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Commercial Influence and Stealth Advertising

by Kevin Hogan

Can you optimize your sales and marketing strategy learning from this?

Who Pays to Produce a Television Show?

TV shows cost a fortune to put together and there are really only two main revenue streams. One is harder to get than the other.

Commercials.

No commercials = No TV

Someone has to pay for you to watch CSI. If you don't pay then someone else has to pay twice or three times.

An episode of CSI runs about $2 million dollars to produce.

That doesn't include anything but getting the DVD (film) to the network.

Then you have to cover all the costs of your Mom and Uncle George working at CBS, answering phones, janitoring, etc.

Now CSI airs on Thursday night and we all watch. But being the clever guys that we are, we Tivo out the commercials so we don't have to watch those evil things.

If everyone did that? We'd be watching reruns of Gilligan's Island for the rest of our lives.

No commercials = no one to pay for us to watch the show. 45 minutes of Gil, Nick, Sarah, Warrick and Katherine, 15 minutes of advertising.

But alas, costs of production go up, especially on good shows, and advertisers (the people who pay for you and me to watch TV) are getting ripped off because we won't play fair.

How are Advertisers Reacting to the Shift?

So, the advertisers have to get your attention. And the networks that run the news so you can watch the weather and sports are scared to death that Wheaties, Ford, and Coca Cola are going to leave them and spend their money elsewhere.

The big advertisers leave for other places....and the local network station and all the employees go broke. Jobs lost.

So, the network execs at both national and local levels have to come up with something to keep advertisers paying salaries, lights and health benefits.

They use product placement in television shows. That means that when I watch CSI, I get to watch Katherine drink a Pepsi and Gil drive a Ford and it's clear.

Last couple of episodes of 24 this last season, Cisco Systems unveiled their new conferencing system as a piece of the show 24. It was very cool and not subtle in any way. If it weren't for Cisco, I probably wouldn't have seen 24 that week and we all get that.

But what happens when it comes to your local news, weather and sports?

We've all seen TV stations boost ratings by hyping the weather. Terrible storm on it's way...when in reality it might drop a 1/2 inch of rain.

Why?

The station doesn't want viewers, it NEEDS viewers. Jobs. Just like anyone and anywhere else.

But the news has always been sort of sacred.

Continue: Page | 1 | 2 | 3 |

Kevin Hogan
Network 3000 Publishing
3432 Denmark #108
Eagan, MN 55123
(612) 616-0732

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