TV executives turn to social networking to shape programming

Social networking - not letters from viewers - is emerging as a powerful new medium for persuading TV network executives when to replace a TV host or revamp programming. That was the message from some of North America's top media players speaking at the Banff World Television Festival yesterday. One company that relies on social networking is Revision3, the online TV network behind the massively successful Diggnation. Chief executive Jim Louderback, one of the speakers on the Digital Heavy Hitters panel, said his company uses social networking sites to build audience communities and determine the direction of its online shows. When Revision3 launched a new program earlier this year that wasn't connecting with audiences, it used feedback from social networking sites to successfully retool the show, including hiring a new host after only three episodes. Joe Ferreira, GM and senior VP of CBS audience network, said the US' top over the air broadcaster is doing the same thing. After last week's launch of new series Swingtown, Ferreira started mining conversations about the show on Twitter, a social networking site where uses comment on issues in 140 characters or less. Almost instantly, Ferreira was able to take granular information to network executives about what viewers like and dislike about the show, so that the show's development directly responds to viewers tastes. "That's the kind of viewer conversations we could only speculate on before," he said. Then Louderback linked the new media process back to the past. "All of the letters used to show up at the network when it cancelled Star Trek," he said. "That was interaction in the 1960's." It may be a simple analogy, but it draws one link on how new media can be leveraged in the television space. No one tried to directly monetize complaint letters in the past, so perhaps the same should be true for social networking."We want to partner with everybody who has a touch point with the consumer," said Ferreira. "We don't necessarily want to monetize every online conversation, but we want to be part of that and have our brand out there." Virgin's move into online content Looking at the past also helps clarify the vision for online distribution. During the panel, Malcolm Wall, CEO of content for Virgin Media Television, reminisced about his favourite radio disc jockey from the past. He said when that DJ was on the radio, he knew he could tune in and enjoy all of the songs that were played. Now Virgin is trying to recapture that DJ model as an aggregator of online content."The trusted aggregator cuts straight to the best content so viewers don't have to search for it themselves," said Wall. "That DJ was my trusted aggregator." Although the television distributors and networks are narrowing in on the right model to balance online and television content, there are still many lessons to be learned. Moderator and director of digital media at Achilles Media Ltd. Mark Greenspan led off the panel by noting that last year at this time he proclaimed that new media was dead and everything now was simply media. Experimental media, however, may be a better moniker. Ferreira said CBS is experimenting with developing exclusive, online story lines that run parallel to existing television properties. And if the online characters and stories become popular enough they could be integrated into the television show. Effectively, the Internet provides a lower-risk testing ground for the addition of new characters and plotlines for TV shows. However, CBS won't know if the process will work until it tries it out. Later, Wall shared a story with Tech Media Reports about a UK broadcast network that experimented with the Internet by offering all of its content online for free for 72 hours after the show aired on TV. The problem was viewers didn't want to watch the shows online until they checked the TV guide a week later and realized they'd missed an episode and needed to catch up before the next episode aired. By that time the 72 hour window had closed. So not only did the network lose an online viewer, it lost a viewer that would have been driven back to the show on television.

TV executives turn to social networking to shape programming

News | 06/10/2008 1:50 pm EDT

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