Should we have less actual media placements and just make them the right ones? This is the question provoked by Fox’s recent decision to limit themselves to five commercial minutes per hour in two of their new programs. Media Nerd suspects that these premium units will initially be snapped up at a package rate by long-term big spenders while the network looks at the effectiveness of this strategy. The alternative scenario is that the cost will be sufficiently high to have more :15s being placed into these programs. This certainly won’t solve the clutter problem because of the traditionally-perceived lower recall rate of the :15s, leaving everyone back where they started while paying more for it. Nobody wants their CPPs to double, so the return for this has to be more than twice the sales to make it viable.
The Spanish-language networks already run fewer commercial minutes per hour and more program promos, mostly not cluttering the screen during credits or program time. When you factor in the lower commercial load during most novela premieres, you have an audience that isn’t picking up the remote. Good opening episodes will then mean a loyal audience.
Univision’s forthcoming Video on Demand in 2009 comes as no surprise in a market with increasing media choices and comes as very welcome news to viewers who want to have choices about viewing times. The damper on this good news, however, is that their licensing agreement with Televisa doesn’t allow them to provide their blockbuster telenovelas within the VOD offerings.
No te preocupes, because Televisa’s own viewers have come to the rescue: A few of them are meticulously posting entire episodes to YouTube. Media Nerd saw the first 40 episodes of Fuego en la Sangre prior to its record-breaking US debut and saw numerous posts from regular YouTube users eager for the next installment. The stream count for most of those clips so far is in the low to middle 5 figures, not enough to cut into Univision’s normal viewing audience, most of whom clearly prefer to see their programs on a standard-size or large screen with significantly better resolution.
The ones censored by Univision, however, got over 200,000 plays each.
Media Nerd, having seen some of the badly edited DVD sets of a few past titles, would happily watch them on YouTube. Even with commercials. Muchas gracias, amigos.