MY Audition?

When I was fortunate enough to be amidst the most beautiful and creative people I had ever known at a time when they actually sort of liked me, I marveled at the dedication and diligence they put into producing audition videos.  A group of professional actors who had been friends for years, sometimes even more than friends in some cases, their preparation, their personal high standards, their attention to detail on nuances and, most importantly, their mutual support in the pursuit of little more than a few hundred dollars was inspiring.

I actually had pangs of guilt watching them, knowing I was once an alleged inside big shot who would occasionally be asked by casting directors to evaluate, both personally and via vendors, similar auditions to seek out touchstones where they could pursue bigger, more established names to help sell our projects, thereby denying people like these even a shot at anything more than what they could get as day players or the occasional supporting role in a small budget film or limited release series.   When I was invited to actually help them with off-camera cues for one such audition for a role in a series I once had a larger role in assisting with, I was overjoyed.  Decades of being left out of the “cool kids” club was finally being left behind–at least, so I thought at the time.  It was short-lived, sadly, but, God, I LOOOOOOVED auditioning.

So when I was asked this week to make an attempt to write something that might eventually turn up in print, without a byline in all likelihood, and I promised to take a stab at it with limited information, it was, in a week that I cannot begin to tell you was as personally painful and poignant in recent memory it was a beacon of joy in a morass of crap.  It’s in effect my audition.  But since unlike my former friends I have literally no one in my life these days except you readers to share my takes with, I’m going to ask for your indulgence and feedback on what I’ve got as a first take.

For obvious reasons, I can’t divulge the name of the company, nor can I be overly specific in their solutions.  I’ll leave that to the company’s CEO and the consultants they already have in place for that. But I’ll merely ask if what I write even piques your interest, please reach out via this site with feedback.

Here goes nothing (well, OK, something)…

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On Thanksgiving Day, 138 million Americans all watched at least part of a professional football game.  That morning, more than 27 million watched a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade even without Oswego’s own Al Roker present.

And, per CBS, over the first nine weeks of fourth quarter 2022, more than 619 billion minutes were collectively spent watching something on one of the four old school broadcast television networks that have been around for roughly three-quarters of a century.   That’s, at least per Nielsen, nearly three times as many as Netflix was credited for, even in a world where DAHMER, STRANGER THINGS and a whole lot of CRIMINAL MINDS was available to be seen.

And that doesn’t even include the CW or syndicated shows or local news.  So anyone who may tell you that broadcast television is dead is, pure and simple, only telling you part of the story,

But there’s the problem.  Nielsen still, as of this writing, is still not capable of telling the entire story accurately.  Nielsen still does not measure anything but connected screens, in effect giving zero credit for anything that is watched on a phone, tablet or disconnected gaming console.  And in a world where a reported one-third of all video consumption is occurring outside of a traditional cord such as cable, broadcasters are, by necessity, pivoting to streaming and apps to get their content out there.  The younger the viewer, the more likely they are to be watching something on a screen that, at least per Nielsen, is not capable of being capably measured or, therefore, monetized.

This would be the same Nielsen company that recently was sold to investors for $16B and, just this week, announced a reorganization that will see two of its most competent and seasoned executives leave before 2023 begins.  Yet another year where Nielsen currently projects that the measurement and monetization of the entire video landscape will not be possible.

Now just suppose there WAS a measurement platform out there that could do the following:

— Provide direct access to first party household-level audience data across devices and distribution environments. Augmented with demographic and psychographic data to provide unparalleled audience insights to inform television programming, marketing and advertising sales efforts.

— Provide insights at the national, DMA and segment level.  Enabling a proactive response to changes in audience usage by delivering accurate measurement of program engagement, advertising engagement and campaign performance.

— Allow programmers and distributors to understand when, where and how content is consumed.

With the investment of a watermark, content distributors and manufacturers could, right now, take full advantage of a third party measurement platform of scale that could allow them to fully monetize not only their existing audience, which is increasingly diminishing from a ratings standpoint as Nielsen embraces the concept of broadband-only households into their sample but has not yet developed its long-planned “solution” to be able to count everyone who is watching what is technically “broadcast” television but is, in reality, content distributed digitally in various ways that doesn’t neceesarily involve a pipe or a signal.

Several years ago, I had the good fortune to work with a similar company which revealed that multiplatform audiences were substantially larger and younger than what Nielsen can provide.  It was ostensibly created to measure streaming TV platforms at a time when transparency of any sort was non-existant.  But it also revealed that old-school TV was indeed being consumed more voraciously and broadly than Nielsen was reporting.  Nielsen’s response was to buy the company that provided the engine to run that company’s measurement platform, and indeed shut it down.  And, frankly, it wasn’t as robust or as inclusive as this one is.

If you ran a broadcast network or station, particularly in light of the power and the hook you actually still have on America, might you be interested in learning more about how you could do that–right NOW?

Well, then, click here and learn more about my client…

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And…scene.

I would literally give anything, which, today, is in effect nothing, to have the feedback from the actors who inflamed my respect and admiration for the audition process.  I miss them, and the world they briefky allowed me into, soooo much.

I so much need to nail MY audition.

I’d really love your feedback.  Help me help me help them.  Please?

Until next time….