Have you noticed how nothing on TV is a surprise these days?
Now that Sky plus, iplayer and TV on demand is now the norm, TV companies must do everything in their power to make sure that everything is an event.
In order for a TV show to be a compelling property for an advertiser, they must have confidence that the audience they are targeting will be sat at home, engaged and watching, all the time minimising the chance that they will be clicking straight through to the 30x fast forward button.
In years gone by this was pretty easy. Fewer channels to choose from, and a selection of mass-market, mass-interest shows that could guarantee you an audience. It was only a last resort to set the VHS and watch it at another time.
But now, TV schedules are largely an irrelevance. I’m as likely to use the A-Z search on Sky plus as I am to search by channel. Often I’ll watch something without really even knowing which channel it is on. I certainly don’t hang about for the ads. People watch what they want to watch when they want to watch it and in a variety of different ways.
So, that’s a big problem when selling once-prime advertising slots around TV. How can it be overcome?
The answer is the creation, development and promotion of unmissable i-was-there TV events. It starts with sport – unscripted drama that loses its value if not watched live. Perfect. As relevant to advertisers now as it ever was. No-one will watch England in the world cup final on their sky plus.
Other types of TV shows want a piece of this and as such are becoming more and more like sport. Look at the prime time TV shows and you have X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent and Strictly Come Dancing. All have an element of sport about them, and have a newsworthy “vote out” that loses its impact if you watch it after-the-fact. These are shows that people set their watches to.
But also, increasingly, the shows that traditionally were the fodder of the ad-men, Soap Operas, are acting more and more in this way. If you look at the life cycle of something like Coronation Street it has a few weeks of (mind numbingly dumb) build up, then a big event. Usually a murder, a death or a wedding. Sometimes (in Emmerdale) a plane crash. These are promoted like sport – with build up in the tabloids and glossy mags for weeks before. Several endings are filmed to give that sense of mystery and to add to the drama.
It’s all designed to make people feel like it is unmissable. And if it is unmissable, the advertisers are suddenly interested again.
It even happened in the world of news last night with Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time. A political debate show set up as a big event, a piece of must-watch TV.
The world of TV advertising has changed, and it is responsible for a change in the medium itself.
It will be very interesting to see how advertisers combat this and whether they back away from “normal” TV altogether. I’ll sky plus it and find out later.