Week in Review: Discovery Launches An Online Millennial Network; The NFLs Fall Ratings Suck
- Discovery Launches An Online Millennial Network
There are three ways established companies can deal with disruption in their industries. They can bury their heads in the sand and pretend it isn’t happening (the music industry circa 2000), they can try and fight the change tooth and nail, (the publishing industry circa 2008) or they can simply use their greater financial power to buy up and co-opt the usurpers. This seems to be the path that the television industry is choosing and it’s the only one of the three that actually works.The latest example of this is a move announced this week by Discovery Communications. They are acquiring a minority stake in a new holding company, Group Nine Media, that combines Thrillist, Seeker (Discovery's digital network), NowThis, The Dodo and SourceFed Studios.Their $100 million investment, which includes a strategic partnership between Discovery and the new Group Nine, gives Discovery a stake in what looks to be a very popular (and profitable) new venture. Why It MattersIn order to thrive in the years to come, traditional TV companies need to be able to reach a Millennial audience that spends most of its time online. With Group Nine, Discover gets 40 million Facebook followers, 30 million YouTube subscribers, 12 billion monthly social impressions and the top video news publisher on Facebook.That’s a lot of eyeballs and impressions and there’s a whole lot of data that comes with those 40 million Facebook followers and 30 million YouTube subscribers too. That’s data Discovery can take advantage of to help create new programming or to promote its current slate of shows. What You Need To Do About ItIf you’re a TV network, studio or MVPD, you need to remember this lesson: the key to victory is to use your superior capital position to invest in and buy up the companies that are threatening you.The key, of course, is not just buying a stake in these companies and forgetting about it (Disney/Maker) but actually integrating them into the organization, making sure that each side learns from the other. (It’s a fallacy that digital publishers can’t learn from traditional TV—there’s a reason Awesomeness is kicking ass and it has a lot to do with the fact that it is run by people who’ve created successful TV properties.)And if you’re a digital publisher? Find a friendly TV company you wouldn’t mind being a part of. Resistance is likely to be futile.
- The NFLs Fall Ratings Suck
Ratings for NFL games are down considerably this fall— double digits down. (Monday Night Football, for example, is down a whopping 19%) Observers have been offering up all sorts of theories about this, some credible, others less so.The elections seems to be the big one—people are too busy focusing on The Donald and Hillary Show to pay attention to football. There’s the lack of any real identifiable superstars now that Tom Brady and Peyton Manning have ridden off into the sunset. There’s the kerfuffle around Colin Kaepernick and the national anthem protests. There’s the overload of Thursday Night Football. Too much NFL content on social media. Twitter broadcasts.The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson, one of our favorite writers, offers up a far more subversive theory: maybe Americans are falling out of love with football. Thompson isn’t suggesting that interest in the game will suddenly drop to the level of badminton, but rather, that the long dominance that football, NFL football in particular, has held over the American sports fan, is slowly winding down. Why It MattersBecause the networks have invested $50 billion in the rights to broadcast NFL games. And because, for better or for worse, a lot of our national identity is wrapped up in the National Football League.It also matters because the loosening of football’s stranglehold opens up the door for other sports, eSports in particular. This is a booming market that stands to pick up a decent chunk of the audience that the NFL is losing. What You Need To Do About ItIf you’re a network, think about investing in eSports, adventure sports and other alternatives to the NFL. If you’re already committed, don’t sweat it— even with a 19% drop, NFL games still attract a giant sized audience.If you’re a brand, we’d offer the same advice—take a look a eSports and understand that your NFL investment is still reaching tens of millions of fans, most of whom aren’t going anywhere.
TV[R]EV is written, curated and incubated by the BRaVe Ventures team. Find TV[R]EV on Facebook and Twitter, and sign up for the newsletter to stay up to date on the TV[R]EVOLUTION.
