Too Much TV: Your TV Talking Points Friday, March 3rd, 2023

Why Peacock should own a social media network.

Here's everything you need to know about the world of television for Friday, March 3rd, 2023.

WHY PEACOCK SHOULD BUILD (OR BUY) ITS OWN SOCIAL NETWORK
Back in the dinosaur days of the internet, nearly every broadcast and cable network web site has some sort of a rudimentary message board and forum. They were messy, often hard-to-navigate and were usually only regularly used by a small subset of visitors.

The upside is that those visitors were super engaged with the site. One of the sites I worked for back in the early aughts did a survey and found that while only about 7% of their users were using the message boards more than once a week, that 7% were spending an average of 11 hours a week on the boards. Those people are your superusers. And they are the people who you want to keep engaged and motivated to talk about your programming.

There are a lot of downsides to social media for any brand, but the primary reason people have continued to use them - even as various sites come and go - is that there is a percentage of people who see posting and chatting online as an extension of their viewing experience. They use social media to talk about their favorite shows, discover new programs and get sidetracked with all of the minutia that comes with closely following a TV series.

And social media chatter can move the ratings needle for a show. Especially on the broadcast side, where the average viewing numbers are so small that adding 50,000 new viewers can mean the difference between success and failure. But whether it's a streaming series or something on linear television, shows without a serious social media presence tend to fade away from modern pop culture discourse. In a crowded marketplace, conversation and buzz drive engagement with the show. And to accomplish that requires a sustained effort from the network and studio through to the showrunner, cast and writers.

For most networks, the social media emphasis over the past decade has primarily been focused on Twitter, Instagram and to a lesser extent Facebook and Tik Tok. While Twitter's audience is small in the universe of TV viewing, it has proven to be an extremely powerful driver of social media buzz and viewer engagement. And over the past six months, the changes at Twitter have severely restricted any network's ability to build a message virally. Changes to Twitter's UI have essentially broken everyone's feeds and now there is no guarantee that your show's biggest fans will see your messaging - even if they are following your accounts.

At the same time, a number of other "alternatives" have sprung up, but none of them have really replaced Twitter's unique role in the promotion of entertainment projects. Post, Hive, Discord, Spoutable, Mastodon - I have accounts on all of them and none of them have the membership base or ease of use that makes Twitter so compelling. (Side note: if you like Mastodon but find the web interface annoying, check out Elk.zone, which builds a Twitter-like interface for you Mastodon feeds. It's my go-to approach now).

All of which makes me think that a service like Peacock should build - or more likely acquire -  one of the many Twitter-ish social networks and integrate it into its overall offerings. 

There are a number of upsides. Bravo fans are already extremely engaged and are just the viewers who would find a complimentary social network helpful. Add in Peacock's sports coverage and you enough of a base of users to make the service feel alive and valuable. It provides another marketing tool for both Peacock and NBCU's other businesses. It also would provide Peacock with additional data points that can be used across the service. For instance, you can require any user to be "verified," but current Peacock subscribers are automatically verified without any additional information.

Sure, there are potential danger points. Content moderation is always an issue on social media and that requires a content moderation team and additional resources. But that is a doable thing, especially since the focus of the platform would be TV programming. There are possible bullets to dodge with any social platform. But a company with NBCU's technical expertise should be able to make it work. And the upsides are immense. It would be another way to differentiate Peacock from its competitors and in today's fiercely competitive streaming sector, that is no small accomplishment.

ODDS AND SODS
* An NLRB administrative law judge has ruled that two Hallmark movie productions violated federal labor law in 2021 when nine of its drivers were interrogated about their union activities, were threatened with job loss, and were then fired for attempting to unionize the projects under a Teamsters Local 399 contract.

* Well-known journalists Ashley Graham, Vanessa Hudgeons and Lilly Singh will host Countdown to the Oscars, the official lead-in to the 95th Oscars on Sunday, March 12th.

*  John Malone and his former colleagues on Charter Communications Inc.’s board agreed to a $87.5 million settlement of claims the billionaire unfairly benefited from the $79 billion purchase of Time Warner Cable he helped finance.

* Moonbug (Cocomelon, Blippi) managing director Andy Yeatman talks about what his company is looking for in an IP and offers advice to creators looking to grow their properties.

WHAT MAJOR STREAMERS COULD LEARN FROM SPOTIFY
Spotify is rolling out a feature which uses AI to assemble a playlist of songs you might like, then it adds a virtual DJ to introduce the tunes, add context and tell stories about the songs. It's still definitely a work in progress and I have some qualms about the idea. But testing it out this morning did make me think of something else.

Content discovery is maybe the biggest challenge for the streaming industry and despite having spent hundreds of millions on the problem over the years, none of the major streaming services do an especially good job of relevant content moderation. Netflix has a world-class backend, but the UI still can't remember to tell me when new episodes of a show I once binged is available. Much less suggest specific shows that feel tailored to my preferences and not just the result of some checking off of very general content boxes. And the other streamers are even farther behind when it comes to providing useful viewing choices based on what I've watched before.

I know that music tracks and television shows are two very different art forms and you can't draw exact comparisons between the two. But the streaming services are still so bad at this. Which astounds me, because there is no better way to reduce churn and increase engagement than to provide on -point viewing suggestions.

Not to be glib, but if Spotify can figure out, why can't your favorite streaming service?

WHAT'S NEW FOR FRIDAY:

Daisy Jones And The Six Series Premiere (Prime Video)
Finding Michael (Disney+)
Grand Crew Season Premiere (NBC)
Love At First Kiss (Netflix)
Next In Fashion Season Premiere (Netflix)
Sex/Life Season Two Premiere (Netflix)
The Exhibit: Finding The Next Great Artist Series Premiere (MTV)
The Pimp - No F***ing Fairytale [aka Luden] (Prime Video)
The Problem With Jon Stewart Season Premiere (Apple TV+)
The Snoopy Show Season Three Premiere (Apple TV+)

Click Here to see the list of all of the upcoming premiere dates for the next few months.

SEE YOU MONDAY!

If you have any feedback, send it along to Rick@AllYourScreens.com and follow me on Twitter @aysrick.

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• Too Much TV