Streaming in the winner's circle

A look at shifts in the “Best Drama” category 


The Handmaid’s Tale was awarded Best Drama at this year’s Emmys, the first streaming show to ever to do so. Before the ceremony critics wondered whether academy voters would hand the award to This Is Us, which would have signalled that the broadcast drama is still alive and fighting. Instead, the drama from first-time nominee streaming network Hulu took the prize.

Another notable difference this year was the prominence of streaming show nominees. For the first time ever, streaming shows dominated the category with four out of seven nominations. It might have been an unpleasant surprise to Netflix, who had three nominees this year and has been on the slate for the past five, that the distinction should go to Hulu. In any case, Handmaid's win is an indicator that streaming has made its mark and will continue to spur the industry's digital transformation.

Until the arrival of prestige cable, ushered in by HBO’s The Sopranos, broadcast television was never challenged. “Remember broadcast? The TV O.G.,” Stephen Colbert quipped in his opening monologue at this year’s ceremony.

My personal TV viewing years peaked in the cable era and I couldn’t recall the last broadcast drama that won. I went back to the historical data to see the trends and the visual shift is compelling.

A few notes:

• A show from a streaming network won Best Drama on the fifth year that streaming was represented as a nominee. It took cable six years after first being nominated in the category to gain a win.
• The Sopranos was HBO’s magic bullet that put cable on the board in the 1998-99 season. House of Cards did the same for Netflix in the 2012-13 season.
• Even after The Sopranos' first win in 2004, and nominations for every season it aired, cable still faced competition from broadcast for two more years. Lost and 24 picked up awards in 2005 and 2006, respectively. Cable secured the win in 2007, for The Sopranos once again, and never again lost to broadcast, who offered a dwindiling number of nominees over succeeding. Shows from cable networks were the only Best Drama winners in the past ten years, until this year.
• Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Mad Men and The Sopranos were cable’s winning shows with two to three wins each. The last broadcast ‘mainstay’ was The West Wing, which enjoyed consecutive wins for its first four seasons.

The rise of prestige streaming

Whether the crown will stay with cable networks will be up for debate in the next few years but cable certainly has huge competition now.

Prestige streaming has been challenging cable for several years, with online producers investing heavily in original programming. Netflix led the category with House of Cards as the first streaming program ever to be nominated for an Emmy, and the network continues to invest in a wide range of original programming. The three up for Best Drama this year were vastly different – political drama House of Cards, thriller Stranger Things and historical drama The Crown. It has an equally unique and critically-lauded collection of comedies. Amazon and Hulu have rich original products as well, though none as popular as Netflix's series.

Though we can’t discount cable completely.  The absence of Game of Thrones may have given streaming shows an early entry into the winner’s circle. The show’s last two seasons will remain major contenders. HBO’s other prestige fantasy, Westworld, was also nominated this year, while FX, AMC, and Showtime continue to produce critically-acclaimed programs. Cable may win for a few more seasons, but it will be interesting to see how many it will take for the tide to shift completely to streaming shows (as it did for cable after The Sopranos secured their second win in 2007), or whether cable will continue to challenge streaming.


Notes of digital interest

Television is an interesting vertical to explore in terms of digital transformation because new technology, new players, new ways to engage with the old, are so evident. Three things that stand out:

• Contribution to fragmentation of the category: Streaming has provided a platform for content that would never be viable on broadcast television, or even cable, with their fixed airing periods. Streaming platforms make their programs available on-demand and opens up a content long tail that is not restricted by broadcast periods. The results have been glorious. So many new points of view are now being represented. These programs fit with audience demand and the digital behavior of finding a constantly refreshed stream of content that resonates with audiences’ personal stories and narratives.
• Format shifting and bending: Streaming shows can play with episode lengths, airing dates and how quickly they release their episodes (binge vs. weekly). This season Master of None took complete license over episode lengths, with one episode at just over twenty minutes and one extending almost to an hour. In fact the series itself took a break in the 2016 season while creators took the time to refuel with new material. With Game of Thrones as a unique exception, most shows would lose network support and probably fan interest if it took more than a year off to air. Netflix won audiences over with the whole-season drop starting with House of Cards and streaming networks continue to play with binge vs. weekly releases for different programs.
• Diversity to include a more global perspective: This may be unique to Netflix for now, and one of the reasons I find it such an exciting company to watch, but its expansion to other markets could eventually lead to a more global programming slate. This could happen on two fronts. First, in terms of local original programming. The US is likely to remain its center-of-gravity but for Netflix to make a big difference in markets like India, Korea or the Philippines, it will have to penetrate through original local programs. This would be interesting to see. Second would be the potential for Netflix to create a truly global experience. As it is, based out of Singapore, I have access to a growing number of Indian and Japanese properties. But that Netflix could one day broadcast a premier Korean drama or even Philippine drama to other countries is phenomenal. There are cultural hegemony questions and potential issues here I’m sure but the idea that my favorite shows could eventually include shows from countries outside the US and Britain is pretty exciting.

In any and every case the real winner for now are we, the viewers. With so much quality choice in every genre, sub-genre and new genres, there is never a lack of quality programming. As television's influence grows, we are sure to stay tuned.

re-formatting

Despite new viewing habits, television content still sticks to old formats

Wet Hot American summer was released in one eight-episode go, the whole series immediately available to binge on. Netflix releases all their original content this way, starting with House of Cards in 2013. Un-Real, though aired on Lifetime, released the show's first four episodes onilne along with the on-air season premiere. 
I watched the first four episodes of Wet Hot in one shot, stopping only to find and view the original film. I am a TV binge-r, and habitually watch shows straight. I remember when my sister and I first binged on an entire season of The OC. We were sharing a room and even if she hadn't seen much of the show prior she started watching when I put the DVDs in. At the end of every episode we couldn't stop the machine from automatically playing the next one. We had started in the afternoon, stopped only to eat dinner and then continued to watch straight until 4 am the next morning. When we woke up we just resumed watching until we were flat out of episodes.

Straight shot viewing seems to be part of the engagement model. It is tough to watch one episode at a time, and unless I am deathly afraid to be spoiled (e.g. Game of Thonres), I prefer to hoard episodes. What is the reason behind this behavior? It could be loneliness or feeling like you just need to finish a show that you've already invested in.

Given this mode of viewing that studios feed by releasing entire seasons at once, it makes me wonder if episode specs will be maintained as viewer habits shift. Wet Hot still shows opening and closing credits, and the episodes fit the half-hour format. At 28 minutes per episode, they don't need to leave time for ads but still fit within that standard timeslot. House of Cards fits within the hour-long time slot. These are the two typical episode lengths aligned with how programming is planned and scheduled. However when people are watching television online and often practically as a mini-series, will episode lengths eventually change beyond these uniform durations? To mini-clip shorts or even feature length episodes?

Entertainment formats are platform-driven. Except for cable shows, most television programs run for 22 or 44 minutes, leaving time for ads, as standard lengths that can be programmed into a pre-determined time slots. To signify the start of an episode there is often a summary of relevant events in previous episodes ("Previously on..."), which you might have forgotten if you're watching on a weekly basis. Many shows also have opening and closing credits that we associate with the start and end - which have to be in the show material itself becuase there is no external webpage that could include that information.

This reminds me of the intermissions that were once standard in movies. I remember seeing this when we were kids watching classic films on laser disc. As someone who usually has to leave the theater to go to the bathroom (thanks, RunPee), I wouldn't mind if more movies had an offical break. But on the other hand, why cut the action and lose momentum? It turns out that they used to need this time to change reels. "In cinema’s early days, intermissions were necessary to allow projectionists to change out film reels. When the French silent film The Loves of Queen Elizabeth opened in New York in 1912, it consisted of four whole reels and an individual intermission accompanied each." (The Outtake) Intermissions were a necessary, platform-driven spec.

I suppose that when the technology evolved there was suddenly no need to stop a film to change the reel, and this is one platform spec that has been changed.

Movies have always had a much freer rein on length and duration. To qualify as a film a material must be at least ninety minutes long, but they can go to LOTR lengths of three hours and counting. Will television programming eventually evolve this way as well?

While there are online-only content networks like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon, most television programming is still tied to linear and ad-driven programming schedules. We still have "late night" TV, shows are still scheduled during a supposed "prime" time, morning programming is largely news-led and "daytime TV" consists of soap opears. Episode lengths are determined by the number of ads that will be run. It is still one timeline being mapped out by networks, with content and cost per hour, per minute, per second. In advertising time determines cost, a 15s material costs much less than a 30s vs. a 60s or, the ultimate TV luxury, the 90-second commercial.

As someone who views shows often by the season, hasn't seen a TV ad on TV in years, never watches the morning news and views late night shows at any hour of the day, I wonder what changes lie ahead for this particular platform. As we move online where units of time become less as we select our own non-time lines, I wonder what innovations we will see in entertainment formatting.

Get Lucky

I won something! I got word late last year that I had been nominated for Mansmith's annual Young Marketing Masters award. After a few rounds of judging I found out I had been selected as one of nine awardees. For the award ceremony, each of us were asked to prepare a thank you speech that talked also about lessons learned. Here's was mine:

The one thing I’ve learned in my career is to get lucky.

I know Han Solo said “There’s no such thing as luck.”

But we can get lucky.

Getting lucky doesn’t mean waiting around for something great to happen.

It means searching to find that one thing you love to do – or at least something you enjoy,
enough to do it for 8 hours a day, or in our case in advertising, 10-16 hours! a day, and sometimes weekends, too.

It means knocking on doors, not giving up when people say no because you have no advertising experience, and trying until someone takes you in and gives you a shot.

Get lucky –

means always reading and constantly studying,

keeping up with what’s going on in our industry that changes so fast, to develop a gut feel for what’s up next.
And coming across things like digital and riding on, thinking that might be what’s up next.  

It means being ok with experimenting and failing, even when as the digital person nobody knows where you fit in the organization and you end up with seven bosses in three years because there’s never been a Digital Account person or a Digital Planner in the agency before.

Get lucky –

means finding like-minded teammates who also really enjoy the nerdy advertising challenge of identifying marketing issues and insights,
and who will spar with you to help you find the answer to the tough brief that was due yesterday – because everything was always due yesterday!,
or

Finding the dream digital team who will miss meals, dates, sleep, to get our best work out the door,
who always invite you for a drink when you’re stressed out,
and who also toast with you to the things that have gone brilliantly.

It means finding amazing mentors who teach, who coach, who say no, who shout yes.

Get lucky –

means getting older and getting to become a leader and hopefully getting to pass something on to the next generation whose turn it is to have no experience yet in advertising.

It means expanding horizons to be able to find the best new challenges, and coming to grips with getting out of your comfort zone to take them on because sometimes they turn out to be across the sea.

It means staying close to the awesome parents who told you it was ok, and that you should, do what you love – I was and have been very, very lucky.

Thank you again! 

new scenery

There's no way I could have predicted what was going to happen this year, the end of an era. When I look back the good times stand out, but there were things I needed to move on from and grow out of. After a few years discontent had started to seep into the everyday. There were always great challenges, inspiring mentors, awesome teammates. There was also more corporate haberdashery than I would like to have witnessed, the general advertising burnout, and the wear and tear that comes with building something new. The good times stand out the most.

It all came to a head this year, finally time for a break. On my last day I wanted to post as that I had ended my longest relationship - 6.5 years with M.E.

Who would have guessed that I would be re-adopted, this time by the mother ship. They took me to Singapore, Indonesia and Tokyo, but where I ended up was here in Shanghai.

From team lead to solo flight, from one market to fifteen, from internals to conference calls. From creatives just desks away to creatives miles and plane rides away. From my all-Pinoy AEs to the United Colors of Benetton account team. From beverages to cars, from the D to the R. From comfort zone to the great unknown.

Ni hao.

where do we go from here?

Facebook has been the king of Philippine digital marketing for the past two-three years. I don't think this will change drastically next year, but I think we will have to start moving past this gated community.


The Philippine digital branding ecosystem skipped a stage when brands went straight into social media and skipped building the "Web 1.0" assets - websites with sound SEO, e-commerce portals, etc. Most "motherbrand" FMCGs (the Nestles, P&Gs or Unilevers, even the San Miguels or Universal Robina Corps) do have properties but it is not rare to come across a brand without a local and content-rich dot.com. Many marketers we were working with in 2009-2010 were hesitant to build websites. There was no social ad equivalent back then, and banner ads were expensive to produce, optimize and place. So, many brands skipped building these sites. Luckily Facebook came along, and saved marketers from having to pay for programming, CMS, database management. Even social ads are much more cost-effective than the usual banner ads.

But I think that next year will one to go back to digital basics that we might have skipped in the rush and excitement to build Facebook communities.
Because for brands looking to create a deeper layer of utility and engagement beyond the Wall, apps may not be enough. Many clients have started to ask us to start think about what comes after Facebook. What happens to our community when people stop signing up or frequenting the social network? I don't think there will be another Facebook after this (just like nobody really succeeded Google), but there could be a new trend after social networking. And while we have the Likes, brands don't necessarily own the database of their hundred thousand-to-million fans.

*Note: This is completely based on personal experience and observation.

Ultimately the issue is one of ownership. Many brands don't necessarily own their databases, unless they've secured additional contact information through an app. Most of all, brands are subject to each of Facebook's changes and re-designs. We once developed an app for a client to give fans a feature missing on Facebook, only to have that exact feature launched as we were programming. So brands looking to be more content-heavy may start going back to the dot.com. Content will probably always best-propagated on social network sites but this doesn't mean that wholly-owned properties cannot work complementary to communities.

This might be too old school for brands and agencies in more developed markets. But a lot of us might have room and occasion to build and/or improve on these foundational assets.

Just realized that this image could well be mistaken for the Digital Sh*t.
But this conference was quite the opposite!

Two days of intense information overload. Still absorbing and thinking through all that was said and tweeted. But will post something soon!

ways of seeing: wristwatches

a curated digital post


I've always had a wristwatch, more for style than for function; the face of my watch is a long rectangle so spacing is weird between the X and Y axis. Sometimes I can't be certain whether my watch is telling me it is 10 or 11. To be sure, I check my phone.


With the onslaught of handheld digital devices that hold the time, what happens to the wristwatch? 
THREE PERSPECTIVES:

says THE ATLANTIC

Such displays of time on mobile devices [and apps] go beyond the ticktock of the grandfather clock and the insistent pulse of the wristwatch, no longer pointing at one moment but indicating all the hours at once.

says THE CLASS OF 2014

...They’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day.

says LUNCHBREATH

brands in the webvolution

Wired's latest buzz piece boldly declared that "The Web is Dead". Not the Internet, but the world wide web that is currently the main medium of transaction - linked web pages accessed by browser. They argue that the web is declining as we move toward a browser-less internet - "think apps".

This is right in line with the evolution of Webs 1.0 to 2.0 and soon, Web 3.0.

If 1.0 was about information and static pages, 2.0 is characterized by user participation and real-time data streams. The singular thesis of Web 3.0 has yet to be determined but it will center around portability, cloud computing, semantic and intelligent data.

For brands, especially local Philippine brands, where are we now and how are we ever going to keep up? This is something I've been thinking about and hope to write more about in the next few weeks:

• Which key Web 3.0 developments will have the biggest impact on brands
• Which (or are there any) brands are poised to win in 3.0
• How to move forward and who should spearhead the movement

Keeping track of where we are and where we need to go...

open....

This week was crazy. Insane. Impossible. Sick.
But things worked out somehow.

I think we're finding our groove.  I'm getting better perspective.

So before anything else happens I want to write that this is great. Best mood ever.

photo by Buttersweet - PLEASE REMEMBER OUR FRIENDS IN CHILE	via PhotoRee

learning trip / be your digital best: digital marketing philippines

Was back at my old office yesterday to give a talk - our boss asked me to share about about my trip to the States and digital learning in New York. I actually wrote the presentation a month ago but just hadn't been able to deliver it since everyone (including me, haha especially me!) was busy.

It was nice to look back at what I had written down almost as soon as I had gotten back to work, fresh from the trip and before getting stressed out handling new projects.

The "framework" I was asked to use was: Five things learned, Five things unlearned. The premise was that there are new mindsets we need to develop to really go digital, but there are also some things that, as above-the-line marketers, we have to forget.

Here are my five on five, which I plan to write about in more detail in separate posts:

FIVE LEARNED:

• Value Marketing, inspired by MRM
• Role of Consumer, inspired by the 140 Conference
• Context changes with mobile, inspired by very a wired city
• Be inspired by the art world, inspired by a very self-expressed city
• No cheat sheet, only problem-solving, inspired by NYU

FIVE UNLEARNED:

• Optimization over launch
• Long-term measurement over short-term
• Propagation over viral
• Quality over quantity, but quantity over campaign
• Role of Consumer over all!

It was hard to whittle down the list of things I had learned to just five (or ten). Especially because I don't think I've really realized yet what I really got out of going to New York and trying to immerse in digital and art. But that's what this blog is for!

thinking tools

Do you think using A3 paper,
letter-sized blank paper,
legal-sized bond paper,
notebook paper,
small pieces of paper,
a pile of scratch paper,
graphing paper?

Do you think using a pen,
markers,
pencils,
old-school sharperner sharpened pencils,
a Wacom pen,
fingers on an iPad?

Do you need silence,
or do do you prefer
some Jimi,
Phoenix,
Marsalis
 or Sandwich?

Do you need
Starbucks,
Chippy,
yosi,
maybe Absolut
to get you going?

Do you like a big empty table,
a view of the sea,
a coffee shop bustle?

Do you think in pictures,
or words,
mindmaps,
doodles,
phrases,
sentences?

photo by quacktaculous	via PhotoRee

be your digital best !

I am pressing replay on this blog.

I haven't been very serious but now that I have begun a "digital immersion", I am re-thinking a lot of how I do things... including the grand opinion piece that is (supposed to be) this blog.

I have a lot of opinions, in general I think I overthink! But that doesn't mean that I cannot categorize and catalog my digital thoughts into a coherent, focused hub on Philippine digital marketing.

The local digital practice is blooming. Filipinos have found their way online and are some of the most engaged in the world - blogs, social networks, social media. But, as is symptomatic of digital business, monetization is still a challenge. Everyone is scrambling to gain "expertise", partnerships are being formed, AORs are being selected. But who, really, has a handle on things?

I am no expert. Given that the space changes every second I don't think anyone can really claim to be. But we can definitely learn from each effort and try to get a handle on upcoming trends. And this blog is one of the places where I plan to do that.

www.beyourdigitalbest.com will run the gamut of topics involved in building a digital media marketing practice. This will include Philippine digital marketing issues and challenges, digital strategy, local and (relevant) international trends, traditional agency life and sometimes my perspective as a consumer of both products and content.I might include a little bit of branding and general communication also.

And one day who knows! Let's see where this goes.