Tag: TV

TV Reality Check

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Who’s the biggest TV star in the world? Anyone older than 25 will probably nominate a TV star from the free-to-air (FTA) TV era. Anyone under the age of 25, that is, born after the modern internet burst onto the scene, will tell you it’s MrBeast – aka Jimmy Donaldson.

MrBeast recently passed a milestone 100 million subscribers on YouTube (now 104m) . In total, his posts have attracted more than 26 billion views and his videos are seen on average anywhere between 50 to 110 million times. To put that in context, the two most-watched shows in TV history (outside of global live events) are:

  • Mash – the final episode, 105 million viewers and;
  • Seinfeld – the final episode 76 million viewers

Clearly, it has been a long time since traditional linear TV set any viewership records.

Mr Beast Strategy

MrBeast is now more than an on-screen persona – it’s graduated to a sizeable business. According to Forbes magazine, Donaldson earned $US54 million in revenue last year and now runs a production company with over 50 employees. He has also given away more than $50 million to charity and claims to be YouTube’s biggest philanthropist. To celebrate his 100 millionth subscriber, Donaldson created a video with a hundred of his fans running a modern-day game show, competing to win an island. The production cost alone for this celebration was over $US500,000.

The story of Donaldson’s origin is as surprising as how big he’s become. Ten years ago, Donaldson set himself a clear goal to become famous by earning as many views on YouTube as possible. The ‘how’ of gaining views was less important. Naturally, Donaldson gravitated towards silly stunts and challenges to maximise reach. Some of his early videos included counting to 100,000 (a lengthy 40 hours) and tried spinning a fidget spinner for 24 hours straight. Although his videos have evolved in sophistication of production and concept, this ‘game show’ method has served him well. His key ingredients have become:

  • Challenges and stunts 
  • Giveaways with often very generous prizes
  • Celebrity appearances

Consistent with other popular game shows like The New Price is Right, audience participation is a priority. Donaldson creates incentives for viewers to be involved – to appear in videos and compete for exciting prizes, creating a brilliant viral loop growing both views and audience. Donaldson claims to have cracked the code for making viral posts and that once you’ve mastered the art, “you can make unlimited money”. There are many lessons our local media channels could learn from him about generating views, revenue and profit.

Bonus: Follow my TikTok here for biz & life rad advice (almost 1 million views just this month!)

TV Reality Check

The financial struggles of free to air TV channels are well-documented. Network 10 ended up in receivership and was eventually bought out by CBS. Neither Seven West Media nor Nine Entertainment have done much to solidify their long-term future and may struggle.

Basically, all media sells attention. In media circles, this is known as CPM which is ‘cost per thousand’ viewers. Enter, a reality check. FTA TV currently commands an average premium per set of eyeballs of 700 per cent. No, that’s not a typo.

Nestled in the TV that fits in the palm of your hand, social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook and YouTube charge around $A7 for every 1,000 views. In comparison, FTA TV charges $A50 per 1,000 views a mid-rating show, while ratings winners like The Block costs as much as $175 per 1,000 viewers for a 30 second commercial.

The irony is that while most people are peering into their tiny phone screens, that is when these ‘premium-priced’ commercials run on the big TV mounted on the wall. TV commercials are not nearly as targeted as digital advertising is, neither psycho-graphically nor geographically.

Additionally, FTA TV commercials don’t have click-through potential, and disappear into the ether after they run. In contrast, the online variant, while it can be skipped, can continue to live on in the same social channel as a standalone video, receiving organic views and feed a content play for the brands pushing them.

These FTA numbers for reaching people simply can’t and won’t be sustained. If I were to point out a reason why the market still tolerates such an imbalance in CPM on FTV versus digital channels, I’d narrow it down to the senior executives buying the ad spaces. People buying the advertising space for large brands mostly grew up before the internet and bear a legacy mindset that TV is in some way superior.

That said, it won’t be long before a new cohort of CEOs and CMOs arrive and start challenging why they are paying such an exorbitant premium to reach the same people. When that happens, we ought expect FTA TV’s revenue to decline by 80 per cent.

What Free to Air TV Should Do

Like all disrupted businesses, traditional TV is filled with growth opportunities if they’d only embrace them. The first of these should be realising that the world is no longer segmented in 30-minute slots.

The simplicity of online videos running for as long as a few seconds to a few hours is telling. It seems as though the TV stations would rather things be neat, instead of relevant.

They need to lower the barriers to entry on their digital catchup TV. Tuning into catchup TV is not nearly as easy as it should be. It requires registrations and most shows are removed after a few weeks. In what should be a competitive play against YouTube, the on-demand digital platform is treated as a departures lounge for the TV you missed.

In fact, all channels would do well to leave their entire corporate back catalogue of TV shows online forever, share the revenue with existing content owners and even allow it to be mashed up by new content creators. Then they could create new layered versions of what has already been made. This is already happening, but just TikTok and YouTube. It’s not even a secret…. they only need to copy what is happening!

Search for your favourite TV show from the 1980s and you’ll see it published on YouTube with Google collecting the revenue for advertising running before and beside it. Simply embracing long tail content, asynchronous viewing and allowing the audience to upload and re-interpret their content could change Free to Air’s business model dramatically. But it seems they love the business model they had yesterday more than the reality of today.

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Keep Thinking,

Steve.

Enlightened Loyalty

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Loyalty in life matters. But one thing we should never be loyal to, is a corporation.

Corporate loyalty is one of the most foolish decisions we can make, simply because companies, aren’t real. They are a legal-financial construct invented by humans to literally remove human oriented risk. And we can be sure that despite what they say, a company will never be loyal to anyone inside it. The ‘thing’ can only be loyal to its corporate objectives. It’s designed that way on purpose.

But here is what we can do – be loyal to the people we meet inside them. That has the potential to be enduring. This has the potential to extend beyond the original corporate meeting place because it is between people.

One of the most important decisions we can make – is what to be loyal to. On this my advice is simple, be loyal to people, not things or market based constructs. The irony of course, is that the more we focus on human loyalty, the more the companies and market places we inhabit benefit.

Speaking of loyalty – This weeks Episode of The Rebound is all about Gamification & Loyalty. It’ll be shown on Channel 9 Nationally at 12.30pm. We are now in our 3rd season which is pretty cool.

I remember the first pitch meeting we had with Channel 9. I said that we think smart Australians want to watch something a little more educational than seeing strangers get married on an island or at first site. A risky move, but it worked. I was loyal to what I actually believe. And when it comes to pitching I always say that the audience believes, what you believe They can smell it – and there is nothing more compelling than self belief. And while, we still haven’t cracked prime time our audience was up 61% across season 2. So thanks for all who are tuning in.

The first 2 episodes have already run. Ep.1 was all about Data and Algorithms – with clear explanations and hacks to get them working for you. Ep.2 was all about the Freelancer, something close to my heart because I am one.

And if you haven’t had enough Sammatron – here’s a radio interview I did for Talking Finance (nerdy I know) about why Elon Musk literally can’t afford to buy twitter. Yes, you read that right. The world’s richest human with his $250 billion+ in net worth, can’t raise the cash. Nearly all of his wealth is in Tesla Stock, and he hasn’t got the $43 billion in cash needed to buy it, and he can’t access it either. You can listen in here to find out why. I speak at 23 min mark- a simple insight into how investment markets really work.

I actually posted this interview about Elon Musk not having the money to takeover Twitter – and the tweeting Taliban descended upon me with hate mail. Lol. It’s an interesting example of misdirected loyalty. Elon’s fans, or should I say acolytes, think that he can do no wrong. No doubt he is a genius who has changed the world, but I think it is about time that we kibosh the idea that the person with the most money is always correct. Wisdom isn’t a financial construct, and neither should loyalty be.

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Keep Thinking,

Steve

NFT to TV Star

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

So here it is: my latest world first! As part of The Rebound TV show, we are selling the final episode of Series Two as an NFT. This is the first ever Australian TV show to be sold as an NFT.

Here’s the kicker: The winning bidder of this NFT will also become part of the next series of The Rebound. We call it NFT to TV Star! We will mentor them in their business or career, as part of the Accelerator programme on Series Three and broadcast nationally in Australia. This NFT will be someone’s ticket to TV stardom and a new financial trajectory.

You can buy this NFT on Rarible.com – check out the NFT here. Heck, why not bid on it? At the time of writing, it’s a mere 10% of 1 Ether (around $323 USD). I’d love to have one of my readers win it and come on the show – that’d be rad.

As you may know, NFTs are tokens of digital assets. The cool part is that you can attach other entitlements to these tokens – all of which are verifiable on the Ethereum blockchain. In this case, the buyer wins the token to our Crypto episode, as well as the right to actually appear on the show. But it doesn’t end there. The person who buys it can sell the NFT to someone else, or even a company looking to promote their business (a TV show would be a pretty good place to do that). So the NFT could also become a traded asset that increases in value before a smart contract is executed against it.

Bonus: You can buy this experimental NFT gif here. It also comes with an hour long mentoring session from me or Tommy. I have already sold four of these this week. Only one is left! I have listed it at a very reasonable price of 0.01 Ether (around $30, the minimum listing price). It’s a good way to dip your toe in the water to experiment with the tech and learn – which is what I did. Get on it and chat NFT / future stuff with me!

This is a nice example of how we can better use digital assets by attaching real physical things and future contracts to them. The world is getting increasingly meta. This means the most important asset isn’t the technology itself, but how we apply our imagination to it.

Keep Thinking,

Steve.

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Keep Pushing

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

We all need to chase, we all need to knock on doors. The world is filled with insightful and skilful people, and the ones that get the most work and recognition are those who push more often. I’ve just been reminded of this.

Fortunately, I’ve got to a stage where around 70% of it comes to me directly. It’s mostly luck that my output has waht I call a natural viral loop built inside of it. What’s a viral loop? Glad you asked! It’s when the product you sell has to be introduced to others in order for it to be used. So, every time I am on stage delivering a keynote, I am actually sampling my product live to a new set of potential customers. Every time am featured in a newspaper given expert commentary or on the radio – I am being paid introduce my ideas to a new set of potential clients. But, with my TV show The Rebound – it’s back to basics – I need to sell first and make second, no viral loop here.

The emerging business model of TV shows is a weird beast. It isn’t just about selling a show the commissioning executives will like – these days you need to bring in some sponsor dollars too – let’s call it ‘collaboration’. In the pursuit of said collaboration, I got reminded of one important thing all growth hackers should note:

There are many organisations, inside every organisation

Companies themselves don’t say ‘No’ to opportunities, but people do. And these people often work in different divisions, offices, cities, branches and realms of which all have different objectives, timing and budgets. Often, they don’t even know each other. It means that there are lots of entry points into a single building. I got reminded of this fact when I proposed some opportunities to different people inside the same firm. I knew this company had a perfect fit with The Rebound. So I didn’t stop pursuing them. Different, people, different angles and different doors – I kept knocking – and one opened.

This is also very true for working with that giant beast known as the Government – it is so giant, that you just need to find the right entry point. And while it is easy to think you are being annoying by trying to find another way in, there’s often someone at the other side of a door somewhere who needs the solution you are about to provide.

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Keep thinking,

Steve.

The Gap in the TV Market in Australia

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Sometimes we look at the world and ask why a certain thing doesn’t exist. We wonder why all the current options are so terrible. Especially when the thing that doesn’t exist is at the centre of a massive change that’s happening. That’s how I feel about Free-to-Air TV in Australia at the moment. Here we are living through the greatest technological shift the world has ever seen, and not one television program is focused on it. Currently there is a giant gap in the market. But more importantly, there is also a market in that gap. People have never been more curious about technology as they are now in my entire life – and I should know, I’ve been a tech nerd since way before it was trendy. Further proof lies in the millions of views technology videos get in Australia on YouTube and streaming channels like Netflix.

At the end of last week’s post, you may have noticed it had a micro rant about people wasting their time watching reality TV shows that rob them of their intelligence. But there’s no point ranting unless you’re prepared to do something to change it. And that’s exactly what I’m doing.

On Saturday I brought to life a new TV project, which will give to those curious about the future something worth watching. We shot the pilot for a new show we are calling Future Sandwich.

What is it? It’s a TV show which serves up the future in small tasty bytes (see what I did there?). Oh, and this thing ain’t no cooking show. It’s the show our country actually needs which will inspire kids and adults alike to get excited about the opportunities new technology brings to our lives, work, the economy and a thriving future we can all believe in. Future Sandwich was originally a podcast I was involved in that we’ve taken to the next level. And to keep things true to the show title, every episode (ten in season 1) starts with the humble sandwich being used to explain the topic in a simple way we can all comprehend.

To get it to this stage, we took a pretty big risk. We did this because we believe in it and actions speak louder than words. Sometimes you’ve gotta just make something if you think it is going to work. It’s not about formal research, it’s not about getting anyone’s approval, and you won’t find this advice in a text book or a spreadsheet.

My partner for the show Tommy McCubbin and I think we are onto something and we are prepared to risk losing the game in order to win it. We invested in ourselves and funded the pilot with our own money. No venture capitalist required, because we are real entrepreneurs. We have skin in the game. It’s ironic given that is what the show is about – inventing the future – and we want to invent ours by showing everyone theirs.

The lesson here is simple: if the market isn’t serving up what you need, then maybe it’s a sign you should go out there and make it.

The weird world of people as brands

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

The new year often brings career considerations. How will we position ourselves to take the next step? These days, this involves the nuanced world of personal branding. And while it makes many of us feel squeamish to think of ourselves as a brand, it’s not a new phenomenon.

Before industrialisation, we were what we did. Just quickly scroll through the contacts list on your phone and there’s a chance you’ll see a few of the OG personal brands. Surnames like Smith, Carpenter, Taylor, Baker…  If you think personal branding has gone too far, then don’t forget our brands used to come with us everywhere, and not just appear on our LinkedIn page. Washing powder and electronics aren’t the only brands, people are too, and have been for a very long time.

But then, once we industrialised much of our branding, as economic participants at least, was derived from where we studied and the corporations we worked for. ‘She went to Harvard.’ ‘He worked directly under Henry Ford.’ We built ourselves around the institutions we spent time in. The evidence of who we were and what we were capable of was a function of where we spent time. It was their brands that we had to leverage as we became cogs in their machines. The era of being known for our output got lost, and this was for one simple reason – most of us became part of something much bigger than ourselves. For most of us, there was no longer a table we could imprint our name on, or suit with our name in the jacket pocket. Our work became shared, we only made a slither of the final output – we got lost in the system. As people, we essentially morphed into sub-brands of large corporations. It was then that the great brand reversal started to happen, as mass media infiltrated our homes.

Once upon a time, things were once just things – bread, washing powder, suits, you name it. But in order to build trust, corporations who now made what we used to make, used the branding process to personify what they were selling. In a way, things replaced people as brands. Companies had to make things seem reliable like people, because, who the hell knew who made what? The bread didn’t come from Billy’s bakery – who we knew and trusted – it came from a big factory somewhere.

The tool used to personify the products and build brands during the 20th century was mass media. The factory and the TV were the perfect partners. Big budgets and big scale were both mandatory. Together they combined to make us believe that very average things were worth more than they actually were. Much of the value, credibility and the premium price we paid was a function of the advertising. What we were consuming was ostensibly a parasocial relationship. It was a closed shop for the big and privileged – until now.

For the first time in history, people can now brand themselves at scale. The emergence of fragmented, low-cost and highly distributed media on the web means anyone can play. Anyone can build their brand, and then charge a premium for their services. Just like brand XYZ became known as a premium brand, so can we. The more well-known someone is in their industry, the more they will earn – it’s just a modern inalienable truth. I know it feels like a very uncomfortable transition, especially when the world of personal brands is filled with hucksters, and camouflaged Amway sales people on Instagram trying to sell you milkshake weight loss powders by showing their photoshopped abs. Yes, there’s lots of dodgy players out there, using the new cheap tools and make a quick buck – but isn’t there always?

What we might consider instead, is to build something respected and sustainable based on real work and insight. How do we display, using the tools available, our capability? How do we become more than our formal qualifications and experience by sharing new ideas, projects, industry transitions and connection? How do we share things of value with others and then let the law of reciprocity set in?

In simple terms, we just need to decide what we want to be known for – and take that to the market. For me it’s being the guy who understand technology’s impact on business and society – and helping people navigate the future. I study this stuff all day long, so my customers don’t have to. They can focus on their industry and plug in my skills when required.

But in a busy world, where everyone is the CEO of their own personal media corporation, it’s hard to be heard, where everyone has something to say. It might even mean we need to invest in ourselves, and actually pay to build our personal brands. Yes, advertise ourselves, just like the hero brands of the TV Industrial Complex did back in the day. It’s never been more affordable to take control of our own futures, perceptions and capabilities. If it’s good enough for corporations products, then why not people?

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Thanks for reading this year. Have a great 2019. Steve. 

A world before the World Wide Web?

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Here’s a documentary I want to see. Two families living life as it was were before the world wide web arrived. For most homes that was some time during the 1990’s. I imagine life is very different for teenagers, toddlers and parents today compared to say in 1985. We’ve all seen the documentaries comparing life in the distant past – this farming one living like it’s 1885 comes to mind. But how would today compare to just 30 years ago – 1986 to 2016?

I think we’d find it is more different than we remember or younger people expect. I’d love to see a house, school, shopping, media, politics, transport systems all set up to run the experiment with a family or two. Document it – compare it to our modern economy and boom – compelling viewing

Someone go make it – it’s a cool idea for free. I’m sure a production company or TV station would love it.

You can thank me at the award ceremony.

Love, Stevie.