5 Ways to View the Ryan Seacrest/NBC Universal Deal

by | Apr 30, 2012 | Cross-sector shifts, Innovation Shifts, Synthesis: Cross-Sector Shifts, Tech+Change

A reporter from a major newspaper emailed me on Friday with three questions about the Ryan Seacrest/NBC Universal two-year, multi-platform deal.  He had found me from one of my non-Maremel roles: lecturer at UCLA Anderson Graduate School of Management.  (I’m off this quarter, and back in June with their summer program.)  

He asked about (1) whether ubiquity is necessary in media these days, (2) what the deal was like from a management point-of-view with Ryan as a business, and (3) whether there is a risk of backlash.

I thought about these issues, and came back with five ways to view the deal:

  1. Diversification of his brand portfolio with this deal, to expand into prime time, sports, elections, and a broader morning show portfolio. 
  2. Comcast/NBCUniversal’s need to bring younger audiences to NBC News, and elections, and possibly women to Sports. 
  3. Social Media, essentially in “buying” a Klout score
  4. Ubiquity – Wow, he’s been ubiquitous for years
  5. Strategic role vs. being the product 
  • Diversification:  I’d contest he already is ubiquitous, though in entertainment modes across the US and some global distribution.  What this deal gives him is diversification; it helps him move from an entertainment brand to a news, politics, sports, and prime time brand.  Bluntly, it could reduce his “fluff factor.”
  • Comcast audience challenge:  The TV audiences are getting older, or younger viewers are finding other modes of engagement instead of watching network TV as network TV.  Ryan is a broadly appealing brand with a younger audience base than election coverage usually attracts.  Whether the Today Show, the news, or even Prime Time, Ryan brings a potentially younger demographic than currently is showing up to those genres.  For US elections, this age gap in attention on Network TV is of increasingly important; as Morley Winograd says in his work on Millenials, “only 5% of Super Tuesday’s votes were cast by people under 30,” while they make up a much larger percentage of the US population.  (http://communicationleadership.usc.edu/blog/post_6.html)
  • Social Media: He also brings a nice, high Klout score (85), a strong Twitter following (6.6 million), robust Facebook following (487,000 subscribers), and other direct connections with fans.  That asset set dramatically could help the interconnections with these old and new media delivery arenas for NBC Universal.
  •  Ubiquity:  Being in LA, Ryan has been everywhere for years.  I think I first heard him on KYSR back in the 1990s.  As he added in his American Idol, E!, and American Top 40 expansions, it felt to many of my friends here that Ryan was everywhere all the time…quite a while ago.

    My funny story there: My two teenage daughters joined me at a much younger age to see an American Idol live taping, I think in Season 2.  Ryan came into the audience and spoke with them a while, which both my (now) 14-year-old and I remember vividly.  She remembers that moment now, mentioning that it was so cool as he was a famous person (back then).  I asked her about him now.  “Well, he’s a lot less famous now.”  I think that the “ubiquity” might be apparent now to those Americans who spend time in traditional television; it won’t affect or even be noticed by my 14-year-old unless those outlets come into her social media sphere to do more than just hire Ryan. 

  • Strategic Role vs. Being the Product:  He already was amazingly busy as an individual.  I’m not sure how all of this will work for him.  As a leader of a production holding company, his time will be swamped out by all of this face-time.  I don’t know Adam Sher and Jeff Refold from his company management team, or his support network including his CAA team – I’m hoping that they will be able to leverage these new demands on his time, as well as the January co-investment in AXS TV and new incoming funds from Clear Channel and others.  Hopefully they can mix this all with his time and health, creating strategic opportunities for him to make it all happen. 

Some comparisons have been made with Dick Clark.  Dick Clark Productions leveraged his time, making his ideas come to life.  Dick did a lot of things himself, but seemed to structure his business world to help him amplify his influence beyond his appearance.  Ryan has made some efforts in that regard, but the deals in January would be the core to help him create robust, permanent economic legacies for him other than his charm and appearance.    Perhaps this NBC Universal deal can help him bridge in this direction as well.  I hope that it doesn’t put too much complex pressure on his time that may pull pieces out of a complex puzzle. 

Ryan Seacrest ubiquitous?  Nah.  😉 

Monday Panel on Digital Media 101, Digital Hollywood 2012

by | Apr 27, 2012 | Events and Projects

Join us Monday, April 30, at 10 am for our Digital Hollywood “Digital Media 101” panel.  It will feature Phil Lelyveld (USC 3D lab and private guru), Andrew Wallenstein (Variety), Jim Halkett (THQ), Ben Spergel (Ipsos), and Sam Kling (Peer Music).

If you will be at Digital Hollywood or the Variety Summit, please join us!

Social Listening: Cool Tools

by | Mar 29, 2012 | "How To" Tech, Innovation Shifts, Tech+Change

We’re building new short-form classes here at the Maremel Institute (and join our email list to find out more about the upcoming schedule).  One that so far is in high demand is on Social Listening, the arts of using social media for business intelligence not just on big trends, but also on where unique conversations are going on that align with your work and message.

We are looking at current resources to share in these courses, and ran into a great SlideShare deck from December by Rosie Siman (@rosiesiman) on Social Listening tools.  We wanted to share this great visual representation of tools while we are putting our own work together.

1) Enjoy!

2) Let us know which ones you like or have been missed.

3) Let us know what you’d like to make sure that we cover in these new short-form classes.  You can contact us at synthesis [dot] maremel.com for more information and recommendations.

Social Listening Tools

View more presentations from rosie siman

 

Changing Tech Stories to Change Organizations

by | Mar 21, 2012 | Events and Projects, Innovation Shifts, Tech+Change

We enjoyed meeting all the people who came to our Computer Using Educators session in Palm Springs, California, last week.  Our presentation, “Reframing Technology Narratives and Routines To Energize Organizational Change,” is up on Slideshare, plus embedded below.

To some, this may seem VERY complex, and we are working to make much of this more simple.  One of the participants last week suggested we create a workbook, which is a fine idea.

The core story here is that we worked with a K-12 school district last year to help them understand how they could change their own stories about technology blockages.  First, we gathered stories from 22 individuals at different locations and levels across the organization.  Then, we analyzed those narratives and brought them back to the organizations’ members in focus groups.  The groups took apart the patterns, and later individuals took action to changes some of the main stories across the organization.

Reframing Technology Narratives and Routines To Energize Organizational Change

View more PowerPoint from Gigi Johnson
Owned vs. Newly Purchased Media

Owned vs. Newly Purchased Media

by | Jan 26, 2012 | Innovation Shifts, Tech+Change, White Papers

Fifth of a Series of Blog Posts from Maremel’s White Paper: Opening Pandora’s Digital Box

Challenge:
Fates of Owned Media vs. Newly Purchased Media

Will it be worth the consumer’s while to convert old to new?  Time and convenience have been trumping cost in many instances.  iCloud from iTunes, for example, provides clean tracks to replace ones you already have in your physical storage for the cloud.

UltraViolet, in the film realm, has approached this transition with a mixed package.  Buy a DVD and gain rights to using the content in any mode, including online.  The fine print on the online is for a year, with rights then to be renewed for an undisclosed sum of money.

Consumers, with available freemium storage space over 5 GB now, are being trained by the marketplace to not pay for digital storage.  Will users pay a premium to store their digital stuff, or judge whether they will use something a second time?

Other forces are training consumers to “borrow” content, for one-time use.  Video on demand has not performed as many early analysts predicted a dozen years ago, but provides a single-use option with much less revenue to the studio or producer.  The TV Everywhere initiatives by many of the cable companies, including HBO Go, are training consumers for subscription-based extensions into the mobile world from their video services.  Netflix’s 24 million subscribers (3Q2011) and Hulu’s 1 million premium subscribers are all following the call of renting a package of experiences.  All of these services provide robust ways to not “buy” anymore, with a strong connection and even tethered in many off-line environments.

Challenge:
Usage Models for “Buying” Versus “Renting”

Questions of ownership may have more to do with usage models instead of media segments.  Products may need to address different aspects of the consumer relationship, especially need for multiple sittings to consume the content (e.g., books, games, and classes).

 

 

 

Ownership may make sense across multiple users (e.g., family media ownership), who may not be sharing all of their media subscriptions.