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April 10, 2008
On "Life After Katie"
I know this is a marketing blog, so excuse me if the following post seems every so slightly "off-center" but IMHO it is completely relevant...
I just finished reading a posting on the Time.com Tuned In blog by James Poniewozik titled "Life After Katie." The posting was about the rumored demise of Katie Couric's CBS Evening News show. His commentary should be read by every marketer, in every industry, in every role because it applies to all of us.
Here is a small excerpt from Jim's entry:
"Katie was brought in on the premise that she and her star power—plus a revamping of the newscast format—could bring in new viewers to the evening news, rather than just steal a few hundred thou from the competition. She cannot. God cannot. It is a losing proposition. As I have written before, Couric's newscast has been an expensive final refutation of the desperate belief that it is possible to reverse the slow, inexorable decline of network news. Network newscasts are a holding effort. They are a rearguard action. They are prisoners of demography and cultural shifts that are as irreversible as the physical laws of the universe."
Besides being cool writing, he is right. The article goes on to explain the various demographic reasons why Katie doesn't deserve $15 mil a year to safegaurd her chair while the broadcast's Nielsen ratings plummet. The point for me, however, was broader.
Across all facets of marketing, B2C and B2B, there are dramatic and continually evolving ways in the way the people consume information. Not that long ago, Wired magazine ran a cover story on "snack culture"...our growing predilection for information in small bites (bytes?). Media fragmentation continues to alter audience accessibility to marketers. Blogs and online video are redefining the term pundit. For marketers, the impact is a new landscape in which you must paint your marketing plan. And like network news broadcasts, any efforts to do things "the way you've always done them" would be rightfully characterized as another "rearguard action."
Katie Couric and CBS may have done a favor for more than just NBC and ABC. They may well have taught every advertiser and marketer just how important it is to change...or die.
Posted by jcioban at April 10, 2008 6:53 PM
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