Networks try DVDs, video-on-demand to reach audiences
The success of TiVo and DVDs is causing the networks to reinvent how they reach the audiences they've been losing recently according to this Wall Street Journal story (subscription required):
Among big advertisers, "there is a pent-up demand for alternative approaches" to reach viewers, says Nick Brien, president of corporate business development at Starcom Mediavest Group, the Publicis Groupe unit which buys TV advertising time for such clients as Procter & Gamble Co., Coca-Cola Co., and Kellogg Co. "We either face the onslaught of TiVo and DVD ... paralyzed with an inability to evolve. Or we learn it, we test it, we apply it, and we evolve." He points out that the music industry ignored the threat of technological change, the new services that let people get music free, and now is reeling financially.
TV studios are also moving more quickly to take advantage of DVDs, whose introduction in 1997 proved a goldmine for the film industry. In part, because DVDs of new movies sell for only about $20, households are buying on average more than 15 discs a year, almost three times the number of videotapes that were purchased at the peak of the video revolution, according to Adams Media Research. The number of DVDs sold annually has jumped to 490.9 million last year from virtually nothing in 1997, according to Adams.