Friday, July 7, 2023

Is The Superstation Era Back?


One of my duties in my first paying TV job involved processing contest entries for the Goody's Home Run Jackpot. I worked for the KTVT television station at the time and Goody’s Headache Powder sponsored our Texas Rangers game broadcasts. If a Ranger homered during the designated inning of a game we were televising, a lucky entrant received the accumulated jackpot of cash. If Texas went homerless, the pot rolled over to the next telecast with more money added to it. 

 

With sluggers like Juan González, Rubén Sierra, Julio Franco, and others on the team, the contest made for drama compelling enough to fill many mail buckets with postcards (analog entries only - KTVT’s first website was a few years away). These entries came from all over the country, too. In those days, a few local stations had placed their signals on satellites. Some cable companies across the country, as well as people with backyard dishes, would pick up the signal. Thus did baseball fans from all over watch the games - and entered to win. We didn’t enjoy the universal distribution of WGN (Cubs) or WTBS (Braves), but we were still a superstation.

 

That word sounds cool - “superstation.” One envisions titans of the industry wielding a giant antenna of power spewing forth content and ads across the land. The reality wasn’t quite as cool.

 

I asked a sales executive once about how useful it must have been to have all the extra viewers that Fort Worth-Dallas’s other stations didn’t have. He explained that it actually didn’t really help them. The people to whom they sold advertisements needed to buy the DFW market. The media buyers he serviced weren’t interested in those (more difficult to quantify) out-of-town eyeballs. They’d be judged on how well they reached Rangers fans (and other viewers) in North Texas.

 

Goody’s discontinued that contest a couple of years into my tenure at the station. I thought they were crazy at the time because of the tubs of postcards in my office on which a whole lot of people had written “Goody’s.” That was not enough information on which to judge their decision, of course. Maybe the price we tried to charge them to renew no longer passed even a mail-tub-intensive cost-benefit test. Or maybe they myopically undervalued the quality and quantity of the audience we were delivering. Who knows.

 

In any case, the superstation era soon ended. Major League Baseball better defined home team territories, wanted to protect national rightsholders, and, eventually, started thinking about streaming out-of-market games for a price. In addition, suppliers of syndicated programming wanted to get paid for the residents of the extra markets who might watch the shows we ran between the sports and the news. 

 

Ah yes - news.

 

KTVT started a regular 9pm newscast in 1990. As an independent station, they had not previously been a player in covering news. But local news can be a substantial profit center for a TV station and we wanted to tap into those revenue streams. Another beautiful thing about news for a station is that it controls the rights to the programming, so it doesn’t matter who watches it or where. As technology has created more “wheres,” it’s also given rise to a new version of the superstation era - one with more revenue possibilities. Consider these developments:

 

• When I started in the industry, your options to watch moving pictures were pretty much TV, at a movie theater, or your home VHS player. We still have those (if you can get your VCR to work, that is) but have added myriad streaming options and devices.

 

• Video has stolen market share from print in a number of ways. On the local side, as reported by Pew Research, newspaper ad revenue fell more than 60% from 2008 to 2018. With a robust video base from which to work, ad revenue has held relatively strong in local stations (when you include their emerging digital inventory) over the last two decades, according to Pew.

 

• With quality syndicated programming less lucrative and more difficult to come by, and opportunity presenting itself thanks to newspapers’ decline, stations have expanded their news products. The National Association of Broadcasters studied Nielsen data to conclude: “More than 107,000 hours of local television news content aired in November 2021 across the country, an increase of over 40% from November 2011 and more than 16% from November 2016.”

 

Did you ever watch WGN’s news program on their superstation? I might have if it came on after a Cubs game. If you were a Chi-town expatriate, you might have been plenty interested. Perhaps there were former Texans who liked it when they could see our Nine O’Clock News after the ballgame via satellite. It turns out that present-day TV station owners think there’s an appetite for such programming. If you’ve got a streaming device (and you all do), it turns out you can watch a large portion of the above-referenced glut of local news, should you find yourself with 107,000 hours of free time this month. Watch newscasts on the stations’ websites, catch clips on social media, or watch aggregated content from local markets on streaming platforms like Roku. A good example of the latter is the CBS News Texas channel on Pluto TV. It includes newscasts from KTVT (which became a CBS affiliate in 1995 - we added a lot more news programming that year and they have even more now).

 

One reason it makes a lot more sense for a station group to have locally-originated programming available outside its markets has to do with how buyers can now purchase advertising programmatically. We used to sell ads in a particular program that Nielsen guessed had a lot of the types of people the advertiser wanted. Now that targeting is a lot more precise and you can buy the eyeballs of people who, for instance, your research has shown will be willing to use a powder product to treat their next headaches. Buyers can be less beholden to local markets, although they can certainly specify geographic filtering. But a more expansive ad world means more opportunity for sales to a broader base of potential clients.

 

As regional sports networks decline, local stations have started becoming a player for sports rights again, too. They’ll likely be limited in how they can utilize those telecasts beyond their home markets, but it’ll be interesting to see how some of these deals shake out in terms of streaming rights. The superstation just might be making a comeback. Entry-level TV workers might still have a lot of (digital) contest entries to process.




Rush Olson has spent two-plus decades directing creative efforts for sports teams, broadcasters, and related entities. He currently conceives and executes content projects through his companies, Rush Olson Creative & SportsFourNine Productions and Mint Farm Films. Through MFF, he’s at work on biographical documentaries about Nancy Lieberman, Sidney Moncrief, Pudge Rodríguez, Ed Belfour, and Bob Lilly as well as a show about the The College Gridiron Showcase.

Subscribe to @MintFarmFilms on YouTube to see excerpts from upcoming documentaries.

 

 

Thursday, June 22, 2023

Tuesday: A Big Day in Women's Sports

 

Women’s sports had a lot going on Tuesday.


The activity on the playing surfaces was actually a bit limited. The WNBA played three games. FIBA held a couple of Eurobasket group stage contests. The WTA’s grass court season continued with early round matches. The National Women's Soccer League and Athletes Unlimited had offdays.

The action occurred in my inbox and LinkedIn feed.

Alyssa Meyers reported in Morning Brew's Marketing Brew Newsletter how Disney Advertising had announced a new initiative called Level Up. It invites advertisers to make a blanket buy across women’s sports content on ESPN platforms. Disney Advertising President Rita Ferro’s department is looking for a minimum spend of $5 million for an advertiser to participate (though they will offer some flexibility in the total dollars and allocations). In order for that size of expenditure guarantee to make sense for the client, it strikes me that they’ll need to see some value beyond just getting a bunch of 30-second spots in game telecasts. At least two additional components might need to be present.

One is that advertisers might want Level Up to act as a “Women’s Sports Upfront,” in which brands commit a certain amount of dollars all at once because they can get favorable rates and placements. One thing I heard a lot about at SXSW this year was how companies wanting to support women’s sports through their ad buys need more inventory with which to do so. When you’re chasing limited inventory, locking in sufficient quantities of it at decent rates makes sense.

The second has to do with one of the reasons one would support women’s sports specifically in the first place: because you want the audience to perceive you as SUPPORTING WOMEN’S SPORTS. A brand that participates in this program wants more than just the same quantity of eyeballs they can get with a content-agnostic media buy. Fans who care deeply about women’s sports tend to spend to support the brands who seem to share that affinity. Some of that will be apparent by virtue of seeing one’s advertising running in, say, a live game broadcast. But a brand may also seek to capture earned media value from their commitment. Participation in custom content and events were also named as options for Level Up participants. Those assets could be useful beyond just their audience traffic if they help with a brand’s positioning.

I read another article on Tuesday, too. This one, from SportsPro Media’s Josh Sim, contained some stats about the United Kingdom gathered by their Women's Sport Trust, although I’d like to think they potentially reflect preferences in other countries, too. They found that 62% of women’s sports fans consume their sports content live. But they also found that “58 per cent of committed women’s sports fans want more non-live women’s sport content available” and “47 per cent find it difficult to find non-live women’s sports content.”

In the U.S., ESPN’s networks, through their various documentaries, pre- and postgame shows, and robust websites have probably done their part to reduce the number of women’s sports fans who find it difficult to find the non-live content they want. But will they need even more? In some ways, the success of Level Up will depend on having sufficient inventory, both live and otherwise, to fulfill promises to the buyers who join in.

Natasha Howard blocks a shot

I attended one of the above-mentioned WNBA games Tuesday evening. The Dallas Wings defeated the Atlanta Dream and the home crowd enjoyed it. I’m sure those who watched the TV broadcast on the local regional sports network, Bally Sports Southwest, did as well.

I joined my friend and collaborator Nancy Lieberman at the game. In addition to doing a lot of work with her eponymous charity, I’m also working on a documentary about the Hall of Famer’s life and career. We’ll eventually place it with an ESPN or their competition. We’re positioning it to maximize multi-platform inventory across her rich story. Custom content, events, earned media, and more will be in play in the creative process right from the get-go. Another article that came out Tuesday, this one written by Fuse CEO Louise Johnson for the Sports Business Journal's website, suggested “it’s time for women’s sport to stand on its own and benefit from bespoke activations tailored specifically for women’s sports fans -- creatives take note.”

Some of us are taking note, and, therefore, today’s developments encouraged us. Somebody’s going to need more inventory.



Rush Olson has spent two-plus decades directing creative efforts for sports teams, broadcasters, and related entities. He currently conceives and executes content projects through his companies, Rush Olson Creative & SportsFourNine Productions and Mint Farm Films. Through MFF, he’s at work on biographical documentaries about Nancy Lieberman, Sidney Moncrief, Pudge Rodríguez, Ed Belfour, and Bob Lilly as well as a show about the The College Gridiron Showcase.

Subscribe to @MintFarmFilms on YouTube to see excerpts from upcoming documentaries.

Friday, March 17, 2023

Support for Girls in Sports (And My Mom)


Last month my mom broke her hip.

She’s 88 years old.

She did it while she was bowling.

I thought about her today after a SXSW panel featuring four prominent women committed to advancing women’s sports. They didn’t mention bowling specifically, though I’m sure they would support more opportunities for female keglers. They did, however, mention some statistics.

Google Director of Global Sports & Entertainment Marketing Kate Johnson, a former Olympic rower, pointed out that 94% of female executives had played sports, with more than half having played at the collegiate level.

However, she also noted that young girls are dropping out of sport at a rate greater than when equality-encouraging Title IX legislation came into effect. That’s a problem all these women want to address and one way they’re doing it is from the top down.

As ESPN’s Laura Gentile (who played field hockey at Duke University) pointed out, women haven’t always had access to executive positions in which they could make decisions about sports-related matters. But as progress in that area has accelerated, it has allowed women in positions of authority to begin to direct resources toward their gender’s athletic pursuits.

This panel focused specifically on mass media and the extent to which it showcases women’s sports content. Ally Financial Chief Marketing and PR Officer Andrea Brimmer (a soccer player at Michigan State University) pointed out that “less than 10% of media coverage goes to women’s sports” currently. She’s working to change that by devoting half her company’s sports media spend to women’s leagues and teams.

Johnson has embraced this sort of equitable distribution as well, including during a stint at Visa that preceded her Google gig. Gentile laid the groundwork for much of the increased visibility of women’s athletics when she spearheaded the establishment of the ESPNW vertical more than a dozen years ago. And it turns out that those decisions did more than help advance a cause about which they were passionate – they made business sense as well.

The fourth member of the panel won four Olympic medals with the United States national ice hockey team. Angela Ruggiero now works producing data that will help those spending marketing dollars on women’s sports justify the investment. Her Sports Innovation Lab’s research shows, for instance, that fans of women’s sports are ahead of the curve in adopting new tech (a characteristic one would think valuable for a property like Google).

One problem they all cited is that no matter how much companies like theirs might want to spend on women’s sports, finding enough available inventory is a challenge (some of us creators are working on making more inventory, fyi). But they also acknowledged progress has been made. I can relate to that. When I began my career, women’s sports options on TV were mostly limited to tennis, golf, and the Olympics. I couldn’t have worked on women’s sports if I wanted to. Now, however, I’ve gotten to do projects for the likes of Athletes Unlimited (a league Ruggiero referenced) and the Dallas Wings. A film we just finished talks about women’s emerging presence in the sport of American football. And I’m working on a documentary about Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of FameNancy Lieberman.

So to loop back to one of the statistics from near the top of this piece – girls, don’t give up on sports. There are people working to make more of a sports world for you than ever before. In another session I attended, Amazon Global Chief Creative Officer Jo Shoesmith talked about how an organization on whose board she serves, Baseball For All, works to give women and girls more opportunity in that sport.

Nancy Lieberman didn’t get to play baseball as a teenager because the boys league wouldn’t let her. Brimmer couldn’t compete in the Olympics because there was no U.S. national team when she played and no women’s soccer in The Games until 1996. And my mom, despite having once scored 57 points in a high school basketball game, had no real options for playing beyond that level during the 1950s.

So she did what Gentile suggested a lot of women in sports do – she tried to help another generation. My mom had girls’ backs. She encouraged my sister and her daughters. As a physical education teacher, she worked every day to help girls (and boys) learn how to stay fit and realize the other benefits sport brings. It’s good to see that’s still the case with a lot of women.

The good news about my mom is she’s out of the hospital and healing as hoped. The doctor said she’s likely recovering more quickly than if she weren’t active, a legacy of her sports background. She’s the best bowler in her memory care unit and the activity director is hoping she gets back up to speed soon, because sports should be for a lifetime – for everyone.



Rush Olson has spent two-plus decades directing creative efforts for sports teams, broadcasters, and related entities. He currently conceives and executes content projects through his companies, Rush Olson Creative & SportsFourNine Productions and Mint Farm Films. Through MFF, he’s at work on biographical documentaries about Nancy Lieberman, Sidney Moncrief, Pudge Rodríguez, Ed Belfour, and Bob Lilly as well as a show about the The College Gridiron Showcase.

Subscribe to @MintFarmFilms on YouTube to see excerpts from upcoming documentaries.