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Articles by: "Will Harris – Independent Journalist"

Advertising | Featured Post | Perspectives

Media execs weigh in on Covid-crisis inspired trends: creativity, productivity, and growth

Throughout the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, media organizations have had no option but to rapidly – and even radically – change their existing processes to keep things running smoothly. despite being unable to work within their usual offices and create content in the manner to which they’d become accustomed.

We reached out to some of the members of Digital Context Next and asked them the following question:

“Given the way companies have been necessarily adjusting and adapting to the Covid-19 crisis, what trends have particularly caught your eye, and which ones do you think are most likely to continue into the post-pandemic digital landscape?”

As you’ll see below, the responses were wide and varied, with each exec offering insight from their own unique perspective. But there were also several distinct similarities of observation, hinting at some potentially noteworthy trends in creative problem-solving, consumption of news and information, and increased productivity in a remote work environment.

“The increase in news consumption among younger demographics has caused an influx of new advertisers to the genre. We have also seen a decrease in keyword blocking over the last month compared to the start of the pandemic. Marketers realized that keyword blocking was being applied too broadly and that they were missing important, brand safe content.”

– Jeff Collins
Executive Vice President, Advertising Sales
FOX News Media

“Advertisers, agencies and publishers continue to navigate these challenging times with flexibility, speed and increased communication. The rapidity of creating solutions and working together across the industry has been impressive, and surely that nimble nature will be a constant moving forward. Additionally, the power of live news in a digital environment has been a force. Partners are embracing cross-platform service advertising to support necessary journalism while communicating brand campaigns and messages with mission at the helm. The value for partners and consumers alike is inherent, and from here, we’ll continue to see that grow in importance.”

– Christine Cook
Senior Vice President & Chief Revenue Officer
CNN Digital, WarnerMedia Ad Sales

“I’ve been impressed with how productive our staff has been in a fully remote work environment. I worry that our strong culture supports an effective WFH structure, but that over time, with departures and new hires, that could erode. Even with that concern, I do think that we will be much more accepting of remote work arrangements and lower occupancy in the office.”

– Michael F. Finnegan
President
Atlantic Media

“In addition to some obvious trends that will stick, involving remote work and public health precautions, I’m hoping that the speed and agility of our response to the crisis as publishers will be long lasting. In the AP’s case, we converted to remote operations worldwide, including complex video newsgathering and distribution. The move required us to move master control rooms to staffers’ homes immediately and implement remote tools for video editing to staffers worldwide. Not every project in the future needs to be run as a fire drill like this, but my hope is that we will retain a lot of the muscle memory from our response to the Covid crisis.”

– Jim Kennedy
SVP, Strategy & Enterprise Development
Associated Press

“Independent trustworthy journalism has proven itself in the crisis and is emerging even stronger than before. However the advertising markets across the globe have collapsed significantly and we cannot be sure whether they will return or shift even further towards the mega-platforms. Increasingly, a very few mega-platforms decide if, where and how citizens can use and access journalistic offerings and other services. The Covid crisis has accelerated this development. The policy response in Europe and in the US must be faster, more determined and more comprehensive in order to safeguard free, independent journalism and to re-establish fair competition in digital markets.” 

– Dr. Dietrich von Klaeden
Senior Vice President Public Affairs
Axel Springer SE

“The pandemic is forcing us to look more closely at who we’re reaching and when. And it’s making the case for more surgical, performance-based advertising in lieu of broader brand marketing efforts. Going forward, I think we’ll see a more concerted effort to tie media investment to business outcomes, but those business outcomes will still include brand building KPIs in addition to performance focused KPIs.

“We’ll also see an increased emphasis on flexibility and agility across the media industry as a whole, specifically in relation to upfront/annual budget commitments and creative production. With so much changing so quickly, the last several months have created an environment in which marketers want to mitigate risk as much as possible, especially when it comes to media distribution or to creative campaigns that may need to be altered based on micro/macroeconomic conditions and societal issues.”

– Craig Kostelic
Chief Business Officer, U.S. Advertising Revenue and Head of Global Advertising Solutions
Condé Nast

“Mobile has been a central part of our business but Covid-19 has brought that to a new level – people aren’t in the office so that workday routine is out the window. Our audiences are toggling between mobile devices, laptops, and Connected-TVs at all hours. This means more news during the day (especially streaming broadcasts) but also on evenings and weekends. Offering a great experience across all devices is so important. We’re also seeing the value of effectively pushing content out through app notifications, search optimization, email and third-party aggregators. It’s a very competitive market and you can’t sit back and hope people find your content.

“We’re seeing how important it is to be ready to tell stories with video and with text. Video does well on social media, text does better on search – people have different preferences. By consistently telling stories in multiple ways, we maximize our audience and the engagement we receive. Explainer videos that offer foundational information have been extremely important during Covid-19. Things like ‘What you need to know about Covid-19’ have been consistently among our top videos and most shared on social media. They also have companion articles that share similar information and that’s been a winning formula for us.”

– Marian Pittman
SVP, Content
COX Media Group

“In our space, OTT and other platforms have seen explosive growth. We are also seeing an uptick on online donations, even in these challenging economic times. This is directly related to an increase in the consumption of PBS content both on air and online. We’ve also seen marked growth in PBS Learning Media as more students and teachers and parents look for online educational tools and growth in PBS Kids content, especially the games app that launched only a few years ago but is now used as much as the PBS Kids video app. For PBS I believe all these trends will continue as consumers adopt new habits and discover the quality content Public Media and our local stations bring to them.”

– Ira Rubenstein
Chief Digital & Marketing Officer
PBS

“Three trends catch my eye. One is the necessary acceleration of creating value from audiences other than via advertising, which is proving to be a fickle friend. That means specifically paid content/membership strategies, but also the value in analysis and research via first party direct relationships with readers. In a world without a compass, insight into the thoughts and inclinations of key audiences are gold dust, both for publishers and partners. 

“The second trend is the changing definition of ‘journalism’ from the spoken, video or written format to a more data-driven and graphical experience. The Covid-19 crisis has been played out – and devoured by readers – in charts and graphs. I think there’s a lot more potential to engage readers in the future with this format.

“The other trend is of course the reinvention of the event space. Digital events were always thought to be a poor relation of the live experience. But I’m seeing audience appetite, bags of creativity, and lots of opportunity to develop engaging, valuable events online. 

“It’s a terrifying time for a lot of reasons, but there are exciting opportunities out there, too.”

– Jon Slade
Chief Commercial Officer
Financial Times
Featured Post | Innovation | Video

Complex Networks is making the most out of staying at home

These days, the new normal involves a whole lot of not going anywhere, and it’s a situation that’s wreaked havoc on businesses of all kinds. Yes, that includes streaming programming, too, particularly those of the scripted variety. While viewers abound, production shutdowns have placed the future of many programs on uncertain footing. Some shows have decided that they can –and will – go on, COVID-19 be damned. However, the inability to film within a standard studio environment has necessitated some serious outside-the-box thinking and a whole lot of making the most of what one has at hand.

For Complex Networks, this sort of thing is old hat. Some of their most successful series to date have emerged as a result of being scrappy in the face of budgetary and situational constraints.

Wings and chill

Take Hot Ones as one tasty example. It all started when Chris Schoenberger, GM of Complex Networks’ First We Feast, and host Sean Evans were setting up to interview a guest. After spying some hot sauce in the company kitchen, they came up with the idea of interviewing people while serving them hot wings.

“I think the wings have probably improved in quality since the first time around,” says Justin Killion, laughing. “And the sauce has certainly improved! But it came out of being as opportunistic as possible, given the limited resources that the company had at the time.”

If anyone would know, it’s Killion. He’s GM of Complex Networks and EVP of Operations and Content, and he knows everything there is to know about Complex programming. As such, when he suggests that a few semi-new series in Complex’s programming lineup have the potential to be an heir apparent to Hot Ones, you may want to add them to your “what to watch” list.

Fun and franchises

“If you’re talking about new franchises, Tacos Con Todo, which First We Feast just put out, that show is excellent, and we also did another one called Gochi Gang,” said Killion. “I think both of those are franchises that you’re going to see us double-down on and potentially do more of. But if you want to talk about a breakout show, Full Size Run is right on the cusp. It’s a little bit of an in-the-weeds sneaker show, for true sneakerheads. But it’s edited in a fashion not that dissimilar to what you see on Adult Swim. I’ve never really seen anything quite like it. I really don’t think there is anything quite like it!”

Killion knows all too well how much of a whirlwind the business of streaming entertainment has become in the face of the Coronavirus outbreak – and how much of a boost everyone’s numbers have gotten with people being stuck inside.

“Truth be told, we’re up 35 percent in engagement on our YouTube shows over the last two, two-and-a-half weeks,” said Killion. “That’s just incredible. Our dot.com is up over 20 percent. Our social is up significantly. We’ve seen a massive spike in Tik Tok. We’re doing about five times the daily views that we were doing prior to the quarantine.”

Thirst and lemonade

Looking at these numbers is one of the few ways to make lemonade out of the lemons everyone’s being handed lately. (And by “lemons,” of course, we mean “stay-at-home orders.”) But the public’s thirst for entertainment has also resulted in a certain degree of forgiveness from the viewership, which puts Complex in a position to try some things that they might never have risked doing before.

“The quality of the content still needs to be there. But we’re at a moment in time where no one’s getting dragged for putting out content that isn’t exactly up to their usual standards of polish,” said Killion. “That allows us to take chances that we otherwise wouldn’t be able to take. So, there’s been a lot of experimentation.”

Case and point: Life at Complex. In the pre-coronavirus world, the series involved host Tony Mui wandering around the Complex offices, interviewing staff members. Killion describes the show as “a look-how-cool-it-is-to-work-here kind of thing.” However, when everyone is suddenly working at home, you’re looking at some retooling.

Sole-ful solutions

“What Tony’s turned the show into is almost like an incubator each week for a different format that we’re gonna try,” explained Killion. “One episode is him checking in with all of [Complex’s] different deputy editors… Just kind of getting a sense of what their home life is like in general and getting to know them a little. Then, he did something called ‘Sneaker Battles,’ where he took Brendan Dunne, our host of Full Size Run, and paired him with someone from our editing team. They were comparing sneakers from their own personal closet, and had it judged by one of our directors of photography from Sneaker Shopping.”

Killion says that it’s a fun format that they were able to quickly pull together. However, he points out that, if they’d been producing the show prior to their current ad-hoc situation, “the level of polish on it would have to be significantly higher. We would’ve been shooting with a crew at four different locations to make that happen. Instead, it’s just turning on a computer monitor at four different locations!”

Featured Post | Innovation

How Discovery’s Food Network Kitchen delivers across platforms

Cooking and watching TV: it’s a culinary combination that’s been a staple of the small screen since Philip Harben whipped up a batch of lobster vol-au-vents for BBC viewers way back in 1946 (look it up, kids). But try asking Harben to remind you how many tablespoons of olive oil he said to add to the saucepan and see how far it gets you.

Of course, Harben died in 1970, a situation which certainly doesn’t help the promptness of his reply. But to be fair, even when he was still with us, his program (Cookery) offered little in the way of interactivity.

Needless to say, digital offers a buffet of opportunities to enhance how-to experiences like cooking. And, with its multiplatform, entertaining, and interactive approach, Discovery Inc.’s Food Network Cooking app aims to take cooking shows to a whole new level.

“I remember watching Julia Child on WGBH in Boston when I was growing up. Back then, unless your living room TV was near the kitchen or you actually had a small TV in your kitchen, you couldn’t actually make it along with her,” said Tim McElreath, Discovery, Inc’s Senior Product Manager of Emerging Platforms. “Now you can just bring your iPad or Fire tablet or your Echo show over to your kitchen counter.”

Launched in October 2019, Food Network Kitchen provides on-demand cooking classes, which incorporate an option for online grocery shopping to secure all the right ingredients. However, the strategy doesn’t stop there. Food Network Kitchen also offers interactive cooking instruction with some of the biggest names in culinary television across a wide range of platforms.

Live and lively

“Right now, we’re doing up to 10 live broadcasts a day out of New York and Los Angeles. We’re also doing more and more on-location broadcasts,” said McElreath. “So, we’ll have, say, Bobby Flay up in Chelsea Market on a Sunday demonstrating how to make a chorizo omelet or something like that. He’ll walk you through and try to do it at a pace so that you can cook along. And if you’re watching on a mobile, you can type in a question. It’ll get relayed to the chef by a monitor and then they’ll answer you. Or if they can’t answer it, someone will answer it for you. So your question will get answered.”

“What we’ve seen is that our talent really starts to shine in a live context. They’re great at producing polished scripted programming. But if you get somebody like Michael Simon in front of the camera, talking extemporaneously… He’s just a great raconteur. He can just talk your ear off while he’s cooking. He’ll talk about his experiences, he’ll talk about his family, he likes to talk about how his dad taught him to cook.”

Sometimes the questions submitted during a live broadcast aren’t about the recipe being made, they’re about the chef and their experiences and how they learned to cook. These kinds of questions are also welcome. “It prompts them to start telling a little bit more about themselves.” 

Demanding on-demand

Beyond the live programs, Food Network Kitchen also boasts a library of more than 800 on-demand classes. Many of these are bundled into courses, such as Rick Bayless’s traditional Mexican cooking course.

“We also have courses by cooking types, so we have a baking course, a grilling course, and things like said,” said McElreath. “Each class within a course has a recipe associated with it. But if you watch the course, get the gist of the recipe, and then want to make it again later without necessarily watching the whole course over again, we have regular step-by-step text recipes that you can walk through as well.”

Listening to audio opportunities

For McElreath, the big focus with Food Network Kitchen has been to build the smoothest possible virtual smart-screen situation for at-home chefs, while also providing customers with a value proposition.

The approach McElreath and his team are using for the Food Network Kitchen app – interactivity, value, and entertainment – is an extension of the work they’d been doing on Alexa and Google Assistant.

“We’d been working on voice platforms since early 2016, and it’d been largely kind of a research and development type group for experimenting with the capabilities of the platform,” said McElreath. “The voice multi-mobile platforms were so new that, across the board, people were just kind of making things up as they went to try and figure out how it fit in with their digital strategy. But we’d done a lot of experimentation for things like searching for recipes and recommendations on both the voice and the smart-screen platforms.”

Ease and extensions

For Food Network Kitchen, part of this strategy is making the app available on Amazon Alexa and Echo Show, Fire Tablets, Fire TV streaming media devices, and Fire TV Edition smart TVs. This gives McElreath and his team an opportunity to integrate some of the work they’d already done while also extending the platform out to a very specific situational interaction.

“You know, if somebody’s looking to take a cooking class, and we have a set of ingredients, it should be very easy to get the exact ingredients delivered very quickly,” he explained. “And since we’re on TV, Mobile, and Smart Screen, you can watch something on TV and say, ‘Okay, I want to save the recipe I’m watching right now,’ which shows up in your saves on Mobile while you’re out shopping so that you’re able to use that as your shopping list, after which you’ll go home and be able to walk right over to your kitchen counter and be able to pull up that recipe on Smart Screen without having to search for it again.”

Mind you, with audiences expecting such interactivity between their devices, content companies are going to have to step up their game. Fortunately, McElreath has already considered the many possibilities that exist beyond the kitchen.

“We have a lot of short-form how-to videos like how to chop an onion, how to poach an egg, and things like that. And if we have a content template, then I think there’s a pretty big opportunity to start thinking about applying it to some of our other Discovery brands.”

Featured Post | Innovation

Watch out, streamers: Disney+ just can’t wait to be king

In the amount of time it takes the average TV viewer to contemplate subscribing to a new streaming service, five new streaming services have appeared.  

That last part’s not actually true. But given the way streaming services keep popping up, it’s likely closer to accurate than either we or our wallets would like to believe. That said, there’s only one such service looming on the immediate horizon that’s capturing the attention of viewers in virtually every age demographic. Slated to make its grand debut on November 12, everyone is watching out for Disney+.

The origins of Disney+ date back to August 2016, when The Walt Disney Company acquired a minority stake in BAMTech, a spin-off of MLB Advanced Media, the digital media arm of Major League Baseball. A year later, they upgraded to a controlling stake in BAMTech and on April 18, 2018, Disney subsidiary ESPN kicked off their streaming service (ESPN+).

Picture this

By that point, however, Disney had long since seen the potential in constructing their streaming offering. They began setting things in motion, having already swiped back the rights to the Marvel and Star Wars movies from Netflix and set a deal to acquire 21st Century Fox’s entertainment assets.

If you’re wondering what this means in terms of content available on the Disney+ service, just sit back and spend the next three hours and eighteen minutes (give or take a few seconds) watching this trailer. As its title helpfully explains, it offers a glimpse of “Basically Everything Coming to Disney+ on November 12.”

And we’re back!

No, we don’t think that you actually watched all three plus hours. However, we suspect you couldn’t resist skipping around enough to see how much Disney, Marvel, National Geographic, Pixar, Star Wars, and other programming Disney+ is bringing to the table – and to your screen – when it bows next week.

Subscribe now

Unsurprisingly, The Walt Disney Company is making it very easy to secure subscriptions to Disney+ as they prepare for rollout. They’re also providing ample incentives to give it a try, whether it’s the 7-day free trial membership, the streaming bundle of Disney+, ESPN+ and the ad-supported version of Hulu for $12.99 a month. There’s also the deal where Verizon is offering 12 free months of Disney+ to all new and existing 4G LTE and 5G unlimited wireless customers as well as to existing Fios Home Internet and 5G Home customers.

Yet the question remains: Given all the other streaming services out there, will viewers really be champing at the bit to add Disney+ to their “collection” come November 12?

Watch it

Here are five reasons why Disney+ looks like a must-watch:

1. Disney+ is the new “Disney Vault.”

In the past, whenever Disney has decided to reissue various films, they’ve done so in an ostensibly limited-edition fashion. They assure consumers that, at a certain point, they’ll stop production and the film will  go “back into the Disney Vault” until such time as they decide to reissue it again. Disney+ is already being viewed as a virtual vault. However, viewers can access their favs whenever they want…for a nominal monthly fee, of course.

2. If you like Star Wars and Marvel movies, it’s now the only place you can stream them.

As we mentioned above, it wasn’t a good day for Netflix when they found out that they were going to be losing not only the Disney movies they’d had in their catalog but, indeed, the Star Wars and Marvel stuff, too. One need only look at the top box office blockbusters of the past decade to see how valuable those franchises are. And that’s not even contemplating the drawing power of the new original Star Wars and Marvel series that Disney+ is adding to their programming roster.

3. Those 21st Century Fox entertainment properties? Yeah, that includes The Simpsons.

Yes, yes, Avatar is in the mix, too. And that’ll be a big deal as we get closer to the release of Avatar 2. But Simpsons fans are a devoted bunch. Remember that FXX’s earlier deal with the series resulted in some record-setting programming and a great deal of viewership. However, giving those fans the opportunity to secure access to more than 650 episodes of the series – and the movie, too! – in an ad-free environment is enough to make them shout, “Gimme, gimme, gimme!” and subscribe post-haste.

4. The “come for the classics, stick around to see what’s next” rollout plan.

Disney+ certainly isn’t shirking on offering interesting and high-profile new programming straight out of the gate. This includes a Toy Story spin-off series (Forky Asks a Question), a new Star Wars series (The Mandalorian), and an extension of the High School Musical franchise with a tongue-twisting title (High School Musical: The Musical: The Series). However, Disney+ also has some deals on the horizon that strengthen the appeal of its debut. They’re understandably confident that no one will walk away from the service when they know they’re going to be getting a Monsters Inc. sequel series (Monsters at Work), a second Star Wars series that has Ewan Macgregor reprising his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi, and no less than eight new Marvel series.

5. Even setting aside the aforementioned sign-up deals, the standard monthly price is still a steal.

Of course, the definition of “a steal” is relative. That said, consider this: Disney+ is $6.99 a month, whereas Amazon Prime is $8.99 a month, Netflix is anywhere from $8.99-$15.99 depending on which plan you have, Hulu is $11.99 a month, and HBO Now is $14.99. No matter how you slice it, Disney+ is a bargain.

We can’t say that November 12, 2019 will be remembered as the day the sun set on Netflix and rose with Disney+ as the new king of streaming. But it’s evident that there’s a tussle on the horizon that’s going to put the battle between Simba and Scar to shame. And, hey, the good news is that ringside seats only cost $6.99 a month!

About the author

Will Harris has a longstanding history of doing long-form interviews with random pop culture figures for the A.V. Club, Vulture, and a variety of other outlets, including Variety. He’s currently working on a book with David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker. (And don’t call him Shirley.)

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