Earthquakes, Tornadoes, Hurricanes: The Short Head and The Weather

I tend not to be a big broadcast news/broad sheet reader (at least during the week). However, the TV is usually on in the morning and I’ll catch the end of the local broadcast before one of the main morning shows kicks in with its top stories. Earlier this morning – in the wake of the ‘Quake of 8/23/11 (never forget!) – I quipped quickly on the state of what it is like to be a news broadcaster these days:

Now, a few hours later, I actually see there is a little bit of truth in that, and it can explain a small bit of where broad-scale mass media is these days. I’ve spouted off more than a few posts on the value of the long tail, but this could be the first time I attempt to discuss the “Short Head” i.e. the opposite site of this chart.

Mass media needs to appeal to the broadest mass of people. It was the invent of cheap/free publishing in form of the Internet and those communities that started to allow smaller and smaller groups to begin to connect to each other in the same away. That’s the long tail – the more specific you get, the less people there are interested in a topic, in a limit that more or less approaches infinity. So, across a completely diverse audience – and the top of network morning shows probably do attract among the more diverse groups from a demographic perspective – people have less in common. That’s the head of the beast. And at the top, where the least is in common, it is more and more likely the only thing in which the audience shares a common interest is what is happening from the sky.

Which is what brings us to non-stop weather coverage from our favorite networks. They have the broad audience, and it is insensitive to use “lowest common denominator”, but that’s the mentality. It’s probably better to call it the “most common common denominator” – but that’s how the Short Head works.

The Super Bowl Ad Game Has Changed

It’s safe to say that the talk of the week leading up to the Super Bowl has had some to do with the game. It’s had a lot more to do with two other completely unrelated things: the upcoming (likely) NFL Lockout that may shut out the 2011 season…and, more importantly, the commercials.

And one company has taken complete advantage of how the Internet and online video has changed the game of Super Bowl commercials.

Back in the day, it used to be about the USA Today Monday after rankings for Super Bowl commercials. Tightly focus grouped, evaluated the moment they came on the screen but that was it. There wasn’t instant reaction on Twitter – and it felt like most organizations kept thing under wraps until gameday.

I turn to Darren Rovell of CNBC to synthesize what’s new this year:

Congrats to Volkswagen for realizing that it's 1 thing to own the Super Bowl. It's another to own the entire week.—
darren rovell (@darrenrovell) February 05, 2011

The video above came around earlier this week and it will in fact be shown during Sunday’s Super Bowl. Does it matter that 10 million people have already seen it? Hardly. But the buzz of laptop screens to the television screen will certainly help set the precedent.

Commercials being made for YouTube, not just the TV audience any more. That’s huge.

A year since Conan versus Jay, has Late Night really changed?

On January 22nd, 2010, Conan O’Brien signed off his seven month stint as the host of the Tonight Show with a rousing performance of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s glorious “Free Bird.” Maybe you remember this moment. It’s still on my DVR.

In the year that has passed, Conan circumnavigated the media world until he was contractually allowed back on television – hosting a TBS show that carries his name and seems a lot like his old program. The hope was that he would reinvent the medium, but instead, it feels like the ratings update every week from TV by the Numbers tells the exact same story. Here’s their post from last Friday, but it potentially could just be recycled from any of the previous week’s posts dating back to November and Conan’s TBS debut:

“Jay Leno’s Tonight Show adults 18-49 ratings were well below those of  Conan O’Brien’s Tonight Show on a calendar week basis (2010 vs. 2009), and were above Conan on TBS for the week.”

Here’s the pretty proof in graph form, passed along from that same post at TV by the Numbers:

The only spike on there for Conan, naturally, is his debut week on the cable net. By my math, the only thing missing on here is a flat line at around .8-.9 that for Jon Stewart, so the point pretty much stands. Conan has done respectable for cable, but he hasn’t been “can’t miss” in any of these first eight weeks (at least in the shows that I’ve caught up on the following morning). If anything, the cable late night host who has earned that title – along with my new favorite pejorative of “Oprah Winfrey for urban hipsters” – is Stewart, offering to be a voice of sanity in another polarizing and politically charged month.

Last January’s Internet darling hasn’t seen nearly the amount of fawning posts that he enjoyed in that month, just the occasional spike but more in the flat line territory in recent days:

Sure, search volume doesn’t equal commentary, but I think it gives a good sense of the zeitgeist of Conan’s staying power in the mindset throughout – and after – his time on the bench. The whole idea around him heading to cable was to do something different – have we seen it yet?

I ranted about the possibility of Conan doing more with the Internet last winter, but we haven’t seen anything mindblowing. Sure, he has a lot of fun on Twitter and with people checking into his blimp on Foursquare, but I don’t think that’s enough to say he’s pushing the boundary by way of cable or social media. I like the live Conan cam and the other Web video offerings, but they are kind of a sad replacement to a fifth show every week. And, sure, the Flaming C became a real action figure, but it’s not like this is a gimmick that couldn’t have been done on network.

Where’s the innovation? Where’s something that will make me switch off a live Daily Show or catch up in the morning over coffee? I’ll be patient, but hopefully it won’t take a threat of a George Lopez takeover to bring out the best in Conan.

When Timeshifting Hits the Nightly News

It’s easy to talk about how technology has changed the rapid response of news, and how that changes the newspaper industry. What about nightly news? The forces at hand are potentially even replacing not just the content, but the need for a screen beyond a computer or a cell phone.

One victim? The evening news, perhaps. And Brian Williams’s team over at NBC wants to at least try and get any DVR loyalties while they can. From the NYT:

Of all the news commercials on the networks this year, one running this fall for “NBC Nightly News” might be the most unorthodox. In it, the anchor Brian Williams recommends that people record the 6:30 p.m. newscast if they will not be home in time to watch live. [...] “A growing number of viewers tell me they time-shift the news,” Mr. Williams wrote [by e-mail to author Brian Stelter]. “Loyal viewers used to say ‘we watch you every night.’ These days, an increasing number make a point of saying ‘We RECORD you every night.’ ”

The question to me: does this say more about the change to American culture (i.e., being home at 6:30 to actually watch the news) than it does about news habits? I’d generally guess that someone who would watch any evening news program on any of the networks is someone who is plugged into news throughout the day.

Let’s say it isn’t a comment on culture but truly an impact of media consumption. Does a DVR audience require different content? Slightly more in-depth on lead stories since the audience has had more time to gather bits and pieces, but not the chance the synthesize, and then perhaps a longer news feature that doesn’t rely specifically on the day’s current events. At that point we’re about a special guest each night away from a serious version of the Daily Show.

It may just be ads for now, but it is fascinating to see if this does get to be more than that.

Even Emergency Communication Is Getting Personal

Check out CiviGuard, via RWW:

Among other things I am fascinated by: how this turns emergency communication into a pull instead of a push, tapping into social communication and existing networks. Interesting concept worth toying with, for sure.

Quote of the Day: New Media’s Square Peg in a Round TV Hole

“$#*! My Dad Says (which debuts Thursday at 8 ) is what happens when you try to apply old-media values to new-media material….[the writers] Kohan, Mutchnick and the rest have pounded and pounded until they got the premise of the Twitter feed to fit the needs of a traditional half-hour sitcom, but the end result is largely unrecognizable, pointless and profoundly lame.”

~Alan Sepinwall, TV Critic at HitFix in his review of the pilot of the based-on-Twitter sitcom $#*! My Dad Says.