Creativity counts in era of audience fragmention: Rabinovitch

CBC president and CEO Robert Rabinovitch spoke about the challenges of audience fragmentation during an address he gave at the North American Broadcasters Association conference in Toronto on May 16. That challenge is audience fragmentation. For more than four decades our business model has relied upon 30-second ads and a network’s ability to deliver an audience. That model served broadcasters and advertisers well when audiences had fewer entertainment and information alternatives. In those days the networks were the only game in town when it came to providing advertisers with a large, receptive audience. Today, however, tells a different story…Our audiences have more choice today and more choice means our audiences are shrinking, if not vapourizing in some cases. And when they are watching us, they’re employing new technologies to zap those 30-second spots. As a result, advertisers are turning to those mediums that are siphoning off the next generation of our audience. For 18 - 24 year olds, television is being replaced by video games, the Internet, podcasting and other technologies as the medium of choice. I used to think that video games were just a kid’s thing until I read that 16% of men 18-34 count playing video games as one of their favourite leisure activities. What also blew me away was the number of MBA grads I have met that want to go into the videogame business as a career. The New York-based Interactive Advertising Bureau and Pricewaterhouse Coopers recently reported that Internet advertising revenues rose nearly 33% in 2004 to more than US$9.6 billion, demonstrating that marketers’ confidence in the medium is growing. Similarly, advertising within video games – "advergaming" - is expected to grow to more than US$1-billion in the next five years as marketers try to reach those audiences they are no longer reaching through television. …But should we be worried? You bet. Does this shift signal the end for television, as we know it? Time and resiliency will determine that answer. What we are seeing today is similar to the challenge facing newspapers in the 1920s when that voracious new technology called radio arrived in our living rooms. Newspapers were doomed. Forests were saved. And yet, newspapers are still around. So is radio. So is television. So is that soon-to-be-teenaged technology called the Internet. …With audiences already diminishing and with margins thinner than ever, there’s very little incentive to take risks. Indeed, there’s a huge incentive to play it safe. Private broadcasters, who live and die by advertising alone, have to make their audience numbers, in order to make their advertising numbers, in order to make their ROI. Similarly, public broadcasters must generate audiences or risk being labeled irrelevant. But it’s not only new technologies and entertainment alternatives that are causing mainline network audiences to drift away, and with them, the advertisers who are now interrupting their enjoyment 16 minutes out of every prime time hour in America. One factor in the slow decline of television is the lack of bold, risky programming ideas. But it’s clear that the rewards of taking programming risks can be considerable. So who can afford to take programming risks? Well, public broadcasters can, especially ones like CBC/Radio-Canada. Because we receive close to two-thirds of our annual budget from Canadian taxpayers we have the flexibility to take programming risks that private broadcasters cannot. But therein also lies our greatest challenge. We are charged with a responsibility no private broadcaster would ever attempt - to reflect our nation to its citizens, and our regions and people to each other. To provide audiences with programming they can’t find anywhere else…

Creativity counts in era of audience fragmention: Rabinovitch

Broadcast | June 8, 2005

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