The Media Drop: Niche is good

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March 28, 2005

Niche is good

Niche is good.

It's a statement that many a blogger has mentioned to me when they were trying to figure out the best way to build a following as a writer online. Okay, maybe they rambled on and said something like "I wasn't getting any traffic until I focused on one industry / topic / idea / area" or something like that, but you get the picture.

So while many a television station has cropped up in recent years, further fraying the overall ratings table in a million different directions, the Web has a similar growth pattern. Fortunately, this seems to be a model that works - not just for website operators, but television stations as well. And as bandwidth continues to get cheaper and broadband connections reach ever higher levels, video and "bigger" content continue to grow in number online. That seems to be the strategy behind HGTV, the Scripps television channel that has kicked off quite a bit of online content in 2005. The AP's Duncan Mansfield writes about the HGTVPro.com website that now carries "dozens of three-minute videos" for consumers to snap up.

Outside of the advertising and marketing opportunity that this could provide, a la ABC's "Extreme Makeover Home Edition" with Sears, it provides evidence of linkage between the television programming and the online presence of the channel - something that content providers are clamoring for.

Posted by Tom at March 28, 2005 5:14 PM | TrackBack | IM This

Comments

I agree that niche is good in general but I don't think that applies so much to television. The very nature of TV is based on mass appeal and attracting a large audience. Productions are so expensive (compared to websites and such) that getting too focused on a core audience means that producers are foregoing the economy of scale.

Being as focused as I am on movie marketing this is being played out on the adverstising level in that industry. Studios aren't seeing the return on investment in producing or airing too many TV commercials and are instead focusing on industry-centric mags and websites.

Those few movie TV ads I have seen are for movies that are not seen as sure things. For instance I saw a ton of commercials for Hostage with Bruce Willis but almost none for Miss Congeniality 2. It seems the studio was so desperate to build any sort of audience for Hostage that they resorted to advertising on TV whereas with MC2 they didn't have to. They knew there would be tons of press since it involved Sandra Bullock and was a sequel.

It's not a direct comparison from advertising to network programming but I think the points are similar.

Sorry for the long-winded rant.

--Chris

Posted by: CThilk

at March 28, 2005 6:48 PM

Chris,

I can see what you're saying, I'm just thinking from the "loyalty" perspective. The sheer number of television stations we have these days leads to such distributed viewership that you can't bank on people to watch anything more than "Lost," "24," "Desperate Housewives," and things like that on a regular basis. Appointment television has not only changed because of the DVR/PVR, but because of the level of programming out there.

In this particular case, it's trying to figure out what is better: 1,000,000 viewers who periodically tune in but may never be exactly (or close to exactly) the same group, or 100,000 viewers who watch your programming day in and day out, plus hit your website, plus buy your products, etc. It's a tough call, but that might be how some of the niche programming has survived up to this point.

But of course, it's still somewhat theoretical =)

Posted by: Tom Biro

at March 28, 2005 8:11 PM