A New Realm of Television

A New Realm of Television: Netflix, YouTube, Amazon, Oh My! from Jessica Lane

My attempt at providing insightful recommendations on how cable TV networks can hedge against the disruption of Pay TV by focusing on: Content, Distribution, Advertising & Collaboration. I completed this research and presentation as my capstone project at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Here’s a quick rundown of my findings:

First –> I painted a picture of the state of the industry. I wanted to understand how much disruption is costing traditional media.

Check the slides for the overview.

Second –> I compiled my top four recommendations based on industry interviews and panels

Build immersive, socialized experiences
Avoid content overexposure to strengthen future revenue streams
Invest in better ad production & more relevant measurement
The future of the media industry will depend on collaboration

Check the slides for details

Lastly, here’s why I chose this research and why I decided to devote so many hours during my last year at business school.

A little bit of the transcript from the opening of my presentation….

When I started at TBS & TNT in 2008 – working in Marketing – TV launches were all about finding the right audience – a big audience and getting all those eyeballs to tune-in for the premiere. Everyone focused TV spots, spot testing and seeing your key art on billboards and magazines you intersected everyday. This was the priority and this is what everyone wanted to work on.

The interns, which is sort of what I was, worked on things like radio and this new platform, no one really knew anything about, social media. And, I excelled.

Then, it all changed when I got to work on Conan’s launch on TBS. After the NBC debacle, all of his fans gathered online to support him. So our job – which became job – was to migrate those fans from digital to the television. This was a seismic shift in strategy.

I did crazy things, like create a server-decimating T-shirt contest giving away 1000 t-shirts a day leading up to the premiere…and even build iConan, our first iAd.

I became the Interactive Marketing Specialist on the team and my job was to focus solely on how our digital strategy could build brand engagement and loyalty across the .com, mobile and social.

Then iTunes happened, YouTube happened, SocialTV happened, then TV Everywhere had to happen. And I saw opportunity and chaos merge to create this new space we’re in now….where everyone’s talking about Netflix’s award winning programming and big reach networks like at TBS, TNT and USA are fighting to understand.