Janet Stilson

Competition in an Urgent World

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.

Teetering On The Economic Cliff Edge

You could have heard a pin drop last week when Heather Goodchild spoke before a group of media executives in New York. Goodchild is managing director of media and entertainment debt ratings at Standard & Poor. And she was delivering a very grave assessment of where the economy is headed, and the media business in general, at the Media Financial Management Association's Outlook 2011 conference.

She had the demeanor of Bette Davis in her bright red dress, big pearl necklace and conservative hairdo. And Davis could have hardly done better in conveying a tone so very similar to a doctor telling a patient about a very serious ailment with the utmost tact.

Goodchild noted that the gross domestic product (GDP) outlook is worsening. S&P has lowered its GDP forecast for full-year 2011 to 1.6% from 2.4%. A 2.5% GDP is considered normal, and S&P doesn't expect it to rise above 2% for the next two years.

Defying Journalism's Realities

It's enough to give give a journalist whiplash -- finding out that there's actually a news organization that's hiring reporters in droves, rather than laying them off en masse. It runs counter to the general trend that most news services have faced over the last several years.

So it was a particular pleasure for me to write an article about Allbritton Communications' raging success, Politico, which is both a newspaper and an online news source dedicated to providing Washington, DC insiders with the very latest news about their various interests. That's Politico's bustling newsroom in the image above.

Advertising's Growing 'Community' Agenda

Last week I had the pleasure of speaking with Maria Luisa Francoli, CEO of the media-buying ad agency Havas Media North America, and CEO of Havas' MPG Global buying unit. That's her, pictured at left.

I heard Francoli speak at a recent MPG Collaborative Alliance session during Advertising Week, hosted as always by the witty Mitch Oscar. And that prompted me to pitch a Q&A story featuring her thoughts to TVNewsCheck. They snapped it up.

Like Francoli herself, Havas and MPG have roots in Spain, but they are giant multinational ventures. Havas Media North America spent $2.7 billion on ad placements in 2009 alone,

Musings on Muses

In the last two days, I've had some separate experiences that are remarkably connected. They all relate to what it's like to be a woman in the film and television industries.

Among them, I've been most deeply affected by New York Women in Film & Television's annual Muse Awards gala, which took place yesterday at the Hilton Hotel in New York. I headed the committee that produced the event, and all our many hours of work over the last five months ended with such a bonfire of inspiring words and stories. It was worth every second of my time.

The day before, Helen Mirren gave a very witty speech at The Hollywood Reporter's annual Women in Entertainment breakfast, in which she derided filmmakers who "worship at the altar of the 18 to 25 year old male and his penis."

And today, I found time to read a blog posting by MediaPost's David Goetzl, in which he suggested that it might be time to do away with entertainment industry power rankings of women.

Clash of the Cable-Telco Titans

Is the cable industry about to price itself out of relevance for a large share of Americans? That was one of the key questions I walked away with after hearing Craig Moffett speak recently.

It takes a really insightful media presentation to stop me in my tracks these days, having heard so many over the years. But Moffett (pictured here), did just that.

He's the VP and senior analyst of U.S. telecommunications, cable and satellite at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. And his talk gave me a new view of how the cable and telecommunications company's fortunes will change in the next few years.

It was enough to make anyone holding Verizon and AT&T stock reconsider how long they want to hold onto it. And his assessment of how cable will ultimately checkmate Dish and DirecTV gave me pause as well.

The Luxury of the Long View

Yesterday I met a very interesting woman at a club meeting. She works in security for one of the major sites that offer a form of classified advertising. And she told me that since the economic downturn, her job has become more intense because there's an upswing in the number of fraudsters trying to place ads on the site in hopes of luring unsuspecting respondents into revealing their credit card information

Her remarks reminded me of a column I just edited for an upcoming issue of The Financial Manager that discusses how bullying in the workplace has also been on the rise since everything went to hell in a hand basket a few years ago.

Those two pieces of information has made me think more and  more about the unseen side effects of the financial turmoil.

I've reported and edited so many stories about the downsizing of media and advertising companies, and how many of those left behind are working at breakneck speed to make up for the lack of support.

For many people, there's less time to stop and think about longterm strategies, how their products and services are perceived. Yet one of Microsoft's top marketing executives is doing just that.

David Webster, general manager and chief strategy officer for Micrsoft's central marketing group, works clear across the country from the corporate HQ, in his Connecticut home. That's him with the lopsided smile above.

I recently interviewed him for Brandweek magazine, which named Webster one of its marketers of the year due to the incredible results of his team's campaign for Windows 7.

Webster explained that the distance helped give him more perspective about Microsoft, and that allowed him to develop more insights for campaign strategies. You can read more about Webster's work by following this link to the online version of the story. Or click on the link below.

Download Brandweek - Webster - 091310

Passionate Pleas and a Passel of Projections

"Our projections are always right. But sometimes we get the years wrong."  That quip, from Gordon Borrell of Borrell & Associates, was among my favorite soundbites spoken at the Television Bureau of Advertising's annual powwow earlier today.

It resonated for me because I've spent the last month checking in with a series of media analysts, TV rep firms and TV station group executives to find out what expectations are for national and local spot TV advertising for full year 2010 and 2011. And my article on the topic published yesterday by TVNewsCheck in anticipation of both today's TVB conference and yesterday's Outlook conference organized by the Media Financial Management Association.

One of the most interesting aspects for me in reporting the story was the debate about whether the stampede of auto advertising this year will be followed by a healthy rise next year. Because that's traditionally been the dominant ad category for stations, it's an important topic for them.

Yesterday, Gene Cameron of J.D. Power told MFM conference attendees that the number of cars sold in the U.S. should climb from about 11.6 million this year to 13.2 million in 2011 -- and that pretty much mirrors what Steve Finlay of the auto biz bible Ward's Dealer Business said today at the TVB gabfest.

As there's a direct correlation between auto sales and auto ad spend, that's a really sweet curve for broadcasters. But interestingly enough (to me anyway), Cameron sees a flattening of auto sales in the 2014 to 2016 period -- when it is likely to hover above 16 million. That's about a million shy of its 2000 peak. And he couldn't tell me what that meant for media because there are so many unknown variables.

There were a few passionate pleas at the conference today for broadcasters to wake up and utilize digital media much more effectively than they have in the past or they'll miss the gravy train completely -- hearkening back to my interview with Rino Scanzoni of a few weeks ago (see post below).

Which brings me to another favorite quote from today, from Tracey Sheppach, a VP at the mighty Publicis, who has earned the nickname Sheppach-olypse because of her dire warnings to broadcasters: "Every person I've met who resists becomes a very unhappy person in the end."

Here's my story on the TVNewsCheck site and here's a pdf version: Download TVN - Spot Forecast 091510

TV's Overcrowding Conundrum

The tides are washing in some wonderful gifts for me these days.  People want to take me to dinner, give me insightful notes on my scripts. My massage therapist tacked on an extra quarter hour for free. And I've received a fair bit of praise for my most recent feature article, which published yesterday in TVNewsCheck. That was very gratifying, because I went to quite a bit of trouble to report and write it.

We are now about eight weeks before the November elections, and TV stations in many markets are getting flooded with demands for advertising opportunities by politicos. That may sound wonderful, and it is, but it's tricky business.

Federal candidates must be given the advertising time that they want to purchase, and at lowest unit rate pricing -- which can be about 50% of what stations get from other clients. Oftentimes, non-political client ads get preempted. Noses get bent out of shape, particularly when advertisers pay top dollar, and their sales volume is negatively impacted.

I went on a hunting expedition to find out what stations are doing to solve the crowd-out problem during the current election cycle, and how that compares with what they've done in the past. And in some regards, their solutions are better than ever.

Here's a link to my story on TVNewsCheck's site.  And below is a pdf version of the piece.

Download TVN - Election Ad Strategies 090810

Tough Talk From Rino Scanzoni

When I interviewed Rino Scanzoni a few weeks ago for TVNewsCheck, I could almost feel TV sales executives across the country wincing with displeasure as they read his very frank (some might say harsh) assessment of how stations need to change their ways.

Scanzoni is chief investment officer of GroupM, which is home to four ad agencies -- MEC, MindShare, MediaCom and Maxus. Collectively they managed advertising client purses of some $22 billion last year.

Essentially, Scanzoni, pictured here, doesn't think stations will ever see a return to the glory days of big ad expenditure, and have pretty much missed the boat on attracting a better business because they are slow to change and innovate.

Yet, when the story was posted two days ago, it actually drew some very thoughtful comments from readers, including self criticism along with some explanations concerning why they do business the way they do. Clearly, this is a sore spot, and one that sparks a lot of serious introspection.

Here's a pdf of the piece: Download TVN - Scanzoni Q&A 0810

And here's a link to the story with reader comments.