While it’s not massively surprising, Coke followed AT&T’s decision to pull out of American Idol recently and the decision really speaks less about Idol, and more about the decline generally in appointment viewing. While it’s true the overall reality music genre has faded, with Idol itself down from a series high of 38 million viewers to recent 10.1 million viewers, the bigger question is where are consumers engaging at all.
Where we focus with our clients is on two key areas: a. in people’s media feed and b. in VOD environments. The big challenge for reality shows is the immediacy and real-time nature of the experience. But even with Idol and The Voice, the east coast / west coast feed really spoiled the show for us LA viewers in a post-Twitter world.
So, why aren’t we using the true real time feeds, meaning Facebook and Twitter, as the new home of real time shows. With the onset of Facebook’s in-stream video pre-roll, maybe 2015 is the time we see social media finally stepping up to take on TV in a formal way.
Emanuel Seuge @ManuSeuge at Coke will surely be at the forefront of driving new paradigms in music, social media, mobile, product placement and branding.