Milenthal-DelGrossoYour New Television Season Awaits

The convergence of TV and the internet is moving at very rapid pace. It’s an obvious coming together, but there have been a few interesting stories in the news that really punctuate this inevitability.

NewFronts Becoming the New UpFronts?

Most people in the marketing world know what the Upfronts are. This is a conference of sorts where network and cable television invite the marketing community to see what’s in store for the new television season. New shows are revealed. Current shows that made the cut are promoted. A lot of money is thrown around on behalf of the advertisers looking to get eyeballs.

But there’s a similar conference that has been around for a few years I was not aware of until hearing this on Marketplace…the NewFronts. The NewFronts give advertisers the opportunity to see what programming the Internet community has in store. And this year’s NewFronts were the largest in history attracting thousands of advertising representatives. Companies like Yahoo, Hulu and YouTube pitched their own online programs to advertisers, and some of these have big Hollywood names behind them, like Tom Hanks.

Arrested Development

Then, there was the recently publicized news that NetFlix will be revitalizing the cult-favorite “Arrested Development” on its own platform. What NetFlix learned when analyzing its data is that this little show that was cut from the networks years ago has become one of the most popular “downloads” on NetFlix. So realizing how many people were viewing the past shows inspired NetFlix’ content directors to invite the writers to start creating new episodes. The new season – 10 episodes total – are planned for an “all at one time” release in 2013.

And Arrested Development isn’t the only original content NetFlix has introduced. Today, there is “Lilyhammer”, “House of Cards”, “Hemlock Grove”, and “Orange Is the New Black”. These shows have big names too, like Kevin Spacey.

It’s In the Numbers

It’s not surprising that we continue to witness this given the recent statistics about online video viewing. It’s exciting, really. A recent release from Arbitron cited that 91% of research participants used a tablet or smart phone to view video content while watching network TV. And a recent article presented by Mashable cites that 11% of consumers view network television from devices other than the television (study by comScore of 10,000 consumers).

It won’t be much longer, in my opinion, before TV stations decide to send viewers an email saying, “A new episode of Modern Family is now available at abc.com instead of your local ABC TV station.”

What This Means to Businesses Like Yours

Well, a lot of things, of-course. Advertising opportunities are going to continue to get more fragmented, and the ability to grab “viewers” will continue to become profoundly complicated. But what’s interesting to us is not the advertising opportunities. Instead, it’s about how your business can have its own online “TV” network. If the big online properties are creating their own content, then it’s obvious that you can too, and feature it on an online destination specific to your brand.

We’ve mentioned in our blogs and e-newsletters before about how we view our clients as 24/7 news source…that there is inherently “stuff” happening within your business day-by-day that is broadcast or promotional-worthy. If you think of your business like this, then you have to consider that you can be publishing and distributing your own, custom content all the time.

Your business has new episodes to produce. You’re your own new season of “Arrested Development”, and it’s coming to an internet site hosted and branded by you soon!