Just Show Commercials, PBS
2008 February 4
Dear PBS,
If you’re going to end American Experience or Nova at 50 minutes, and follow it with 6 minutes of boring image spots, promos for other shows, and over-long spots about how much we trust you, before playing the system cue and consigning us to another 3.25 minutes of promos and image spots, why don’t you just give it up and show commercials? Then, at least, you’d make some money instead of simply wasting time.
THANK YOU! PBS has been screwing this up for years now and it’s about time we started this conversation.
I can barely watch PBS anymore because of this nutty dedication to “sponsorship” when in fact it’s “advertising lite” done in a sloppy way. Do they really think the American consumer isn’t wise to what’s going on here? If Americans want commercial-free media, then they’re going to have to pay for it, either via taxes and appropriations or by paid subscriptions. Yet the PBS value proposition in a world of cable has declined to near zero, so that’s not going to happen.
Don’t get me wrong — there’s good programming in there, but it’s a needle-in-a-haystack grab-bag that doesn’t work for real viewers looking for specific content categories. Cable has taught us to expect channels. The web has sites. PBS has… your best guess tonight. Science? Kids stuff? High culture? Mysteries? How-tos? Travel? No one knows but the schedule wizards at TiVo.
But back to advertising / sponsorship — here’s what PBS should do, short-term:
* at the top of the hour, go straight into the program with no more than 30 seconds of thank-yous
* at variable points during the half-hour or hour, insert short ads for your sponsor(s); aim for 3 breaks an hour or 1-2 breaks per half-hour; each break should be 120 seconds or less
* each break should have 30 seconds allowed for local ad insertion
* at the end of the program, run a combo of credits and sponsorship notes on-screen, killing two birds with one stone
* the program should end about 2 minutes before the next hour, allowing for station ID and local promos and ads
Sponsors are supporting PBS for altruistic reasons, but they’re not stupid. The good karma they’re buying is worthless if no one knows about their support. In a channel-surfing world, no one is sticking around for a 10-minute block of image ads and self-indulgent self-promotion.
Of course, all this presupposes that PBS continues to do stuff they way they’re doing it now. That’s just begging for a collapse — and it’s likely to happen in 2010, a year after the analog shut-off. PBS needs to go national and needs to go straight to cable/satellite providers. They need to sell their stuff straight up to cable companies in multiple themed channels a la C-SPAN and be done with it.
Local over-the-air stations should then be given all the PBS content for FREE to run as they wish — OVER THE AIR. Freed from the crushing costs of PBS subscriptions, local stations could innovate and produce and get involved in their communities.
Local cable companies could then decide whether the local TV service is worthy of picking up at all, compared to the national service. In most cases, it won’t be. Local stations will actually have to provide a value-add locally-focused service worthy of being carried on cable. Do or die. Be a relevant community partner or don’t.
But of course, none of this will happen. PBS as a company and as a system will have to collapse prior to any meaningful change. With PBS beholden to 300 independent stations, and 300 stations beholden to PBS, you’ve got a gridlock problem that can’t be solved by “strategic plannning” meetings or summits or whatever.
The only ways to block the gridlock involve taking chances on bold new plans — plans that take the future into account rather than the past. Who’s gonna do that?
THANK YOU! PBS has been screwing this up for years now and it’s about time we started this conversation.
I can barely watch PBS anymore because of this nutty dedication to “sponsorship” when in fact it’s “advertising lite” done in a sloppy way. Do they really think the American consumer isn’t wise to what’s going on here? If Americans want commercial-free media, then they’re going to have to pay for it, either via taxes and appropriations or by paid subscriptions. Yet the PBS value proposition in a world of cable has declined to near zero, so that’s not going to happen.
Don’t get me wrong — there’s good programming in there, but it’s a needle-in-a-haystack grab-bag that doesn’t work for real viewers looking for specific content categories. Cable has taught us to expect channels. The web has sites. PBS has… your best guess tonight. Science? Kids stuff? High culture? Mysteries? How-tos? Travel? No one knows but the schedule wizards at TiVo.
But back to advertising / sponsorship — here’s what PBS should do, short-term:
* at the top of the hour, go straight into the program with no more than 30 seconds of thank-yous
* at variable points during the half-hour or hour, insert short ads for your sponsor(s); aim for 3 breaks an hour or 1-2 breaks per half-hour; each break should be 120 seconds or less
* each break should have 30 seconds allowed for local ad insertion
* at the end of the program, run a combo of credits and sponsorship notes on-screen, killing two birds with one stone
* the program should end about 2 minutes before the next hour, allowing for station ID and local promos and ads
Sponsors are supporting PBS for altruistic reasons, but they’re not stupid. The good karma they’re buying is worthless if no one knows about their support. In a channel-surfing world, no one is sticking around for a 10-minute block of image ads and self-indulgent self-promotion.
Of course, all this presupposes that PBS continues to do stuff they way they’re doing it now. That’s just begging for a collapse — and it’s likely to happen in 2010, a year after the analog shut-off. PBS needs to go national and needs to go straight to cable/satellite providers. They need to sell their stuff straight up to cable companies in multiple themed channels a la C-SPAN and be done with it.
Local over-the-air stations should then be given all the PBS content for FREE to run as they wish — OVER THE AIR. Freed from the crushing costs of PBS subscriptions, local stations could innovate and produce and get involved in their communities.
Local cable companies could then decide whether the local TV service is worthy of picking up at all, compared to the national service. In most cases, it won’t be. Local stations will actually have to provide a value-add locally-focused service worthy of being carried on cable. Do or die. Be a relevant community partner or don’t.
But of course, none of this will happen. PBS as a company and as a system will have to collapse prior to any meaningful change. With PBS beholden to 300 independent stations, and 300 stations beholden to PBS, you’ve got a gridlock problem that can’t be solved by “strategic plannning” meetings or summits or whatever.
The only ways to block the gridlock involve taking chances on bold new plans — plans that take the future into account rather than the past. Who’s gonna do that?
I second the motion John
Rob
I second the motion John
Rob
AMEN to that Todd.