Exactly what is Prime Time now-a-days?

Filed in archive Business Trends , Internet TV , Video on Demand on May 15, 2007

Advertising Age points out "that [the] three-hour slice of the evening [called prime time] last year attracted $15 billion in TV ad spending."

Back in the day, networks used to refer to that as "appointment TV." However, in an age of DVRs, VOD, iPods, cell phones, and broadband TV it is anything but an appointment. Maybe a better name now is MeTV; in other words, I will choose to watch what I want, when I want to, on whatever device I prefer.

In my household, I think we saw one prime time show actually in its time slot during the last few weeks. And when you get to the youth of today, the stats get even worse! The idea of requiring that someone stay home in the evening, glued to the TV to watch their favorite shows, has about as much chance as Al Qaeda turning into a pacifist organization. The people who will do that are those who like the show, don't own a DVR and have no interest in watching television on their computer. The only other people will be those who must tune into a major live event or a show masquerading as an event like American Idol.

One way or another, that $15B will have to find its way into new venues. One obvious one is in-stream insertion in broadband VOD. Another obvious venue is updating stale commercials that are still embedded in an unwatched DVR recording so that they are fresh at the time of viewing. Maybe we will be forced to watch the ad, too. And there are other controversial options.

But the single most important thing is this: marketers are going to have to make the advertisement more relevant to our lives. In my naïve way of thinking that means less emphasis on clever production value and more emphasis on conveying information. It also means targeting messages that might interest me. After all, those are the two main reasons that Google Adsense ads work and are accepted by most people. There is no reason television can't do likewise.

Sometime in the years ahead, there will be only two kinds of television: on-demand and live events. Instead of bemoaning that fact, perhaps it is time the advertising industry start building the necessary transaction mechanisms and relationships no matter how difficult the challenges.