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.
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