Bob Costas hates the dragon thing as much as you do.
During a recent appearance on Cleveland’s ESPN radio affiliate, the broadcaster shared a story about Warner Bros. Discovery’s lost commercial, in which a shabbily-CGI’d dragon flies through the air above Yankee Stadium before Game 1 of the ALDS. Looking for all the world like something that went horribly wrong in the age of the giant, the creature has served as the centerpiece of the readable advertising campaign for HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel.
“From a production standpoint, there’s a lot going on,” Costas told WKNR listeners a day after the release of the corporate bond exercise. “The key business people seem to have more fallout during the games.” Costas went on to say that he tried to mask the sound of his eyeballs rolling (“how do I distance myself from this without taking it all away?”) platform-agnostic universe.
Part of the cornball show, local commercials are as familiar a part of the sports-TV experience as halftime banter and insurance commercials. Live broadcasts generate the largest audience, and are therefore the most powerful platform from which to promote the network’s programming slate. According to Nielsen, about 25.4 million people saw local commercials for The Equalizer and So Help Me Todd that aired during CBS’ Oct. 16 coverage of the Bills-Chiefs game. Last month, some 26.4 million viewers were exposed to teasers for the Monarchs that aired during Fox’s national window (83% Packers-Bucs).
While it’s only natural that the networks use their megaphones to make noise for all the other shows on the air, most of the TV advertising efforts are not very effective. “A smart, funny ad can help convince a lot of people to model a smart, funny show,” says one TV advertising veteran. “Where we run into trouble now is, most of the shows aren’t very good. The commercials are crap, too, so everything settles down to zero.”
This is a joke, although not the kind that TV people find funny. “We’ve been working with the same set of rules for the last 50 years,” the salesman said. “‘Use the big audience to inspire the little one on another night.’ ‘Have the actress from this thing do the song.’ ‘Throw in anyone who’s 55 or older.’ Those are the best.” the ideas we have. They don’t really work. “
There is a lot of evidence that advertising is not an effective way to get sports fans to check out some of the network features, regardless of how much happens to catch a given audio spot. not. According to iSpot.tv data, no preseason trailer has received more attention than that of Fox’s latest drama Monarch, which generated 807.1 million views in the first two weeks of September. Monday Night Live, which was heavily promoted in Fox’s prime NFL coverage and aired in a special window after the Sept. 11 football game, was the third lowest-rated show on network television. , averaging less than 270,000 adults 18-49 in each segment.
Among other network shows that failed to convert ad exposure into actual viewers were ABC’s Alaska Daily, which averaged just under 380,000 adults 18-49 after two weeks, extreme football which racked up 814.7 million impressions. , and the returning NBC series. La Brea, which drew 535,000 dollar demo members in a wake of half a month of advertising that racked up 928.7 million views.
While marketers annually spend about $500 million on Super Bowl ads, the Big Game’s ability to sell Cheetos and lager doesn’t seem to translate into building primetime audiences later in the week. . During the 2021 Super Bowl, CBS aired several spots for Clarice, an adaptation of the Silence of the Lambs IP that bowed four nights after the Bucs defeated the Chiefs. Of the 99.7 million people who saw the Clarice teasers, only 4 million watched the episode. The show was abruptly canceled after its 13-episode run.
Even the coveted Super Bowl site can’t move the ratings needle, as the broadcast booths are filled with shows that air past their prime in the sunset. For every one-hour Friends special that averaged 52.9 million viewers and continues to set the charts ablaze, there have been plenty of flops; Among the notable hits that hit the wall shortly after Super Sunday were James Brolin’s long-forgotten car, and Randy Quaid Davis’s MacGruder and Loud Rules, which you’ll Google. That all three of these unsalvageable shows aired on ABC is a coincidence, though one that speaks to a new wrinkle that could help boost advertising revenue.
Let’s assume the best-case scenario, in which the network shows must develop a reputation far superior to whatever Aaron Spelling thinks he worked for at MacGruder and Loud. While the fragmentation of the primary audience is the biggest blame for broadcast television’s lack of reach, there are also demographic factors at work that undermine the efforts of network marketing teams. For example, women now make up about 36% of the NFL’s national television coverage, but most of ABC’s tentpole series serve an audience that is 75% female. There is a disconnect between the NFL’s “borrowed” audience and the actual viewers that comprise the majority of ABC’s user base; therefore, most of those who see local commercials airing during Monday Night Football cannot tune out weekday dramas, comedy shows and competition shows.
CBS has the best success rate because it can understand its brand better than any other TV station. Knowing that the square/hole-round strategy wasn’t very popular in weekly viewers, CBS used Super Bowl LV less as a prop—we’ll continue to argue Protect yourself with this “Young Sheldon” commercial until you explode—plus as a promotional item. The Tiffany network combines single display advertising with additional design features created to highlight various sports, entertainment and news offerings. Instead of launching a 30-second hook for each show on the air, CBS instead focused on revealing its first brand while presenting a vision for the top of the platform Paramount +.
Traditional show ads are hit or miss, as revealed by Clarice’s future career. But the other key shows CBS chose to highlight during the Super Bowl were able to make the most of its exposure; The Adaptation, featuring Queen Latifah, not only retained nearly half of its original audience (20.4 million), but also maintained bragging rights as the network’s third-highest-grossing drama of 2020- 21. Since its big Sunday send-off, The Matchmaker in its third season now stands as one of TV’s top scripted series.
So that worked. But what about the WBD dragon stunt? Costas is no fan, and when she’s tasked with dealing with a fake monster, MLB Network/Turner Sports reporter Lauren Shehadi looks like she’s slowly compiling a list of her favorite characters. she was in the present. Because Nielsen hasn’t released new streaming figures, it’s impossible to say whether the show has succeeded in converting any baseball fans into HBO viewers, but in the end, Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series has a small profit on the house. Dragon in front of the sword and magic.
At least one television marketing practitioner thinks that advertising may not be as effective as any other media system that includes a mix of unrelated content. “Besides the man who wrote the books [noted Mets fan George R. R. Martin], there can’t be many viewers who divide their time between baseball and sports, even if they are analytics geeks,” said the exec. “Twitter is not ‘real’, but what happened was negative – a lot of people were saying, ‘Oh, to hell with this.'”
Odds are, if the promotion had paid off in HBO’s changing fortunes, we would have seen the aftermath of the Yankee Stadium effort by then. But so far in the ALCS, the skies above Houston have had no trouble with the high-flying monsters. A week from now, Fox might ask a bunch of young actors to pretend they like baseball while sitting in the stands for the World Cup. In a cruel twist of fate, Joel McHale of Animal Care, a Mariners fan, and Jon Hamm (Grimsburg), an ex-boyfriend of the Cards, could be hired to please one of the clubs that have taken out their own interest. drama.
It’s a brutal business, and it’s not very effective. “I’ve never explained how showing some people with SAG-AFTRA cards in their pockets sitting in the rain is not going to get fans to watch a new workplace drama,” the sales rep said. “Parasitism is also a form of collaboration, and I can’t remember the last time someone invited a cassette to the world series.”
