September 2008

The news that three well-known firms -- Lehman Bros., Merrill Lynch and American International Group -- are either ceasing to be, being purchased or facing concerns about raising capital rocked Wall Street but so far has had surprisingly few repercussions on Madison Avenue. In fact, advertising-industry analysts are predicting little short-term fallout -- though the longer-term effects on consumer confidence could be a lot more serious. There were few immediate fears because Merrill and Lehman are tiny players in the world of media spending. Lehman's spending was trimmed in recent years, falling to $1.2 million in 2007 and accounting for only $501,900 in the first half of 2008, according to TNS Media Intelligence. Merrill, likewise, is not a huge spender: $37.1 million in 2007 compared with $38.2 million in 2006. Moreover, by absorbing Merrill Lynch for $50 billion, Bank of America looks to become an even bigger player when it comes to marketing spending. But there are still worries about the already hurting print and business-to-business sector, which are expected to be roiled by Lehman's demise, Merrill's sale and AIG's woes. Media and marketing executives looking ahead though, think the pain could easily become more widespread. Given how much damage the media and entertainment sector has already sustained during this economic downturn, though, most veterans don't see the latest news as a particular reason for despair. It certainly proved a major distraction during the day as execs dealt with fall TV and movie launches and prepped for Sunday's Emmy Awards.

According to a report by Nielsen, product placement on primetime programming for the first six months of 2008 was down nearly 15%. But even taking into account that double-digit drop, January-June viewers still experienced 204,919 "brand occurrences." And that decrease represents a mathematical average between broadcast placements, which actually jumped 12% over those six months, and a 20% decline in onscreen cable shout-outs. The report largely attributes the over-the-air increases to just two scheduling tweaks: NBC's "The Biggest Loser," broadcast's second most product-populated skein, premiered its fifth season in January rather than in its usual fall perch, while Fox's "Hell's Kitchen," which bowed in June 2007, premiered this year in April, placing more of its episodes in the spring.

Most viewers who tune in each night to television's top-rated sitcoms and dramas do so because they want to be entertained, but according to two new studies released today by the Kaiser Family Foundation, many of them are being educated about important health issues at the same time. In order to document how well viewers learn health information from entertainment television, the Foundation worked with writers at Grey's Anatomy to embed a health message in an episode, and then surveyed viewers on the topic before and after the episode aired. The storyline involved an HIV positive pregnant woman who learns that with the proper treatment, she has a 98% chance of having a healthy baby. The study found that the audience's awareness of this information increased by 46 percentage points (from 15% to 61%), a four-fold increase among all viewers. This translates to more than eight million people learning correct information about mother-to-child HIV transmission rates from watching the episode. The study, titled Television as a Health Educator: A Case Study of Grey's Anatomy included three national random-digit-dial telephone surveys of regular viewers of the show, conducted one week before, one week after, and ­ to test retention of the information ­ six weeks after the target episode aired. After six weeks, 45% of the episode's viewers correctly responded about the chances of mother-to-child HIV transmission - down from the high of 61%, but still three times higher than before the episode aired.

Another study released today by the Foundation and the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center's Hollywood, Health & Society indicates that health content is prevalent on popular prime time television. An analysis of three seasons (2004-2006) of top-ten-rated prime time scripted shows reveals that six out of ten episodes (59%) had at least one health storyline, and that most of those storylines provided a strong (32%) or moderate (29%) level of educational content. The typical episode in the analysis averaged about one and one half health storylines, indicating that millions of television viewers are regularly exposed to health content.

Reports of multitasking many be exaggerated. According to Mediamark Research & Intelligence data, more than half of people's time spent consuming media at home is often done exclusively with one medium. Among all adults, 55 percent of their at-home newspaper reading occurs without involvement with other media. With magazine reading, 53.6 percent is exclusive. For the Internet, the figure is 53.8 percent, and for TV and radio, the percentages are 49.4 and 28.3, respectively. When multitasking occurs, it's most likely to be a combination of TV and another medium. Nineteen percent of at-home magazine reading is done while watching the tube, for example. With Internet use, it's 17.4 percent, while with newspaper reading, it's 15.3 percent.