Chapter Seven Hundred and Forty Sixth Circle
In the early days, the popularity of a TV program could only be shown through a long-term viewership curve. If TV stations wanted to know the audience's views, they could only obtain information through newspaper questionnaires and random telephone interviews. The efficiency is very low and the accuracy is not high.
With the rise of the Internet in recent years, this situation has changed rapidly. After the broadcast of "America's Next Top Model", although the popularity in traditional media was not high, its popularity among ordinary audiences was very intuitively displayed on the Internet.
The "America's Next Top Model" section of the Yahoo Forum has added nearly 180,000 new members in just one week. In Yahoo's search engine business, "America's Next Top Model" has also quickly become a popular word. The number of fans on Cindy Crawford's personal homepage has skyrocketed. Before the show aired, her personal homepage only had more than 10,000 fans, but within a week of the show's broadcast, the number skyrocketed to 120,000. And it is still increasing rapidly.
Because the personal homepage business has just been launched, although the overall number of users is large, the related social networks are still in the period of cultivation. tens of millions. Therefore, with the popularity brought by "America's Next Top Model", Cindy Crawford's fan base is far away from everyone in the same industry, and even caused reports in traditional media.
Catalyzed by the unwittingly spreading topic, a week passed quickly.
Although because of the audience feedback from the previous week, everyone is full of confidence in the ratings of the second episode.
However, when the ratings statistics for the second season of "America's Next Top Model" were released, it was a surprise.
The highest number of viewers was 3.5 million, the average number of viewers was 2.8 million, and the viewership rate reached 1.6. Breaking all TV ratings again.
While the viewership numbers are nowhere near comparable to PR TV, the 18- to 49-year-old core viewership figures most valued by advertisers, as America's Next Top Model audiences are concentrated among young women. The ratings of 1.6 are already on par with regular dramas on public television.
The production and promotion of America's Next Top Model and Project Runway have always been closely linked.
Influenced by the cumulative popularity of "America's Next Top Model", on the following Thursday. The first episode of "Project Runway" also achieved a beautiful result with an average viewership of 2.6 million, and the highest viewership also easily exceeded 3.1 million.
Although "Project Runway" is a fashion production program, under the control of Eric and the "Survivor" team, this reality show is not as professional and rigid as the audience imagined. The skeptical viewers of the more specialized reality show were quick to embrace the show, relishing the open-ended schmoozing with contestants and the pleasure of turning any material into beautiful fashion.
As ratings soared, traditional media were keen to capture the news potential of the two reality shows. Reports began to follow, which further contributed to the rapid spread of the fame of "America's Next Top Model" and "Project Runway".
In the following weeks, the ratings of the two reality shows showed a trend of rising side by side. In less than a month, the average viewership of the two reality shows broke the 4 million mark at the same time, and the popularity of "America's Next Model" After all, it is higher than "Project Runway", and the highest viewing data of the fourth episode even reached 4.6 million.
At the same time, in just one month, with the popularity brought by the two reality shows, more and more people began to pay attention to the TV station.
Because of the speed at which America's Next Top Model and Project Runway went viral. Either because of curiosity, or because they want to follow the topic of the group around them, many people find that there is no TV station in their cable TV package. They all opted for a replacement package.
Therefore, the subscribers of the TV station easily exceeded 40 million from the initial 34.5 million in the following month.
Those operators that carry TV signals are better, and they can easily change subscription plans after getting user requests. But the life of operators without TV signals is not so easy. Among them, the most unlucky one is undoubtedly Time Warner.
Things have to start when the TV station reform plan is prepared, when the two reality show plans are confirmed. Katzenberg personally contacted the executives of several operators such as Comcast, Telecom and Time Warner, hoping that the other party could carry the TV station's signal on a larger scale.
but. Because the TV station has always been sullen, several major operators have been very indifferent to Katzenberg's requirements. Katzenberg lobbied everywhere, but with little success, adding only 3 million subscribers until America's Next Top Model aired.
Operators such as Comcast and Telematics are just fine. They do not have large-scale self-owned TV stations. To increase or decrease the number of users of TV stations, most of the time the reference is based on TV station viewing data.
But Time Warner is different. After learning of Firefly Group's reform plan for TV stations, considering that once the TV station rises, it will definitely compete with Time Warner's wb TV station, which also faces young audiences. Therefore, Time Warner not only did not cooperate with increasing the TV station's users Scale, on the contrary, before the autumn file, by changing the form of the package, the number of users of the TV station was reduced by 800,000, and, even more sinister, some of the users that Time Warner cut off were concentrated in New York and Los Angeles. among.
Fashionable women in metropolises like Los Angeles and New York are the most potential user groups for the two reality shows "America's Next Top Model" and "Project Runway". After hearing the news, Katzenberg called directly to the era. The head of Warner's cable division yelled.
However, it may be the answer to the post-autumn reckoning.
This autumn has not yet passed, and Time Warner has already suffered retribution for its small tricks.
If America's Next Top Model and Project Runway didn't catch fire, then. For the 800,000 users whose signals were cut off, TV stations are naturally dispensable, and no one cares about it.
But the current situation is far beyond everyone's expectations. As the broadcast progresses, "America's Next Top Model" and "Project Runway" have become hot topics among many young women. When everyone is discussing the regrettable elimination of a contestant in "America's Next Top Model", when a girlfriend is chatting about an amazing outfit in "Project Runway", because all the packages of the cable operator at home do not have it. You can't put a single word in the signal of the TV station, the embarrassing situation can be imagined.
Operators in the United States also have geographical monopolies. In order to avoid unnecessary competition, operators such as Comcast, Telecom, and Time Warner have tacitly divided their own sites and some relatively remote areas. Residents often can only choose one operator to access the cable TV signal.
If you are unfortunate enough to encounter this situation, you will naturally consider yourself unlucky. However, in metropolises such as New York and Los Angeles, where every inch of land is basically contested by major operators, this potential monopoly does not exist.
As a result, users who couldn't find TV signals in Time Warner's cable packages turned to Comcast and Telecom operators in order to watch "America's Next Top Model" and "Project Runway."
In October, when Time Warner's cable division counted its subscribers again, it was astonishing to find that in just one month. Time Warner quickly lost 460,000 subscribers.
What a concept this number is!
Time Warner has only 15 million cable TV subscribers. After cutting down 800,000 TV subscribers, there are only 3 million remaining subscribers. It belongs to the lowest level among several major operators. The root of all this is of course because of the competitive relationship between Time Warner and Firefly.
But at this time, the loss of 460,000 subscribers in one month is equivalent to 3% of the total number of Time Warner cable TV subscribers. This is only one month. You must know that the number of Time Warner subscribers increased throughout 1994. 1.6 million. And, if this is left to continue. Time Warner's cable TV business will not grow this year, but will retreat to the point where it was two or even three years ago.
Terry Semel is battered by yet another failure of his summer movie business. Hearing this news, the person in charge of Time Warner's cable TV department shouted and cursed. Time Warner originally wanted to deal with this matter silently, but for some reason, the news was suddenly spread out.
For a time, the news of "Time Warner's cable TV business plummeting" flooded the media. Although everyone knew what was going on, Time Warner completely wanted to suppress the development of TV stations, but because of "America's Next Top Model" and "Project Runway" "The strong rise, in the end, stealing chickens is not a loss.
If you lose 3% of users in a month, how much will you lose in that year?
Many people couldn't help but ask, and there are undoubtedly many people in Time Warner's shareholders who thought this way, so the management received pressure from all sides again.
In order to quell this matter, someone must come out and take responsibility.
Time Warner's internal forces are intertwined. A cable TV department is entangled in several forces. Everyone knows the ins and outs of this incident. Therefore, this storm cannot be regarded as a business error at all. It is impossible for Terry Semel to provoke internal disputes under external pressure. In the end, he can only knock down his teeth and swallow it in his stomach, putting himself in the cable TV department. The spokesperson was identified as a scapegoat.
In just a few days, Time Warner announced that a vice president of the former cable TV department was about to leave due to a decision error, which was an explanation to all parties.
But it certainly couldn't have ended that way.
The popularity of the TV station is still rising rapidly. Time Warner has lost 460,000 subscribers. If the signal of the TV station is not reconnected as soon as possible, and the situation continues to develop, the situation will definitely be worse.
After hurriedly dealing with the pressure from the outside world and shareholders, Terry Semel called Katzenberg in person.
The call was diverted to Katzenberg's secretary's office, and the reply didn't seem surprising at all: "Mr Katzenberg isn't here...when will I be contactable...not sure."
After several unsuccessful attempts, Terry Semel had to call Robert Iger, who had just taken the helm of Firefly TV.
Robert Iger's attitude is very enthusiastic, but he just said that because the ae TV network is a joint venture with the Hearst Group, he is not easy to interfere in the affairs of the TV station.
Condescending again, directly dialing the number of Anne Sweeney, president of the ae TV network.
Anne Sweeney was more direct: "Sorry, Mr. Semel, the decision-making power on this matter is no longer in my hands."
In the office at Time Warner headquarters in Manhattan, after being rejected three times in a row, Terry Semel almost threw the phone out of his hand.
Looking at the gray sky outside the office glass window, and taking several deep breaths in a row, Terry Semel calmed down.
Terry Semel certainly understands that this is Firefly's counterattack against Time Warner's original decision, and it wants to deliberately hang Time Warner for a few months. △≧miào.*bi(.*)gé△≧,
However, in the current situation, Time Warner absolutely cannot afford to wait.
If next month, Time Warner's cable subscribers drop by hundreds of thousands, he, the CEO, may be involved in this matter.
After frowning and thinking for a long time, when Terry Semel was considering whether to fly to Los Angeles to interview Katzenberg in person, he suddenly remembered, it seems, the young man behind Firefly should be in East Hampton now.
Although he hadn't visited, it was not difficult to find out where Eric lived. After a few phone calls, he quickly got the address of Eric's manor in East Hampton.
After thinking for a moment, Terry Semel ordered the secretary to prepare the car, and he planned to rush to East Hampton himself.
After all, as the absolute controller of the Firefly Group, if you can directly get Eric Williams' promise, it will definitely far exceed the repeated entanglement with Katzenberg and other high-level executives.
Moreover, although he admires this young man for creating a huge industry in just a few years, deep down in his heart, Terry Semel still feels that Eric Williams is young and must be younger than the shrewd Carson. Berg is much easier to deal with. After all, he has always believed that a person's experience must be closely linked with age, and even those geniuses are probably unlikely to jump out of this rule.