Most of my more popular and attractive friends in high school did school plays. They got to roam the halls freely after classes ended with lengthy rehearsals, often took to the front of classrooms to personally hock tickets, and since we had no football team and barely a basketball team, they were the closest thing to celebrities that we had. The staging that many of us still remember fondly was the 60s Broadway hit HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING, which some of you may know from its successful 90s revival, but we knew from the original that made Robert Morse, who ended his career and life as a beloved MAD MAN co-star, a household name. The show revovled around an ambitious but naive window washer named J. Pierrepont Finch who is inspired by a book of the same name to passionately pursue a career in New York City. Through some iconic musical numbers, and a whole bunch of corporate gerrymandering, Finch becomes vice president of advertising and convinces the company to sponsor a televised treasure hunt for shares of stock, an idea which the boss’ feckless nephew, Bud Frump. had originally pitched to his uncle, which was rejected. But when Finch suggests his mistress be the face of the show, he ultimately signs off on it. In a moment of panic, the mistress accidentally reveals the location of where the stock shares are hidden, causing an internal riot among employees and, of course, blowing the opportunity that the show may have offered the company. But instead of being fired, Finch makes a personal connection to the chairman of the board when it’s learned that the chairman, too, had a book that inspired him. (In his case, it was abook of betting records), Finch ultimately not only saves his job, but those of the rest of the compamy, save for that of the feckless nephew.
I sometimes wonder if those who are in charge of media companies these days are more like Bud Frump than J. Pierrepont Finch. Because there’s an awful lot of excellent analysis out there from media observers that in a landscape where more and more failure is happening, the fact that these insights-ones steeped in actual research and facts–are coming from those that report on business rather than those are running it is not only ironic, it’s damn frustrating.
Take the piece that Evan Shapiro teased on his LinkedIn feed yesterday. We’ve crowed about Evan before; rhe self-described “media cartographer” uses strong visuals and solid research to explain why the multi-billion efforts of emulation and envy are failing. His latest, revolving around “serial churners”, is paricularly enlightening:
To Every Season;
Churn, Churn, Churn
No matter your opinion of the current state of Media or its major players, it’s hard to look at the chart below, and NOT see a dumpster-fire.
Premium streamers are spending more and more money every quarter to keep fewer and fewer subscribers.
Antenna released a crapload of subscription data yesterday, based on millions of actual transactions (not polls). The key takeaways should spark an epidemic of ulceritis in streaming C-Suites.
– Industry-wide SVOD churn has increased by 49% in the last 18 months.
– In Q4 SVODs collectively acquired 41.3 mil new subs. They retained just 18%. The same in Q3.
– THAT is actually an improvement over just 11% retention Q2 2022.
This is not sustainable.
And that’s precisely why major streamers have stopped focusing on total subs as their key KPI, and started focusing on the lifetime value of their users, and overall profits.
Great… Except that Serial Churners (who subscribe, binge and cancel) have 1/3 lower LTV than subs who don’t churn & burn.
Traditional Media entered streaming without understanding the basic fundamentals of direct to consumer marketing and service. They confused the new version of streaming subscribers with their bundled cable subs of olden days. Most importantly, they grossly misunderstood just how BIGLY customer loyalties would shift when the customer had TOTAL control over the relationship.
The big lesson they‘ve learned since: Serial Churners cost WAY more than Channel Changers.
In the #streamingwars Traditional Media players (like Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount & Disney Streaming) simply chose to “copy Netflix,” without truly digging into the ins-and-outs of that D2C business. (Fittingly Comcast did so more than their peers.) CRUCIALLY, collective OG Media marched down that path, without even trying first to reimagine the protective, wholesale model(s) that MADE them Traditional Media.
The results are starkly demonstrated by the chart below, with a statistical equivalent of a revolving door.
As we see the machinations and spin coming from the likes of Max, Paramount+, Peacock and the Disney streamers, and the many moves Netflix is attempting to keep their tenuous best-in-show status as they try to convince a skeptical Wall Street that a penetration rate of roughly two percent of their estimated U.S. subscriber base for an ad tier is encouraging, Shapiro’s cartography and his insights are revelatory–and yet, all but glossed over by the companies that are in that Sisyphusian pursuit.
And as the economics of “peak TV production” are seeing the shows that are driving whatever short-term adoption services tap out at a few dozen episodes, Alan Wolk of TVRev.com pointed out in a piece released earlier this week that the concept of the lifetime ultimate that has sustained the media ecosystem for a century has all but been forgotten:
One of the reasons FAST services are so popular these days is that their linear and on-demand libraries are full of beloved network TV series. Viewers enjoy watching these shows because they’re so familiar, bring back good memories of earlier times, and feature well-known characters and plot lines.
What often gets left out of this analysis is that a big part of these series’ appeal is their ubiquity. Network TV series had about 25 episodes each season, so if a show ran for seven years, it ended up with 175 episodes. Besides benefiting the producers and talent in the offnet syndication market, that also meant that a viewer could easily dip in and out on a daily basis without ever getting bored, regardless of whether they are watching on a linear channel or on demand.
This was the premise behind syndication — that local broadcasters could show a different episode of say, The Brady Bunch, every weekday at 4 p.m. and audiences would not get bored.
That is not the case in today’s streaming universe, where series have somewhere from eight to 10 episodes a season and are lucky to last three campaigns.
This is all well and good, but it means that the next generation of syndicated programs are nowhere to be seen.
Yes, Ted Lasso is beloved, but with only 34 episodes in total across three seasons, watching it years from now will be more of a once-a-year thing than a five-days-a-week thing.
Certainly not enough to sustain a Ted Lasso channel or even a part of a channel. (Compare that to the U.S. version of The Office, which notched 201 episodes during its eight-year run.)
Which is why if the current crop of SVOD services (or maybe even some of the FASTs) want to get ahead, they need to give some serious thought to longer, old-school style seasons.
Such a reality check might mean that passion projects, and the European model of limited series not necessarily dominate the landscape of what far too many executives are pivoting to. But having a wider variety of content, both in style and volume, to give people a reason to subscribe and not churn, not to mention more episodes of shows that can break through that can creatively sustain it, is a pretty darn good idea. Kinda wish it had come from one of the executives at these struggling services.
Finally, a somewhat parochial parsing of the limbo fate of Logo, authored by THE WRAP’s Joseph Kapsch, laments that not only has the life of the network been snuffed out, but even its demise is being screwed up:
Paramount has all but given up on Logo, a once-groundbreaking experiment in commercial media for LGBTQ audiences, insiders told TheWrap, confirming something that’s been obvious to anyone who bothered to tune into the creatively moribund cable channel.
It’s been a slow death, starting with the loss of the channel’s signature show, “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” first to sister channel VH1 in 2017, then this year to MTV. A “federation” of websites has faded away, with the leading NewNowNext property redirected to logotv.com. The Logo brand didn’t make the jump to Paramount+, though a handful of Logo-born shows like the “Drag Race: All Stars” spin-offs now stream there.
The channel’s once-robust push for original programming ceased ages ago and layoffs have left Paramount’s LGBTQ channel gutted, with “just about no full-time employees,” one insider told TheWrap and two other individuals with knowledge confirmed. The decrepit state of Logo, once touted by its parent company as a trailblazing effort to cater to a diverse and underserved audience, illustrates the hard choices media companies face as linear TV continues to decline. Paramount has promised Wall Street that it will staunch its streaming losses next year, leaving little room to invest in a second-tier cable channel.
Now THE WRAP does give full disclosure that Kapsch once freelanced for Logo. And knowing the likes of Brian Graden. the brilliant MTV Networks executive who championed both the cultural and business potential of the channel, the emotion expressed by Kapsch is understandable. The reality of the need to continue to grow a service in order to reach something closer to profitability all but assures that services that cater exclusively to a minority segment of the population is inoptimal at best. And as Kopsch points out toward the end of his piece, clearly with some pain, as Paramount faces the reality of addressing their quixotic battle for streaming relevance, the same decisions they have reached regarding other niche entities seems to have escaped the management team currently in charge:
With no mobile or smart TV app, Logo doesn’t seem to have much of a stake in the fast-changing media landscape. It no longer rates a mention on a Paramount web page listing the company’s “global brands.” Once significant enough to Wall Street to be part of a broken-out reporting unit for Viacom, Logo got a single mention in Paramount’s 2022 annual report. Perhaps most damning, as reports swirl about a packaged sale of BET and VH1, no one seems to be talking about spinning off or selling Logo.
The likes of Tyler Perry and Byron Allen are eagerly looking to pay handsomely for BET, and will likely give the brand a needed rejuvenation. Surely, there are LGBTQI-friendly investors and executives that would be capable of doing the same thing for a brand as revered as Logo. I’d personally love to see one of these well-heeled types to embrace someone like Graden to find a better path to sustainability. It is even more possible to cost-effectively produce the kind of ambitious programming that defined Logo, certainly in digital-friendly short from, than it was a decade or so ago. And it would certainly be better received than the kind of dog-whistling library utility that somehow justifies that shows that celebrate those who many drag queens dress up as, such as THE NANNY or MAMA’S FAMILY, should exclusively populate a channel with such a well-intentioned history. These days, the need for that voice is more crucial than ever.
And perhaps if Paramount would indeed bid out Logo, they might not have to let so many talented executives go in their quest to rein budgets in. Just yesterday, it was announced that Tanya Giles was the latest experienced executive to depart. And as Ross A. Lincoln’s WRAP report notes, in her case, this was an especially ambitious and talented executive, one who I share quite a bit of earlier resume line items with:
Giles’ exit brings an end to nearly 30 years with the company — she joined Paramount in 1995 as a research assistant and rose steadily through the ranks. Prior to serving as chief programming officer of Paramount+, she served as general manager at MTV networks (starting in 2021) and general manager at Comedy Central (starting in 2017), in addition to holding many other roles within the company.
Giles was named CPO of Paramount+ in June 2021 as part of a restructuring of content leadership. Since then, Paramount+ has had several huge successes, most notably the “Yellowstone” spinoff “1923,” one of many Taylor Sheridan-produced hits for the streaming service.
In many ways, Giles’ rise through MTVN and Paramount mirrored the path of the once wide-eyed and aspirational J, Pierrepont Finch. Starting as a research assistant is to folks like myself a small step up from the mailroom. I know she had a Book Voice, too–I don’t know if she had a book like HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS. But I do know she had at least one book which she mastered. The Nielsen ratings book.
And yet…now she’s looking for work, while Logo sits unattended and in an insultingly indifferent recess of some remaining executives’ mind.
So now I know what eventually happened to the Bud Frumps. They’re obvious the ones in charge of today’s most challenged media companies.
To whoever may be the Bud Frumps behind some of the companies that these stories from my respected peers authored: Maybe you don’t have time or the inclination to read a book on how to succeed. But you’d be way more up to speed reading at least some of our suggestions. Better yet, hire some of us (hand raised).
Until next time…
Note: The platforms and reports cited herein may involve subscriptions. If you are in such a position to do so, you absolutely should give each your business. They deserve it, and you deserve the benefit of their brains.