In an article about the CW's 2009-10 season comes this strategy nugget:
One broadcast network, CW, is devoting its promotional campaign for the 2009-10 season to the changing nature of TV viewership. The campaign will carry the theme “TV to talk about,” a line that will change from ad to ad to include iterations like “TV to text about,” “blog about,” “chat about” and even “tweet about.”
Isn't creating shows that people will, you know, watch the typical strategy?
And the CW still has the PR magic, note the mantra that is often repeated by the TV press about the unmeasurable "buzz" vs. the measurable "audiences":
The theme of the campaign also reflects how successful CW executives have been in scheduling series like “Gossip Girl” that generate some of the most pervasive buzz for any new prime-time shows — even if not they do not attract commensurately outsize audiences.
via NYTimes.com.
sounds like more of a “we cant do anything productive, so lets come up with a catchy slogan that means nothing” move. If people get really into a show they will talk/text/blog/tweet about it. Like ya know, that one show with the nerd and the hot chick, I think i remember seeing a few blogs/tweets regarding it (but not much…)[/sarcasm]
am I the only one who thinks that More viewers=more talk/text/blog/tweet? and since CW really cant get viewers….
thoughts?
Some other iteration :
TV to send peanuts about
TV to buy sandwiches about
TV to save about
Good God ! There are thousands more blogs and forums and LJ communities talking about Supernatural (or even Smallville and OTH) than Gossip Crap and 90210.
Go see LJ, TWOP, fanfic.net or better, go see CW’s boards : more than 1 million posts for Supernatural and OTH against less than 250 000 for Gossip Crap.
Journalists are as stupid as Dawn. They see promo everywhere for GG and 90210 and they conclude that these shows have “the most persuasive buzz”. People and bloggers talk 10 times more about Supernatural than about GG.
If you take evrything written about Gossip Girl, i’m sure you’ll find out that it isn’t half of the amount of Supernatural J2 slash fanfics alone. There are 7 or 8 Supernatural conventions per year. Some of them in Europe, Australia, Canada,…
But Dawn is just so stupid. She can use and promote all the crazyness around Supernatural. But no, she prefers ignoring the show and talk all day about 90210 and GG.
No one ever talks about Smallville on here. What is the status of this aging show? This past year was just plain silly. I mean Lois Lane being “Stiletto”???
How is the ratings for Smallville? Is this it’s final season?
NOOOO!! The CW stole this idea from my brain, as I was planning to suggest FOX use this same basic concept to advertise Dollhouse! Clearly in this new age, what matters is not how many people are watching a show, but how many people are talking about it in various social media!
And I get what you’re saying, djm, about that show with the nerd and the hot chick! I, too, have heard of The Big Bang Theory!
Lot of bashing of the CW around here. I’d love to see some positive articles and commentary for a change. I like most of their shows (esp. Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill) and am looking forward to their new fall material.
hem Mary-Louise I do not think that the reason of this thread was to understand which show on CW have more posts …but maybe I’m wrong
Lisa, we’re all about the numbers, not the content/stars, etc. The numbers for the CW shows are not often sources for positive commentary.
@ Lisa : there is a lot of bashing because most of the CW viewers hate the network and Dawn Ostroff. OTH fans, SV fans, SPN fans, black sitcoms fans have all dozens of reasons to bash the network. Look at what they did to Everybody Hates Chris. The show has like 5 million viewers on UPN. And what did The CW ? killing it by moving it around the schedule and never promoting it.
I think Supernatural fans are the most harsh and hateful because they are very passionate about their show. And you know, Supernatural is against CSI, Grey’s, The Office and The CW never promote the show. Supernatural’s ratings are up this year. But Dawn didn’t say something like “Congratulations!” or “We love the show”. They cut the budget, they wait the last minute to renew the show and you’ll never see reruns of SPN after ANTM like they did for 90210.
90210 is under 2 million and Smallville is their n°1 scripted show. But what show are they sending to fridays next season ?
TV to vomit about?
Could be worse. “TV to run hate campaigns about when the network cancels our show” seems to be where some shows have gone…
Well, I suppose I feel like this particular posting is complete non-news and really is just an easy opportunity to get in another negative headline and snipes at the CW. I mean, it’s an article about something someone said that’s basically stupid, meaningless, and forgettable. Not exactly big news, or even little news. I kind of wonder why it was even posted here. Nearly all other postings at this site that I’ve ever looked at have a lot more substance to them, so this weak link stands out.
As for the majority of CW viewers supposedly hating the network and Dawn Ostroff, I find that hard to believe. People usually tend to watch a network because they like its programming, and relatively few people probably even know who Ostroff, let alone go so far as hating her.
Lisa, we are in agreement about many things. This is not particularly newsworthy, but when networks do goofy things we like to point them out, and that’s hardly isolated to the CW. Of course, almost no one who watches the CW has ever heard of Dawn Ostroff (or any network head for that matter), but many people in the audience for our site have, and since we discuss the numbers and the business of television it’s completely relevant here.
While it’s not isolated to the CW, Bill, you are *particularly* in futile resistance mode when it comes to the pound for pound, dollar for dollar brilliance of the CW PR team! Next year, for reasons you’ve already highlighted in the 2008 vs. 2009 post, it’s going to irk you even more.
Bill seems to find this kind of thing particularly irksome in the case of the CW, but I’d suggest what’s really irking Bill isn’t what a brilliant job the CW PR team does, it’s just how gullible some of the media is in accepting the results blindly.
Next year as the stories roll in from Variety and TV Week celebrating the CW being up 15% versus last year without mentioning (or minimizing) the lack of Sunday programming Bill should perhaps insert an “OMFG!” before every post of this nature. Or just outright make the category OMFG
Wow …Lisa here in US you take tv very very ( very ) seriously
I don’t hate Dawn Ostroff, but I do seriously question her judgment and ability to run a network.
IMO Ostroff needs to take a good look at what the WB did when it was running. Not that the WB was a huge success but it did many things right for a fledgling network, most notable of which is that it tried to diversify and appeal to more than one type of audience. All Ostroff seems to be doing is vying for the attention of young teens which is hard enough these days without having to compete with myspace and all the other millions of entertainment options targeted at this demographic.
Whatever its ratings problems were, the WB did two very smart things: 1) tried to make shows that appealed to all types of audiences (7th Heaven for the family, Buffy and Charmed for the fantasy lovers, Felicity and Gilmore Girls for the teens, Smallville for the superhero geeks, Supernatural for the horror buffs) and 2) partnered with some of the most talented showrunners to do it (Aaron Spelling, Joss Whedon, Amy Sherman-Palladino, JJ Abrams, Ryan Murphy). It didn’t get huge numbers because its affiliates were limited and competing with long-standing networks, but at least they didn’t try to pigeonhole their programming into only aiming at the younger demographic and no one else (not at first anyway). That is what the CW needs to do – stop trying to desperately to appeal to the teenyboppers and no one else. Branch out their programming and maybe even (gasp!) try to make some shows that’ll appeal to the older crowd. Lately it seems like Ostroff has given up trying to reach out to this crowd because she thinks it’s a lost cause. It’s not. It’ll take some time to find the right premise and showrunner but it can be done, but she’s not patient enough to want to keep trying.
Wow, that’s a brilliant deduction Robert. I can already see the trade papers buying Dawn’s crap.
Here’s a link to a Forbes article earlier this year which might as well had been written by The CW PR department.
@Shelly – Very well said, and completely right. By reducing their target demographic so specifically, the CW is already automatically putting a ceiling on how high their ratings can go. Ostroff refuses to accept that the most successful scripted shows – on the most competitive night, no less – don’t belong in this demographic, and appeal to a broader audience than Gossip Girl and 90210 do. When she loses the last of the WB hangovers – which she likely will within a year or two, depending on how much longer OTH lasts without Chad Michael Murray – the CW will really come crashing down.
I can’t take credit for that, Bill had already deduced it here:
http://tvbythenumbers.com/2009/05/21/cw-2009-fall-schedule-vs-2008-fall-schedule-by-the-numbers/
Not mentioning that this twitting/blogging/faxing stuff can be a “double blade knife” for them ….by definition a fan is not interested in balance sheet, corporate strategy , forecast , budgets and so on ..he just care of his show and that’s it …if you become so dependent on this type of audience you can have a very loyal fan base, but …what happen when you have to take difficult decision ? What happen with you twitter/blogger/faxing audience when you have to move Smallville to friday ( basically announcing its last season ? )