Editorial: Live Earth vs. Traditional Media

While traditional media is labeling Live Earth a ratings failure, it's also isolating the very group that proves it wrong:  Pretty much everyone.

LiveEarth was highlighted all day on UniversalHD and Bravo, each on about a 2 hour delay from what happened live, and each showing only highlights from select artists; NBC did a three-hour recap on network television that night.  In the UK, a similar format was followed and in both countries the television ratings were pretty poor.  Traditional media blames it on too much profanity, too few "great" artists, and the hypocrisy in the whole process.  What's the real reason traditional media thinks Live Earth was a failure?  Maybe because they measured its success in the traditional media itself.

The broadcasts weren't on network television (until the recaps), had commercials every ten minutes, interrupted artists to show short films and an unusual commercial for a Space Saver bag that decompresses (I could tell you all about this now), and was too diverse to provide any legitimate substance.  It didn't connect viewers with the concert experience.  Live Earth was presented like Sportscenter, with highlights from action around the league.  All the while television was patting itself on the back for its coverage, two places had legitimate, thorough, and complete coverage of the stellar event: XM Radio and MSN. 

XM blocked out six channels (41-46) for the concerts, with each channel playing a live broadcast of each country's concert.  In addition, channel 40 was "All Access," giving highlights of all the concerts and announcing when each artist was taking the stage ("Duran Duran just took the stage on channel 46 if you're interested,") to provide a great convenience for sifting through the 100 artists who performed around the globe.

Meanwhile, MSN broke records with over 10 million people watching the concerts online.  There, users had a video stream of every single concert all day long along with announcements of upcoming artists at each stage; as of July 8, MSN also has every artist and concert archived and organized for reviewing on-demand at http://liveearth.msn.com.

If you had your choice, where would you have watched the concerts?  On a saturated, commercial-filled, generalized television stream that's two hours behind, or on a live customizable stream online or on satellite?  The answer is obvious to most of us, and it's where ratings fail in almost every instance.

Jericho was canceled after one season because of its poor television ratings.  After an outrage by fans brought the show back for another year, CBS conceded that they didn't realize the show had so many fans.  Why?  Because traditional media measures traditional media; in the industry, self is the only medium that matters.  CBS has a website set up for the show (www.JerichoRises.com) that streams every episode, commercial free, for free.  The site also has a message board, cast interviews, commentary episodes, and behind-the-scenes information.  No one's quantifying that.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was supposedly among the higher viewed shows this season according to TiVo and DVR services and combined with online viewing on NBC's rewind viewing.  It was canceled even when lower-rated shows were left on the air (like 30 Rock).  Why?  Because traditional media only measures traditional media.  It's flawed demographically, it's flawed economically, and it's flawed geographically.  Networks strive to achieve the 18-49 demographic and never seem to get them.  Why?  Because we're all on XM or Sirius, on Youtube or MSN, on The Blue State or Daily Kos or, to be fair, Drudge and [insert conservative blog here because I don't read any].  We've all moved on; we're all sick of the media covering the media, interviewing the media, then reviewing the media and passing judgment on the media.  Malkovich Malkovich?  Malkovich.  Malkovich Malkovich!

Live Earth was billed as a failure because people didn't sit in front of a TV and let a producer pick which songs we watched and from which artists.  Ratings fell because someone thought the 18-49s were watching, and they wanted to see a full set from Kanye West instead of from Bon Jovi; they thought Brits wanted to watch the Linkin Park set three times instead of a full set from Metallica.

There you have the generation gap, the same gap that you already know about because you get your news here instead of by sitting in front of CNN waiting for Wolf Blitzer to tell you what you want to hear.

And on a final note:  If the same people who took issue with the profanity at Live Earth took issue with how many Iraqis we kill and how many coal power plants we build, it might be a different world.  Live Earth knows where to reach the future of the world, and it succeeded in full.  No media necessary.

Comments

[George]

I loved Live Earth. Made my weekend. I watched on Bravo, in and out, for 10 hours on Saturday and recorded the rest. After watching most of it back I:

1) cant believe all those artists got in on this on the same day: Bon Jovi, Madonna, Roger Waters, Smashing Pumpkins, Lenny Kravitz, Pussycat Dolls, Kanye, Ludacris, Alicia Keys, Linkin Park, The Police, Keith Urban, John Mayer. Not to mention a ton of others. That's like every genre, every age group. It's amazing they all came together for an issue that the US Congress barely talks about publicly.

2) now realize that if Al Gore were President every day would be like 7-7-7! And Earth would be the greatest planet in the universe once again. I'm sick of playing second fiddle to Saturn.

And That's all i took from it.

[Carl Philbrook]

Don't know if this means much, but I'm lighting the wood stove because it is damn cold in the house. I have never had to do this ever in the summer.

[Erick]

Carl - up until this week, it had rained 26 straight days in Oklahoma City, a new record for the state. In April, it snowed. In December, it was 90 degrees. I think somewhere we got about three months ahead.

[kcom]

10 million online versus a supposed audience of 2 billion. Still not very impressive. And what exactly were the XM ratings like? You didn't say. Just because they put it on 6 channels doesn't mean anybody listened. I remember when NBC put the Olympics on a three channel package (the Red channel, the Blue channel, and the White channel) and bombed miserably. They didn't repeat that mistake. Sure, the TV audience wasn't the whole story, but Live Earth hardly swept the world. It was a blip, considering there are 6 billion people on the planet.

[Erick]

KCom - you make good points about XM and about the blip. XMs subscribership (which isn't a word but it'll do here) is only about 4 million, so even if they all listened to those 4 channels the whole time it's still not a huge deal - and of course they didn't all listen, so that makes it even less. That said, though, it still wasn't a "failure." It may not have "rocked the world," as many others might say, but when you factor the ratings in: 10 million on MSN in this country, 4-6 million on NBC/UniversalHD/Bravo, and a fair estimate of 700,000 on XM, and you're looking at 16 million in America. That's not huge, but that's not bad either. That's more than your top rated Prime Time shows. And in other countries the ratings were similar, as were the resources. The UK has Worldspace Satellite Radio (the equivalent of our XM/Sirius) which I'm sure did the same thing, and I believe the BBC had online coverage.

It's no 2 billion (but then again, I never understand people who hype things up like that. That's like when they said the Superbowl was viewed by 100 million people. No way.) but it's still good ratings. I suppose my only point was that traditional media isn't where we're watching anymore, so those specific ratings seem pretty irrelevant.

[George]

Live Earth was great but it wasn't marketed correctly. I didnt know it was on Bravo until the day of the event and I'm not living in a cave as far as I can tell. And I still cant find a full list of performers anywhere. And the Live Earth website is terribly useless. The event was great - the marketing was weak.