The Future of U.S. Local Television

BIA estimates that traditional media receive about half the dollars outside the political category with the rest going to digital which is growing fast as local linear declinesAt a national level Guideline data show that share of ad spend for linear went from 59 in Q1 2017 to 32 in Q1 2024 Local is known to have taken an even greater hit National and local advertisers have taken half of their local dollars into digital so far and the trend continues New advertisers are also coming into advertising on the digital side who never felt they could afford TVItamp8217s hard to sell local Even before digital came along advertisers who put 40 of their TV dollars into spot in the 60s started to put in less and less and some advertisers disappeared from spot going allnationalWhy is it hard The CPM is slightly higher although quite negotiable in reality and I know one client who got lower CPMs locally than nationally simply by negotiation And it costs the agency more people hours to buy a million dollarsamp8217 worthNow the comparison to digital is that it is programmatic and lower CPM and you get tons of data before during and after Also your kids applaud you for using their favorite digital media which is pricelessStaying the course means accepting that all of the air is going out of the balloon and local TV advertising will become less attractive over time with lower revenues able to pay only lower salaries than in the past and harder and harder to make commissions if youamp8217re a rep or part of an internal sales teamWe donamp8217t have to let this happen Local TV and national for that matter can actually return to its former gloryThe Solutions1 Learn To Sell Against DigitalTake a crash course Happy to help Start with theseNielsen NCS finds that TV has 86 higher ROAS as compared to digital videoThe 10year BHC FOX study finds that TV has 26X the ROAS as compared to digital This MMM study covered 3 trillion in sales vs 50 billion in ad spend making it the largest econometric study in the industryamp8217s history It also showed that brands as they shifted to digital stopped gaining market share Where roughly half had been growing prior to the onset of the great shift today fewer than five are growingNielsen ONE analysis by FOX shows that at 350 GRP a campaign without linear TV will tend to top off its reach at 20 vs 75 with linear TVAds on TV average 15 seconds of attention for 30s and 8 seconds for 15s vs 12 seconds in scrolling digital or 5 seconds for YouTube 54321Skip where most of the 5 seconds are looking at the Skip buttonEven Wharton brainwaves show that digital canamp8217t stand up to the sales impact of televisionBut donamp8217t stop there You also have to make a case to the agency media planners and to the advertisers the CMOamp8217s strategic planners about local The Rogers Diffusion Curve is Sshaped and so each brand finds itself at a different place in that Scurve in each local market The place where a brand stands to get the highest ROAS is in the fastgrowth part of the Scurve Every station needs to know where its market is in each national brandamp8217s Scurve This is lost art I was the discoverer of the data pattern in the early 80s and the ANA informed its members For a while spot thrived off thisIn parallel with crashcoursing your rep and internal sales team selling against digital you also have to sell your own digitalToday all of the growth in local TV is coming from streaming apps and other forms of digital More than 50 US TV stationsRSNs regional sports networks are using Nielsen to measure their streaming app audiences and have the option to have that data included in currencyIf someone asks you why are you now trying to sell them digital when you were a moment ago lambasting digital Itamp8217s because television stays as sweet as it is when it gets delivered digitally Television as an experience is so good that how it gets delivered means nothing It fully retains its valueThe real choice you have to communicate to advertisers and agencies is that their ad will be a better experience in TV Some of it can be the kind of digital TV that is taken from broadcast TV but is now streaming It must not be limited to streaming because that curtails maximum reach right now more than half should be linear And the digital TV that you do buy should be mostly of the professional television varietyThe usergenerated kind of digital TV and other digital video forms that have lesser dramatic production quality and midlevel rather than top talent and often mispresent advertising without due respect do not come close in terms of psychological persuasion power as compared with television But the brand must include all media types to truly maximize reach2 Become Digital YourselfYou must have a streaming app If you feel you cannot afford it alone get sponsors andor join a panlocal schemeYou should also use all digital channels all half dozen or more major social media platforms mobile branded content your own website blog vlog YouTube TikTok Not just for tunein but for actual destination content you produce with sponsors Your station brand should be all over the place You should present as a digeratiGoing all the way into ATSC 30 is the ultimate way to truly become digital through and through You are addressable measurable and interactive The audiences will be more and more related to purchasemotivation data and less and less to demographics In ATSC 30 you can be switched over from broadcast to IPTV on the Internet itself You can do everything digital can do except you are video professionals which gives you an edge That edge will have its greatest effect the sooner you moveGo programmatic early in the game Team up to make it easier for the buy side to buy all local as if it is national or global programmatic3 Become World Leaders in Measuring Sales EffectBecause television has more sales effect per dollar than digital it behooves people with a vested interest in television to make sure that sales effects are measured for as many campaigns as possible with those results visible to the sell side on all occasions The third party measuring that must have maximum credibility4 Have Unique Programming People WantBrands should always leverage their inherent strengths What is the inherent strength of local TV The connection to the community Therefore team up with the local talent base including schools and colleges and create a process that works in your markets to organize an activity of creating local programming with local sponsorsThis is what would have happened 70 years ago if the economies of scale had not temporarily put their thumb on the scale and for that period of time made it unnecessary for local stations to exert that effortThe grace period just ended Time to get into the programming businessHere are some possibilities to prime your pumpYouth sports ages 1319 The people in your market care a lot about this topic their kids or someone they know is involvedLocal musical improv dance comedy poetry slams theatrical and other events you can help create in some cases the venue being the retail sponsor with adequate spaceOn one of your digital subchannels try running paid 5minute trailers for new shows end to end Not just your own shows obviously Test to see whether you make more than you loseOn another subchannel test to see whether you and Solutions Journalism can create a channel all about the people in your market who are living their lives to bring about solutions to the challenging problems the human race faces right now Call it Local Heroes or something like that Once you have ATSC 30 make it interactive so everyone can participate from wherever they are as if it were a big Zoom meetingOn yet another subchannel have rotating DJs who kibbitz an AI who has a moving speaking visual image like Max Headroom and answers callinwritein questions Soopraai can do that they run my personal AI which sounds just like me and gives very close answers to my own but it cannot laugh yet Try the audio version of my personal AI Ask it any questions Imagine what the show would be like and the AI can take on different appearancesThis is just the beginning of what could be the Next Golden Age of TelevisionFull disclosure I totally believe in these scenarios and already have skin in the game Iamp8217m part of a new consultancy The NewStar Group which is working with US Youth Soccer right now to bring youth soccer boys and girls ages 1319 into local TVWe have also linked up USYS with WeAre8 a new form of social media just beginning which is all about turning social media into a source of light rather than darkness WeAre8 is already affiliated with national media in the US Warner Bros Discovery et al and in other countries and seeks affiliations with local media as wellDo you believe you have enough talent in your market to make great television I do Thatamp8217s the real point isnamp8217t it Optimizing the advertising and all that other stuff is crucial but the center of the plate is having an audience draw that no one else hasBeing local itamp8217s your birthright to bring out the best of what is local in your market and make it available to the worldPosted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership selfpublishing platformClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillageorgMyersBizNet

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The Future of U.S. Local Television

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