I was privileged yesterday to assist the 58th Primetime Emmy Awards Ceremony at the Shrine in Los Angeles (auto-translation). To be more specific, it was the Creative Arts ceremony, so television television honored behind-the-scenes workers: makeup artists, casting directors, sound editors, set designers, special effect engineers, editors, and of course animators…
As I was watching the ceremony, I could not help but notice that all this talent, work and dedication from real artists was often misused for mediocre shows to say the least. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like watching TV, especially since I have a DVR, but there are so many show that just get an audience “because it’s on”, so many writers that think about Nielsen ratings and demographics more than they think about character development or stories. Being surrounded by all those talents gave me the feeling of a terrible waste.
Then two important things happened:
- first, Judson Laipply arrived on stage to perform his famous “Evolution of dance“, the video most seen on YouTube (more than 30 millions to date). The audience was slow to respond and cheer. How many people in the audience had been on YouTube to watch the Evolution of Dance? Is the TV industry watching YouTube? After his performance, Judson Laipply asked the audience to stand up and dance the choregraphy of YMCA. After two hours of a boring ceremony, the audience was finally participating and having fun. Judson Laipply, an unknown for most of the audience, managed to accomplish what none of the many celebrities who followed on stage had succeeded: entertain, interact, engage.
- A few minutes later, special awards were given to TiVO and ABC.com’s 24-hour streaming platform. Two awards for the video-on-demand generation.
Then today I came across this excellent post, bad TV is our own fault.
Why aren’t we pickier with our television? That would take effort on our part. When there were nothing good on TV we could actually have to do something constructive with our time. That is a lot harder than sitting around and passing the time away though.
I am not saying television is evil. It is something I enjoy quite a bit. But when brilliant shows like Arrested Development, Everwood, Futurama, and Invasion are cancelled, it isn’t the network’s fault. All they have to do is follow the numbers. The numbers don’t lie. America isn’t watching quality television.
If we keep eating slop, the farmer is going to keep feeding us slop. If we stop eating slop, the farmer will do what he must to keep us fat and happy. We must demand higher quality feed, my fellow swine!
Television doesn’t control us, we control television. The next time that you watch Two and a Half Men, Gilmore Girls, or What I Like About You just because it is on, think of what you are telling the networks. You are telling them that you are okay with mediocrity.
My DVR has changed the way I watch TV, but when I look around me, I see that many people still watch TV shows because they are on. It won’t last long. The future of TV will be on-demand, with higher quality programs that better fit niches for pickier audiences. The younger generations may spend less time watching TV passively and spend this free time co-creating, playing or interacting online. The question is when this will happen. There are already early signs of a meltdown…
The challenge for market researchers will be to adapt to those changes and continue to support both advertisers and networks in their transition to on-demand and viewer-generated TV. Beyond panel-based ratings and surveys, market researchers need to come up with new measurement, segmentation and forecasting tools - exciting times ahead…
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