Posts Tagged ‘nbc’

TONY POTTS: Fallon, Leno And Their Loving Friendship–Must See Video!

Posted: April 2, 2013 by Tony Potts in Uncategorized
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Now THIS is how you smartly handle a potential debacle or at least start to, anyway. After weeks and weeks of more NBC bad press regarding Jimmy Fallon replacing Jay Leno on The Tonight Show, the two hosts put together the perfect antidote —a video send-up of the situation.

Using the appropriately-titled song Tonight from Broadway’s West Side Story, Fallon and Leno smartly and comedically addressed The Tonight Show situation.

I heard from peeps within the two shows that Fallon’s producers flew to LA to shoot Jay’s segment and then put it all together.

Here’s the crazy thing;  The video send-up and the creative behind it is one of the things Fallon does best. It’s that type of creative tv which has propelled Fallon into the discussion of replacing Leno. Younger, hipper etc. However, this video also did something for Leno. It showed him in a slightly different light. A bit more human, if that makes sense. It’s a side rarely seen, but shouldn’t be.

Enjoy, like and pass along!!

TONY POTTS: I Love This Disney Princess Parody! How About You? It’s Why The Networks Are In Trouble (VIDEO)

Posted: March 14, 2013 by Tony Potts in Uncategorized
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His name is Jon Cozart. That’s his brilliant video posted above. Cozart is part of second-screen viewing that my 19-year-old daughter loves. In fact, my daughter and her generation rarely watch conventional TV and get most of their content via a second screen — YouTube, Google, Netflix and Hulu.

Why wait for a show on network TV that more often than not has no resemblance to anything in their lives? It’s produced and approved by people who have to remember what it was like when they were young. And by the way, even if that was 5-10 years ago, that’s like 20-years ago to kids these days. The world has changed so much in so little time. It’s like shoving a Happy Meal down the throats of a gluten-free generation.

Here’s the deal. Cozart’s Disney Princess Parody “After Ever After” video will have more views in the next week than most network shows will get next week. Yes, you read that right. If you’re an advertiser, where would you rather put your money? If Cozart or, say, Ryan Higa, can deliver a bigger weekly audience AND have their audiences email addresses and more, I’d put my ad money with them. I would know the audience, I’d have their emails. Ryan Higa has more than 7-Million SUBSCRIBERS and more than 1,300,000,000 views. Yep, that’s 1.3 BILLION!! Each new video he produces every week gets an average of 4-million eyeballs in its first week. Some end up with more than 8-million up to 20-million. Ever see Bromance http://youtu.be/EJVt8kUAm9Q ? It’s quickly approaching 20-million views.

In contrast, NBC’s much-hyped, super-expensive <em>Smash</em> barely found 3-million viewers. The network announced it is moving <em>Smash</em> to the television graveyard of Saturday night where the remaining episodes will be burned off. The smell of burning money is not pretty.

On a network, an advertiser has decent knowledge of a show’s audience, but it’s still a spray-n-pray approach. They hope maybe 5 percent-10 percent of the audience is in their wheelhouse, the ad will resonate with some and will catalyze into a purchase.

Juxtapose that with a play on Higa or Cozart’s channel. It allows the buyer to know, not only the audience and how to reach them, but all the analytics. How long did they watch? At what point did they opt out of the ad? Where did they come from before they came to Higa’s channel? Where did they go afterward? It’s much more detailed than that, but you get the idea. It’s Cookies! Cookies! Cookies! They serve up tasty bits of info.

I spent most of my career at the network level, NBC’s <em>Access Hollywood</em> and more. I left two years ago when I launched our media company. We are creating content for both the networks and the web, and developing incredible apps. To now have some distance from the networks, I can see how insanely slow they are to react. It reminds me of the music business when Napster came along and the industry was slow to react to the signal of change Napster, MySpace and iTunes illuminated. A&R men anyone??

The TV biz is trying to adapt. Some are doing well at repositioning and creating fascinating content that moves well to the second screen. The move is to premium content that people actually want to see in a way that speaks to them. People can only watch/tolerate so many poorly buffered videos, right?

Which brings us back to guys like Higa, Cozart and more. Can you imagine Higa going into a network meeting to do a show that would take many, many more meetings, the hiring of producers and writers, passing focus groups and, if the network execs liked it, resulting in a show in 6-9 months time?? Or, he can have an idea in the morning, write it in the afternoon and shoot it by day’s end. That content can then be edited and uploaded by Higa within 24-48 hours of the idea. Oh, and did I mention that anywhere from 4-20 million people will watch it in roughly the same amount of time it would take for the network execs to send Higa an email about how they loved their first meeting and look forward to working together? Now you see the chasm of what was and what is. The saving grace for networks are live events. Those still rate and garner millions in ad revenue per 30-second spot.

Speaking of millions, have you seen iNavigator? http://youtu.be/cGU0kRRWy_w
Nuff said.

Follow @TonyPotts1

TONY POTTS: Hey!! Do U Use Instagram? Instagram Says It Now Has The Right To Sell Your Photos And You Have No Say

Posted: December 18, 2012 by Tony Potts in Uncategorized
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I’m pretty sure Picasso would be pissed. However, I’m sure if he were alive today, I doubt he’d give away his stuff for free.

But that’s the beauty of the internet and sneaky entrepreneurship:  Create a free site where people will GIVE YOU CONTENT and then when you get A LOT of content, change the rules and now claim you have a right to sell it. BRILLIANT!! Or, in the case of Instagram, sell-out to Facebook for a Billion Georges and then don’t give a $%*! what the new owners do with your company or your customers.

Let Facebook be the bad guy. Let Zuckerbrerg be, as a friend of mine calls him, Motherf*@%erberg, the bad guy in all this. The “Hoodlum in the Hoodie” apparently. Fortunately I don’t ‘do’ Instagram. Plus, there are two amazing apps MUCH better than what Insta-screw-you can do. Check out KitCam for starters.

Link below to the story.

Instagram says it now has the right to sell your photos | Politics and Law – CNET News.

TONY POTTS: What If The Press Had Left Newtown After Day One Of The Horrific Shooting? Would Anything Be Different?

Posted: December 17, 2012 by Tony Potts in Uncategorized
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This past Friday at lunch here in Santa Monica, California, my wife and I watched with about 20-other customers, nearly every one of them students from the high school next door, the unfolding coverage of the horrific shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. All eyes were on the screen as everyone took bites of their pizza, pasta and salad.

Flash-forward 24-hours later and we’re having lunch Saturday afternoon in another establishment about an hour north of Los Angeles. Out of all the many screens in the restaurant, just one is tuned into the continuing coverage of the massacre. All the screens are usually filled with sports.

 As I looked at the screen watching wall-to-wall coverage, I was  hit with a interesting thought: What if all the news trucks, satellite trucks, producers and reporters went away — just packed up and went home? 

WOULD ANYTHING BE DIFFERENT?

I stopped eating and let that thought sink in.

Is the media adding any real value after Day One of a tragedy?

Now, you have to understand, I’ve been a journalist for nearly 30-years in news, sports, and entertainment. From the tragedy of the TWA-800 crash over Long Island, to Super Bowls, Olympics, every award show you can imagine to sudden deaths of celebrities, a horrific family tragedy where a father tried to hack his family to death with a machete, I’ve seen just about everything.  I’ve been the one ON THE SCENE. Sometimes for days, sometimes for weeks.

But in all those years and all those stories, I never thought about what would happen if we just showed up the day of the breaking news, informed the public and then left the next day?

Granted, in stories like Katrina and Sandy, those are different cases. The actual event continues for days.

But what about in Newtown? The tragedy has happened. It’s not an on-going, fluid situation anymore. It’s actually a by-the-book investigation now. Are the press adding anything of value for the residents of Newtown? For the rest of us?

What if this had happened in 1912, 100-years ago? We would have read about it roughly 2-3 days, possibly a week or so after it happened depending on proximity. No instant, live images as the event unfolded. No shocking immediacy. No real vivid imprint on our consciousness. No following of tweets about it or Facebook posts. No “Googling.” The Newtown of 1912 would have come together probably the same way it is coming together today. In churches and town halls and schools.  The town of Hillsville, VA did the same after the “Courthouse Massacre” in 1912.

So, is the media adding any value after the initial day of the tragedy?

 I’d like to think so, despite how the replaying of the same footage over and over and over for days would lead one to possibly believe otherwise. Maybe some of the stories of the incredible bravery by the teachers and first-responders help the rest of the nation take a slight edge off the sharp pains of what has happened.

Maybe.

Possibly the press putting forth the gun debate is of value.  Maybe publishing the shocking facts of “gun life” in the United States may help (see below)

 

The CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION keeps what are regarded by experts as the most reliable statistics.

The first set of numbers are from the year 2009 and are gun deaths of all types:

Suicide: 18,735 deaths
Homicide: 11,493 deaths
Unintentional: 554 deaths
Legal interventions: 333 deaths
Undetermined: 232 deaths
Total: 31,347 deaths

There is a second set of data regarding guns. It tracks non-fatal injuries by guns. This number of 73,505 in 2010. 

So, when you add it up, more than 100,000 people are shot in this country every single year.  There are a little more than 300-million people in the US. That means 1 in every 3000 people in this country will be shot next year.  The average odds of winning the lottery here in California are 1 in 15,000,000.  I’d prefer the inverse.

Time Magazine reported that 15 of the 25 worst mass shootings in the past 50 years happened in the U.S. The country in second place is Finland with two. The U.S. is at least 7.5 times more likely to have a mass shooting than any other country on earth. Or, as a percentage, we have 750% more mass shootings than any other country.

The question is, why? I don’t know the answer. But what is clear is that we use to pride ourselves on leading the ‘industrialized” world in all kinds of wonderful categories –innovation, productivity and more. Now we are leading that same world in gun violence and throwing great numbers of our population in prison. There will come a tipping-point. A seminal moment when we will be forced to change. Let’s hope that moment is now. And I hope the press is there to cover it when it happens, but maybe just the day of and then they can go home on day two and hug their families.

 

 

TONY POTTS: Barack Obama Tweets Victory in 2012 Presidential Election

Posted: November 7, 2012 by Tony Potts in Uncategorized
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I love the fact that our President tweeted thanks before giving his victory speech. Such a sign of the times. Also the fact that Mitt Romney didn’t tweet a thanks for all of his supporters shows the difference in the candidates, the campaign and what may have tipped the election a bit.

Team Obama’s ability to reach women and young voters via social media. Wait until the books are written on this election…the good, researched books…and they will reveal an excellent social media ground-game by Team Obama. President Obama out-tweeted Mitt Romney 8-1. In addition, watch it copied and improved upon by candidates in the next presidential race.

Barack Obama Tweets Victory in 2012 Presidential Election.

TONY POTTS: Why You Should Rarely Listen To The Pundits/Here’s The Official 2012 Election Predictions/Yet Another Reason To Never Listen to George Will

Posted: November 7, 2012 by Tony Potts in Uncategorized
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This is a fascinating collection of all the pundits, who are usually wrong more than 50% of the time (which you could do better by flipping a coin, literally AND seriously) and who they predicted to win the Presidential Election.

The guy at the top of the list, Nate Silver, is the only guy you should ever listen to about serious issues because of the way he comes to his conclusions. Oh, and you can’t call him a pundit. Because he’s not. He’s a an American statistician, sabermetrician, psephologist, and writer. He predicted 49 out of 50 states in 2008 and all Senate Races. And predicted tonight.

Read just the first 50-pages of his excellent book, “The Signal and the Noise: Why Most Predictions Fail – But Some Don’t” and you’ll never listen to a pundit again or at least without laughing.

Pundit accountability: The official 2012 election prediction thread.

TONY POTTS: Early Returns of….Pictures! Election Day 2012: Best Photos

Posted: November 6, 2012 by Tony Potts in Uncategorized
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Here are some of the best photos from today’s election, so far. Most of them are from the East Coast…cuz they opened first.
Hopefully, we’ll get some cool pics from those of us here on the West Coast.

These are from a CNN link.

More later.

Election 2012: The best photos – CNN.com.

TONY POTTS: The 10 Greatest Moments Of The 2012 Campaign OR PFV

Posted: November 5, 2012 by Tony Potts in Uncategorized
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On the eve of our great nation’s Presidential Election (and more)as the candidates along with Bruce Springsteen, Jay-Z and others finish up their final day of campaigning, I thought it would be appropriate to pass along the TOP 10 GREATEST MOMENTS OF THE 2012 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, AKA, PFV –Politicians’ Funniest Videos.

Please click on the link below to see all ten…

The 10 Greatest Moments Of The 2012 Campaign | ThinkProgress.

TONY POTTS: My Thoughts: Smart Move By ABC/Ben Sherwood –’Jimmy Kimmel Live’ Moved to 11:35 PM; ‘Nightline’ Bumped to 12:35 AM

Posted: August 21, 2012 by Tony Potts in Uncategorized
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I always wondered when this move was going to happen. With Kimmel’s ever-increasing relevance in the past 5-7 years with what’s in the Social Zeitgeist while balancing what’s in the mainstream, it was only a matter of time before his show made Letterman and Leno look Smithsonian, if you know what I mean.

I remember lying in the grass with Jimmy watching fireworks explode above us, (no, we were not holding hands…altho it was romantic), in Pittsburgh (okay, maybe it wasn’t that romantic) at the MLB Celebrity All-Star game. We we’re both there to play n the game. We had just come from the locker room with the likes of Hall of Famer’s Goose Gossage, Dave Winfield, Franco Harris and others where I saw Kimmel flow so effortlessly in conversation as a ‘normal dude’. He was intently curious about everything. I could see that the old timers and even the current ballplayers liked Jimmy. In our world, I’ve been in television for 20 years, and in the professional sports world, unless you’re just an idiot, you can spot a fraud or someone who is not genuinely authentic…or always has to be “on”.

Jimmy is Jimmy. And the ballplayers, young and old, along with the 38,496 baseball fans in Pittsburgh could see this on that night. Even my father, who I took for All-Star weekend, felt the same. Jimmy was gracious and spent time chatting with my dad. Altho my dad apologized for not watching Jimmy’s show cuz’ he’s usually fast asleep by midnight.

All in all, this is a great(and well-deserved) move for Jimmy and I’m exceptionally happy for him.

Oh, and there is one other guy who was brilliant handling conversation that night. My dad, Big Ray. He spent most of the All-Star game sitting between Cal Ripken Jr. and Franco Harris (both Hall of Fame Inductees). From time-to-time I’d look over and they were laughing and slapping each other on the back. Not much of surprise tho’, this is the same dad, who at 1am on a Thursday night in Houston at Alonzo Mourning and Magic Johnson’s NBA All-Star Weekend Celebrity Pool Tournament, I found in the back of the pool hall drinking a beer and hanging with rapper-actor Ludacris. And yes, both were laughing. I’m sure my dad, who recently took an express ride to Heaven, but, as I mentioned, likes to get to sleep by midnight, will be happy for Jimmy, because now he can watch his show. Altho’ wouldn’t Heaven have the ultimate DVR?

TONY POTTS: Why NBC’s Olympics Coverage Was Brilliant For Your Viewing Future (Despite The Opening and Closing Ceremony Gaffs)

Posted: August 14, 2012 by Tony Potts in Uncategorized
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Much has been made about NBC’s coverage of the 2012 Olympics. There are articles on both sides of the debate: love it or hate it. I fall in the middle, with a ‘brilliant’ clause which I’ll explain later.  However, if Twitter is your barometer, then you would believe most everyone despised the Peacock’s presentation of the Games.

But Twitter is a dangerous, slippery-slope to use as ‘thee’ gauge of public sentiment. Sure, it’s spot-on at times. However, it is not the one-size-fits-all instrument to accurately calculate every single topic in the social zeitgeist.

I believe what NBC did is bigger than the London Olympics. I know what you’re thinking, “Really?” and I feel ya’ on that one, but stick with me.

I’ve been involved with network broadcasts of some sort or another for most of my 25 years on television as an on-camera talent n’ host and producer. I’ve seen behind the scenes at the Olympics, Super Bowls, four World Series, the Pope’s historic mass in Central Park, too many Oscars to count…you get the picture. I’ve been in front of the camera at all of them, too. 

All of those pale in comparison to THIS Olympics broadcast by NBC. What NBC accomplished, not in prime-time, cuz that was old school Olympics broadcasting, but on-line/live streaming/social is groundbreaking AND will change, from now on, how you are presented content. Espesh live content. Most networks couldn’t figure it out for years, both cable and over the air. It was a ‘super-sized’ conundrum.

What NBC learned is what Conan learned once he left NBC (and what he was trying to convince NBC of when he nanoseconded the Tonight Show gig) and went to TBS. If you give your audience worthwhile content on-line AHEAD of that evening’s taped airing of it, THEY WILL STILL SIT DOWN AND WATCH that evening, already knowing the outcome.

If I heard Usain Bolt set a world record via twitter or a small highlight PUSHED to me via NBC, I’m tuning in at night to get the full-meal deal.

Conan found that out at Turner when they would PUSH content socially of something they were doing that night on his show and that turned into those recipients tuning in to watch.

In the live sports arena, live sports were not cannibalized. Every which way they were presented and re-presented worked.

Mary McNamara wrote a wonderful article in the LA TIMES today (which I’ve included here) where she says about NBC’s efforts “But the shortcomings of craft are not as important as the long-term implications of intent: to give the viewers the best of both worlds.”

Which I believe is what NBC did. (Save for questionable producer decisions in both the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, ugh!)

However, the number one, most important element in all of this is still: QUALITY of content.

If I heard via Twitter or a video PUSH from NBC that Korea’s Kim Jang-Mi set a new world record as he won the Gold in Pistol Shooting, I probably wouldn’t sit to watch it at night.

However, seeing the USA Men’s Basketball team lock-arms as they step up to the podium to receive their Gold Medals in prime-time, even tho’ I saw it live hours earlier, was almost sweeter the second time ’round. I was notified of the live event via Twitter and I came back for more.

And now I want more, all the time, not just for 16-days every two years.

(LA Times Link: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/showtracker/la-et-st-critics-notebook-olympics-20120813,0,7386914.story )

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