When I first subscribed to Time Warner Cable in New York City, the techie who came by to install the wiring couldn't have been more impatient and rude. "I don't care if she's the President of the United States!" he barked at his supervisor on the phone when she asked him to wait a few minutes so I could get the key to the roof doorway and he could complete his installation. It wasn't until after the supervisor informed him I was an editor at one of the most important business publications covering the cable industry, Multichannel News, that he changed his tune. Move over, Mr. President.
I don't need to pull out my press credentials anymore when dealing with TWC or other companies of that sort. The competition is so stiff, they're generally extremely helpful, and I've also lowered my cable TV and high-speed modem subscription costs by 50% over the last year because of Time Warner's turf war with Verizon in my apartment building.
The importance of competition couldn't be higher today, as consumers try to preserve their capital in the face of high unemployment and a tenuous economy in general. But that's true for businesses as well.
That was driven home to me over the last few weeks as I reported an article about the challenges TV stations face getting valid statistical information from Nielsen on their viewers. A growing number of TV outlets have opted for a competing service, Rentrak, either as a complete replacement for Nielsen or as a supplement.
That article appeared last Tuesday in TVNewsCheck, and it was followed a day later by a second article that I wrote about the tug-of-war between ad agencies and stations on the proper set of statistics to use when judging the effectiveness of various shows and the commercials that run with them.
The second article received many different comments from TVNewsCheck's very vocal and passionate readers, debating whether commercials are viewed when people DVR shows and play them back. I love my DVR, and find that I actually pay more attention to the commercials I chose to watch during playback, because I have some personal interest in them.
That attentive factor is something that Mitch Oscar, of the agency MPG, also references in the article, pointing to industry research that supports that. Unlike most media buyers, Oscar believes stations should get credit for some of the playback viewing, rather than only counting views during live broadcasts. The issue is very complicated, as my story explains.
You can access my pieces on TVNewsCheck's site here and here.
Or read my pdf versions at the links below.
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