all well and good to say 9.2% of the market is unready, but if 20% of my viewing comes from these homes, then I have a bigger problem than most. Nielsen, unfortunately, has not developed a study for this particular question, and as I question industry colleagues, no one else has designed a way to get to this information either. I can't be the first person in the industry to have thought of this question, am I?

To get around this, I've requested a custom report of our ratings for people in the sample that get our signal Over-the-Air only. This is a bit of a false look, as it could include homes that are viewing our over the air signal digitally, and the report excludes homes that are labelled "partially unready", but it is a start.

Anybody else have any ideas?

This is a great description of my job most days...

Tribune, WFLA Staffs Offered Voluntary Buyouts

Things are a bit grim around here....

From TBO.com:


By TED JACKOVICS The Tampa Tribune
Published: April 14, 2008

TAMPA - The Florida Communications Group said today it is offering voluntary buyouts, including severance packages, to about half its 1,326 employees, including those with The Tampa Tribune and WFLA, News Channel 8.

The program is aimed at reducing staff and other costs in a difficult economic environment in the Tampa Bay area, said John Schueler, president of Florida Communications Group, which oversees the operation of The Tribune, WFLA, TBO.com and other Florida media outlets.
Schueler said the program includes severance packages depending on years of service with the company for eligible employees.

For example, some employees would be eligible for severance up to 39 weeks. Schueler said that if not enough employees accept the severance offer, layoffs are possible.
He said that FCG has not determined the amount of money the company wants to save or the number of employees it must shed but that the cost savings needed are significant.

In addition to the Tribune and News Channel 8, FCG, a subsidiary of Media General, includes TBO.com, Centro Grupo de Comunicacion, Sunbelt Newspapers, Suncoast News, Hernando Today and Highlands Today.

NBC 2008-2009 Schedule

The new NBC 2008-2009 schedule was recently announced, so I have been examining these new programs very closely in order to attempt to predict their ratings success (or failure).

Generating estimates for new programming is truly an art form. We RDs typically use past performance history of similar shows to indicate the type of audience that may watch a particular show. This involves analyzing each show and trying to find a similar show on my network or any other network that can be used as a similar comparison. In addition, much like the stock market, I like to say "past results do NOT guarantee future success".

NBC made it tough this year by not providing pilots to watch. Its very difficult to understand the tone and feel of a show from a single paragraph written description, and thus it is difficult to find comparison shows. NBC also varied from the "norm" on a number of points. One, most networks announce their Fall schedules in meetings called "upfronts", usually held in May. NBC announced its schedule a full 6 weeks early, getting the jump on the competition. The downside is, as previously mentioned, no pilots to preview these programs. The advertising community must judge the strength of a new show simply on the strength of the person describing ("selling") the show. I can see where this will get very iffy, as the schedule filters its way down to the local level.

Secondly, NBC presented not just a schedule for Fall, but a full Fall-Winter-Spring-Summer 2008-2009 schedule. Knowing, as I do, NBC's proclivities towards frequent program changes, I am not likely to trust that the schedule presented to me will actually ever air in its entirety.

My apologies...

My sincere apologies to anyone who may have been reading this blog and frustrated by the lack of updates recently. Thus is the life of a TV Research Director - work tends to wax and wane, and lately my work has been all waxing and no waning.

Some exciting changes are afront here in my work, most of which I am not at liberty to speak of, but which revolve around the company looking towards the future of local media. Where are we, as a company, going to be in five years? I have no idea, and I'm not sure if anyone else knows either, but these are exciting and terrifying times for all of us in the media business.

Vegetable Soup Analogy Debunked: Should Television's Small Sample Be Sacked?

Vegetable Soup Analogy Debunked: Should Television's Small Sample Be Sacked?
by Frank S. Foster , Monday, March 17, 2008 TVBoard @ MediaPost.com

I HAD A VERY INTERESTING conversation the other day with an industry veteran regarding the state of the television audience measurement industry. As someone who has been a spokesperson for new ways of measuring television, I am occasionally approached by people who assume that I have no idea how it has always been done. The conversation began innocently with concerns about set-top-box data, each of which I answered simply and directly.

After 30 minutes, he had nothing more to say. When I suggested counting one in five anonymous households and mathematically inferring demographic attributes would be a more acceptable solution than projecting from a small panel, he became quite agitated. "The panel is the only acceptable solution," he cried. "No other approach allows us to taste the soup!"

The infamous vegetable soup analogy had been thrown down. Now, this particular gentleman should have known better -- he was granted an advanced degree from a prestigious college -- because the analogy borders on the ridiculous. But when faced with an argument he was not winning, he turned to something familiar. I told him I was running late but that I would address the issue in my next MediaPost TV Board column. So here goes.

I googled "Nielsen Media Research Soup" and found a white paper of sorts with Nielsen's logo entitled "What TV Ratings Really Mean." Below is an excerpt:

"Actually, a representative sample doesn't have to be very large to represent the population it is drawn from. For example, you don't need to eat an entire pot of vegetable soup to know what kind of soup it is. A cup of soup is more than adequate to represent what is in the pot. If, however, you don't stir the soup to make sure that all of the various ingredients have a good chance of ending up in the cup, you might just pour a cup of vegetable broth. Stirring the soup is a way to make sure that the sample you draw represents all the different parts of what is in the pot."

"A cup of soup is more than adequate to represent what is in the pot." That seems a fair assumption, but the application to television audience measurement is problematic. I believe Nielsen projected that there will be 112,800,000 television households in the U.S. market for the 2007-2008 television season. I believe it is generally accepted that the effective size of the current national people meter panel is 10,000, although many think it will grow to 17,000 by 2011.

To make my point, I will be generous and assume the effective sample will be 20,000 at some point, and that the number of television households will remain constant. 20,000 out of 112,800,000 equates to 1 in 5,640 households. So how small does that make Nielsen's cup?When I was a child, the biggest pot in my mother's home was a five-gallon soup kitchen pot. There are 16 cups to a gallon, so there must have been 80 cups in her soup kitchen pot. So Nielsen's "cup" isn't really a cup. There are 256 tablespoons in a gallon, so there must have been 1,280 tablespoons in my mother's soup kitchen pot. So Nielsen's "cup" isn't really a tablespoon. If there are 768 teaspoons in a gallon, there must have been 3,840 teaspoons of soup in the soup kitchen pot. But that means a teaspoon is still too big to use and Nielsen's "cup" is smaller than a teaspoon. According to Wikipedia, there are 60 "drops" in a teaspoon, so there must have been 230,400 drops in my mother's soup kitchen pot. Which means Nielsen's "cup" actually translates to 41 drops -- or approximately 2/3 of a teaspoon.

What further complicates the analogy is that Nielsen's one pot is used to measure television in its entirety -- which consists not of one network, but hundreds. How do you measure hundreds of networks with just 41 drops? Assume a broadcast network had a great night and 20% of the nation's population watched that network's program. Nielsen's "cup" for that network would be 20% of 41 drops, or approximately eight drops. Out of those eight drops Nielsen would have to differentiate by age, sex and race. A popular network with a 2.0 rating would have one drop of soup, give or take. The ratings for the vast majority of networks would be based on much less soup than that.

Keep in mind we have not discussed the "stirring" of the sample, nor have we talked about those cups that are drawn from the pot and dumped because they would not agree to take part in the tasting. We have also limited our analysis to Nielsen's national panel. Their local panels are an order of magnitude smaller and more problematic. If we include geographic targeting (Sys Code Clusters, for example) the issue becomes further complicated. Of course, addressable advertising cannot be measured by a sample at all.

To my learned colleague with whom I spoke the other day, this has been a real-world examination of the vegetable soup analogy. The small sample approach was fine when collecting more data was expensive and wrought with problems, but it makes little sense today. Ultimately, it will be the television industry that will decide if small panels remain the "gold standard." I continue to believe counting one in five households and using mathematical inference to determine demographics is a vastly superior solution.

Undoubtedly, there will be those who disagree. Rebuttals can be posted on this blog or addressed directly to me. My contact information is listed below.

Post your response to the public TV Board blog.

See what others are saying on the TV Board blog.Frank S. Foster ( foster.frank@evadconsulting.com) is a senior consultant at EVAD Consulting and is currently working with TNS in a strategic capacity related to its television audience measurement efforts. Prior to EVAD, Mr. Foster was the co-founder and president of erinMedia.

Media Roundtable Luncheon

I had the opportunity to attend and speak at a George Allen Florida All Media Roundtable yesterday. There were some very interesting speakers at this Roundtable including:

George Measer - CEO of a local group of community newspapers and past preseident of the National Newspaper Association. Mr. Measer spoke about the decline in circulation for daily newspapers nationwide, but interestingly enough, community newspapers have been shielded from this decline and are actually increasing. These seems to be a strong demand for hyper-local news.

Norman Rau - President of Sandusky Radio, with ten radio stations in Phoenix and Seattle. Mr. Rau spoke on the subject of radio, obviously. What struck me about his speech was his' company's attempt at incorporating the internet into their portfolio, but not having a lot of sales success. All of their radio stations are currently streamed online, Mr. Rau said, but with 80% of a radio station's business local, local businesses do not care about the worldwide listeners attracted to an online streaming radio station. The amount of local visitors listening to their stations online is relatively low, and thus they have had trouble quantifying the value to their clients.

Jerry Bilik - VP of Creative Development for Feld Entertainment. Feld Entertainment is the current owner of Ringling Circus, and also has the exclusive contract to product the Disney on Ice shows. He talked about how even in a declining economy, live family shows like Disney on Ice and the circus thrive. Even as families are struggling with high costs of gas, food and housing, they will still find money to bring their children to these kind of events, simply for the moral factor. Mr. Bilik also mentioned a great breaking news: The Ringling Bros Circus is actively searching for locations to FINALLY bring the circus back home to Sarasota, Florida for a year-round show and winter headquarters! This would be huge for the Sarasota area. If anyone has any potential locations in Sarasota that may meet the needs of the circus, contact me and I can put you in contact with Mr. Bilik.

Bob Chandler - Former CBS Senior Vice President and supervisor of 60 Minutes. Mr. Chandler spoke about the upcoming 40 year anniversary of 60 Minutes and told us the origins of how the show originally came to be. Even I got nostalgic about that period of time in TV history, and I wasn't even around then!

I spoke on the subject of TV and the internet, and the multitude of ways that our company is trying to provide content across any particular platform we can imagine - from TV to newspaper to online to cell phones, where people are, that's where we're going to be. There seemed to be a lot of interest in this new world of media, and a lot of disbelief in the way things have advanced and changed. I received some very insightful questions, particularly on the subject of "Information Overload". I just covered information overload in a previous post, so it is definately a problem in my mind as well.

All in all, it was an insightful lunch, and I was delighted to share in the wisdom of these past giants of the media industry.

Lazy Mechanic vs Industrious Mechanic

On the heels of my past post, here is a story that has always struck me as a good approach to have as a Research Director. In fact, I've had this story printed out and posted on my cube wall for years.
____________

THE LAZY MECHANIC: First, to preface my system for doing library research, let me explain the story of the Lazy Mechanic and the Industrious Mechanic. According to my Dad, who comes from a line of machinists, engineers and other early technocrats, it's better for a factory to hire a lazy mechanic to service it's machines, than an industrious one.

He says that an industrious mechanic will carefully oil, and service and repair a machine so that it works perfectly (with lots of his help and labor) and never needs replacing. This will leave you with an outdated and labor inefficient machine, that is in too good a repair to justify scrapping.

A lazy mechanic, on the other hand, doesn't want to spend his day oiling and repairing and servicing. So he will use his mechanical knowledge to alter the machine to make it more efficient, (expending extra time at the beginning), so he needn't work on it for the future. He will also ignore doing any kind of servicing that isn't actually necessary to the operation of the machine. In short, he will expend his energy on making it a better machine, rather than maintaining an inefficient status quo.

This is one of life's important lessons. If something takes a lot of time, trouble, and effort to do, when it is something that should be simple, chances are that the system is set up wrong. In this case you need to apply your effort to finding a better system that works faster, rather than simply dumping all your effort into forcing an inefficient method to work for you. This will take extra time at the beginning, and save you time in the long run.

Drowing in Data

The biggest adjustment to Local People Meters for me has been the absolute mass of information that is thrown at my head on a daily basis. I'm beginning to learn that too much information can be just as problematic as too little information. With so much data laying in front of you, it is extremely difficult to put your hands on that tiny bit of information that will make a difference in helping your station's news, marketing and sales advance their work.

Most TV research directors are used to delving deeply into four ratings books a year, analyzing and cutting the data in as many possible slices as possible. But with ratings every month, every week, every day, there are simply not enough hours in the day to go into that granular level for every piece of data that comes my way.

My market has been LPM for nearly eight months now. The first few months of LPM were all about understanding the differences in methodology and ratings. The next few months were spent delving into the accuracy of the meter sample, the A/P meters themselves and potential crediting errors. These last few months (and moving forward) are all about establishing regular reports that will pull out the most relevant information to the forefront. I wish I could have done this going in, but its a process that requires the input of news, marketing and sales. What do these people NEED in order to do their job, and what kind of report can I create to communicate the corresponding research for that need.

Time is always an issue. A typical book analysis in the past quarterly sweeps cycle for me would entitle about two weeks preparing for sweeps, four weeks in sweeps, and four-five weeks of post sweeps analysis. This schedule is NOT possible for one person to do on a monthly basis.

Thus, the best RDs in an LPM world adapt and learn to create tools to do the work for them. One RD called them "Excel Widgets". I am a big fan of Excel Widgets, and since I am a self professed lazy Research Director, the more I can make my tools do for me, the less I have to do on a daily basis.

One example of a tool I created was a Meter Sample Monitor. I wrote the excel grid so that I can download the Excel versions of the meter sample characteristics on a weekly schedule, drop the excel file into my Meter Sample Monitoring excel file, and voila! Excel does the calculations for me, tracks the weekly progress of the sample and even highlights in red and orange the areas where the meter is slipping too far off the universe estimates. The whole process takes 30 seconds.

From St. Pete Times Critic Eric Deggan's Blog:

March 10, 2008
Local TV News Ratings Show Typical WFLA/WTVT Fight
I 've only got detailed numbers for the core viewer demographic most local TV stations sell to advertisers, those aged 25 to 54.

But among this group in February's ratings race, WFLA-Ch. 8 was slightly on top in early evening and 11 p.m. newscast timeslots, pretty much flipping places with close rival WTVT-Ch. 13 from results we saw in November's ratings race.

The two stations are pretty much even in the early morning, from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. And though some local folks insist that the switch to daily demographic information back in October has changed the way advertisers buy time, the local TV stations continue to get $$ for promoting their stations from national sources in the sweeps months of February, May, July and November -- so that's when you see billboards, radio ads and other, non-TV advertising.

Here's the February numbers, among viewers aged 25 to 54, for the ratings junkies, courtesy of WTVT. The first number is the rating, or percentage of Tampa Bay area TV viewers aged 25 to 54 with TVs. The second number is the share, or percentage of Tampa Bay area viewers aged 25 to 54 with TVs turned on at the time.:

5 p.m. newscasts:
Dr. Phil/WTSP N/A
WFLA 2.0/9
WTVT (Fox 13) 1.7/7
WFTS-Ch. 28 (ABC Action News) 0.8/4

5:30 p.m. newscasts:
WFLA 2.0/8
WTSP (shows Dr. Phil; no news ratings)
WTVT 1.6/6
WFTS 0.9/3

6 p.m. newscasts:
WTSP-Ch. 10 1.8/6
WFLA 2.3/8
WTVT Fox 13 2.2/8
WFTS Action News 1.1/4

6:30 p.m. newscasts (network, except for WTVT):
WTSP 1.5/5
WFLA 2.5/8
WTVT Fox 13 2.3/7
WFTS Action News 1.5/5

10 p.m. newscasts:
WFLA on WTTA-Ch. 38 0.4/1
WTVT Fox 13 News 11p 4.3/10

11 p.m. newscasts:
WFLA 2.1/6
WTSP-Ch. 10 1.5/5
WTVT Fox 13 News 11p 1.9/6
WFTS Action News 1.6/5

6 a.m. to 7 a.m. newscasts:
WFLA- 2.7/16
WTSP- 0.4/2
WTVT 2.6/15.5
WFTS 0.8/5

Research is all about the source

I couldn't say it any better myself. From Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog:

Research is All About The Source
In one week, we’ve had two “studies” telling us different things about where Americans get their news.

In a report from Magid and Hearst-Argyle, most people choose local TV news. The study made mouths water and lips smack as a chorus of “we told you so” rang from the board rooms of various local broadcast companies.

Not only is local TV news content the biggest audience draw for news and information on-air and on digital platforms – it is also the most effective video advertising platform, according to new research results…

But a second report, this one from Zogby International, reveals that the Internet is the top source of news for nearly half of Americans. Two thirds, the survey found, are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism, calling it “out of touch.”

So who do you believe? Both can’t be right. The truth is neither is right. The Magid study is of 2,700 viewers of local news. Of course, they’d say that local news is their top choice. The Zogby study is of 1979 adults on the Web. Of course, they’d say the Web is their top source for news.
We badly need research in this area, but we shouldn’t pay any attention whatsoever to studies like these, because research is all about the source.

Rock --> ME <--- Hard Spot

I actually had a rep complain to me that I send out so much stuff that he can’t keep track of it all, so he has to ignore all of it. This is not a good excuse in my book. If I send something out, its because its relevant to their job. I do send out a lot, but that’s because I am a RESEARCH DIRECTOR. I try very hard to edit all the information I receive, and only send out the most relevant stuff. Yet, I still get complaints.

And if I didn’t send this stuff, they’d complain that they’re not being kept informed.

Revenue drives Innovation

From a thread on Lost Remote.com:

ROB: There's a core issue right there in my experience: Revenue drives innovation. If the revenue isn't there, you're not getting that new widget, platform, hardware or tool. The expectation for the web in my general experience is that an immediate ROI is expected and if the up-front cost is too high to generate a nearly instantaneous ROI then you don't move forward.Managers in general are putting their mouth where the money is right now. They focus on the current breadwinner and as a result the web doesn't develop as fast as it needs to.

From me:
Whatever happened to "If you build it, they will come?" Managers won't build it until they have revenue. Advertisers won't buy it until there's an audience. The audience won't come if its not there. Its a vicious circle.

Multimedia Journalism Workshop in Tampa March 8

Cross posted from St. Pete Times' Media Critic Eric Deggan's blog:

February 27, 2008

Sometimes I worry about the Tampa Bay Association of Black Journalists.

Mostly, I worry that because of our name, journalists who are not black or people who don't consider themselves journalists will not want to get involved with our programs.

It's an odd concept to explain, but the name of our group -- which is a local chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists -- mostly describes the focus of our organization. Anyone of any ethnicity who is in the media or communications field can join our group, and you don't even have to join the group to participate in our programs.

So it is in that spirit that I roll out a big welcome for TBABJ's second annual session focused on Multimedia reporting on March 8, featuring members who have done extensive work translating their newspaper or TV work into online platforms.

On deck so far: Ken Knight, multimedia reporter for Media General; Demorris Lee, reporter for the St. Petersburg Times, who recently completed a multimedia reporting fellowship at the Knight Digital Media Center; Boyzell Hosey, photo editor at the St. Petersburg Times and Eric Deggans, St. Petersburg Times TV/Media critic and editor/creator of The Feed blog.

Scheduled for 11 a.m. March 8 at the Tampa Tribune, 200 S. Parker St. Tampa, this seminar is free and open to anyone who wishes to attend.

During the panel discussion, we will talk about ways to think about expanding traditional journalism work to multimedia platforms, the advantages and challenges of blogging for journalists, the resources available for those who hope to learn more about this kind of work and more...

Last year, we got a great response from area bloggers of all ethnicities and had a chance to turn it into a wide-ranging discussion. Even if you don't consider yourself a journalist, but would like to learn more about this new field, please feel free to attend.

As we all work to try and understand these new media platforms,sometimes the most fun comes from getting together and swapping ideas on what it all means. And fellow bloggers, feel free to post this on your blog somewheres...

Bizarre Media Math

As our market is in the process of converting from Metered Market to Local People Meters, I have encountered all sorts of bizarre ways in which agencies and clients are attempting to create ratings projections for the future. Every agency has been trained in the basic media math formula:

Shares (Most Recent Sweeps Period) X HUTS (From most recent sweeps falling into the quarter in which you plan to air spots) = Rating

The problem is, we still don't have HUT/PUT levels for the LPM market for February through June. Because you are mixing two completely different methodologies, I refuse to allow clients to project LPM shares against MM HUT levels.

This is leading our clients to develop all sorts of off-the-wall techniques for projecting. Some are using the most recent book, some are only looking at the traditional sweeps periods. Some are comparing the ratings from 2007 to 2006 and bringing down February and May 2006 ratings by that same percent. Some are comparing the total GRPs from 2006 to 2007 and bringing down estimates. Some are using actuals from the year before. One agency today came up with the most bizarre combination, involving comparing November 2007 HUTs to November 2006 HUTs, and adjusting 2006 ratings by the same percentage, and but then looking at LPM ratings and waving a fine dusting of fairy dust over it all - I just shook my head sadly at it all.

In my opinion (and since its my blog, all you get is my opinion), the agencies are making things more difficult than they have to. I now have seven months worth of trending data for all of my programs, and to be honest, I really don't see a lot of variation in the regular daily programs. If for seven months, a program has averaged to a 2 rating (maybe 1.9 one month and 2.1 the next), you can be pretty confident that the program will deliver a 2 in February and May. Let's all subscribe to the KISS theory here: Keep It Simple Stupid.

Nielsen Apologizes for Data Delays

Nielsen released a client communication today apologizing for the recent increase in data delays for its overnight ratings service. They blame the recent delays on three factors:

• Increased data volume from the Local People Meter markets
• Increased data volume from DVR usage
• Increased data volume from A/P Meter penetration

Nielsen made a big splashy announcement in June 2006 about how its finally joining the rest of us in this digital, high-tech world with its A2M2 (Anytime, Anywhere Media Measurement) announcement. They heralded all this fabulous new technology they were developing to measure media, announced that the top 25 markets would be LPM within three years and a new A/P Meter 3.0 in markets up to size 60 starting in 2008.

These were all very ambitious goals, but I wonder if Nielsen has gotten in a bit over its head. Not even two years from the date of the A2M2 announcement, with only 16 markets LPM (or currently undergoing the LPM transistion) and Nielsen is already admitting that they cannot handle the data overload.

However are they going to handle another 9 LPM markets, PLUS this new A/P Meter technology (you know, the new one that measures demos like a Local People Meter, but isn't a Local People Meter)? If Nielsen can't handle the data volume for DVR usage and high A/P Meter penetration now, however are they going to face a future when DVR and digital television is become ever more prevalent?