When the US network, CBS, screened the 40th annual Grammy Music
Awards in February, it was one of the struggling broadcaster’s most
important presentations of the year.
The TV giant finished third in the ratings war with its two big rivals
in each of the past four years. And things haven’t improved in the
current campaign.
In fact, CBS recently cancelled no fewer than eight of its top ten
prime-time shows in an increasingly desperate bid to come up with a
ratings winner that would help close the widening gap on NBC and
ABC.
In the absence of the regular appointment programming of its rivals,
such as Friends, Frasier or Ally McBeal, the network needs sure-fire,
one-off audience winners like the Grammies as a carrot to advertisers,
which it can then ask to support modestly performing regular shows such
as Dr Quinn Medicine Woman.
But this year, for the first time, the Grammies presentation offered one
particular advertiser a little bit more than that. In fact, CBS’s
coverage unmasked for the first time a digitally derived process some
commentators think may lead to the end of the TV ad break in its current
form.
The cause of all this consternation seemed, on the face of it at least,
rather unlikely. It was nothing more elaborate than a standard 30-second
TV ad - for a client called N2K Music Boulevard, one of the largest
electronic music stores in the US. The commercial aired during one of
the lead ad breaks and the majority of viewers would have noticed
nothing untoward.
But the ad had one important difference. It contained additional WebTV
codes, allowing subscribers to the three-year-old, Microsoft-owned
service to view an icon in the right of their screen. If they moved
their cursor to the icon, it brought up a picture-in-picture screen of
the CBS awards broadcast in the lower right of the screen, while the
bulk of their picture was given over to the N2K Music Boulevard’s
Website.
’For the first time, music fans were able to access the Music Boulevard
and the Grammy Guide directly from the broadcast for immediate purchase
of the music they were hearing and seeing on the screen,’ J. J. Rosen,
the president of N2K Entertainment, comments.
The broadcast was, in fact, the first large-scale test of the
interactivity we shall all be taking for granted in the imminent digital
age. It followed on from the decision by WebTV to launch its TV
Crossover Links full interactive programme last September.
For advertisers, TV Crossover Links has been marketed as a device that
allows viewers to interact with both television commercials and online
content simultaneously. It is, as the pack WebTV has sent out in a bid
to lure potential advertisers suggests, nothing less than a new
integrated medium - a sort of combination of direct response, online and
broadcast advertising.
Even allowing for the sales hype, there are already signs that this sort
of interactivity is going to be popular with advertisers. Companies such
as General Motors, Honda, AT&T and Charles Schwab have all already
dipped their toes in some of the company’s standard advertising products
and have welcomed the onset of interactivity.
So far, these companies have restricted their actual tests to
straightforward services such as WebTV’s Video Spots - a series of
15-second broadcast ads that appear to subscribers during the WebTV
start-up process.
’Ads with TV Crossover Links introduce the next generation of direct
response TV,’ Joe Poletto, vice-president of advertising sales at WebTV
Networks, claims. ’These ads enhance broadcast commercials to include
product information, promotions, retail locations and calls-to-action to
which consumers can easily and instantly respond.’
The system has been running for some time on the editorial side, and a
link-up with the makers of the sex ’n’ surf series, Baywatch, in April
this year was the first time interactivity had been brought to a major
series. The behind-the- scenes ’wedding photos’ of David Hasselhoff and
Gena Lee Nolan apparently proved especially alluring to WebTV viewers,
driving subscriptions to the service, which costs dollars 20 a month on
top of the dollars 200 set-top box required to receive the signal.
Unfortunately, UK viewers and advertisers are not going to get these
opportunities just yet, despite an agreement WebTV signed with British
Telecom in March to bring the system to trial over here. But the service
and other digital TV initiatives are now only months away and ad
agencies have already started to assess what the impact of this sort of
initiative might be on the commercial break over here.
’The real worry is that this sort of initiative rips up the model that
we all have of the TV ad break,’ Tim Haywood, a digital media strategist
at HHCL & Partners, points out.
’Even when the service shows a picture-within-picture of what’s
happening on the TV, the danger is that the viewer’s attention will have
switched away either from the rest of the ad break or from the
programming.
’The other danger is that we may only be six months or so away from
having decent quality video available on the Internet - and if TV loses
viewers into that sort of environment, they might not be in a hurry to
return,’ he adds.
