The Fall of Madison Avenue
Amazon announced that they are not going to spend any more money this year on TV ads. They stated that they are not seeing enough of a return. The fragmentation began in the 70's with the arrival of Cable. It accelerated in the 80's with the arrival of the VCR. The 90's may have put the nail in the coffin with the with the arrival of the Internet and TIVO. TV is not what it used to be.
25 years ago in most markets you had between 3-5 stations that carried ads. The market was concentrated because the product was concentrated. With the Internet and other entertainment mediums, families and people have too many choices, and I think those choices change all too rapidly for Madison Avenue to get a grasp on it.
Ask any TV executive; with more then 15 years in the business, and I would imagine they would tell you that right now is the worst time they have ever seen to be in the industry. Chasing viewers is like grasping at straws. That's why we are seeing so much short attention span crap like 'Joe Millionaire', 'The Bachelor', 'Survival', and (up until the last few episodes) 'American Idol'. This stuff is easy to produce, cheap, and a low risk. I think it will also drive away other viewers looking for more intelligent content.
If you are looking for proof that there are benevolent gods of TV, look no further then the demise of "The Dream Team" on the Sci-Fi Channel. This show was simply horrible, pandering to mindless stupidity. I hated it from it's first "I'm a man, having sex with a women, and I'm not sure it's me" ad. Last week it was pulled from the Friday night schedule, because it was dragging down the ratings. Sci-Fi announced that it will be going on hiatus (in this case, TV lingo for "we'd cancel it outright but someone could lose their job for investing in this turkey, so we put it on hiatus till upper management forgets about it").
I think that we're in for an interesting ride over the next few years...mj
12:34:48 PM 
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