Illuminating Marketing Blog

Think about the last time you sat down with your remote to watch TV. After settling in on a show, you watch until the screen turns black and that guy from Subway pops up with this ten year old very large pants. The black screen, the break in programing, caused an involuntary response in your hand. You reach to the remove and immediately start flicking through the channels. You plan to come back to your previous show, but as you're bouncing around the cable system, you get distracted and forget what you were watching before, and move on to another show setting the cycle to repeat again.

Television networks hate this. Your channel surfing means their loss of audience. A loss of audience that occurs at the exact moment when networks need that audience most - to view the advertisements placed on the network. Managing breaks - between shows, inside shows, during commercials - has become a huge problem. And as a smart marketer you should know how the networks working on solutions.

Let's introduce Lee Hunt. Lee's a former television branding executive who built a reputation as being the creative powerhouse behind repositioning networks like PBS Kids, Lifetime and XM radio. His company's focus now is on helping these networks find better solutions for managing audience break migration. Last year, TVWeek sat down with him to talk about ways that subtle management of programing transitions can minimize audience shrinkage.

If you're going to place an ad, you need to know that you ad is being seen. If the publication, television network, radio show, website or outdoor placement is ignored by the audience, you've just wasted all the time and money that it took to create your ignored ad. At least, in the case of television breaks, the networks are as concerned as you should be.