Author Archives: Andy Boyer

The Cure For Local News… No Anchors?

Posted by Andy Boyer in Big Businesses, Media

Not many people under the age of 55 would disagree with the idea that local news needs to be reworked.  In previous times, the local anchor was one of a few links between the scary, confusing news story and the viewer who needed it explained.  

But over time, that bond has eroded.  Some would argue the anchor did not evolve with the rest of the news gathering process.  Most of us are more than comfortable being our own editor.  We navigate from website to website, focusing on topics we self-select in filters and rss readers.  

So what role does the news anchor play now? Down in Houston, KIAH is going to see if that answer is, “They don’t have a role.”

Word is that KIAH will try an anchorless newscast.  The concept is still a work in progress, so no other insight is available.  But an anchorless newscast enables a wide range of sweeping changes in the local news.  At the very least, the 4 talking heads could be consolidated into a single one, news magazine and national newscast style.  And managing editors could be guided by popular opinion or some form of viewer input.

Will people watch a TV screen that has no differentiation from a YouTube channel or web site?  Either way, it will be an interesting to story to follow.

Why the U.S. May Not Qualify for the 2012 Olympics in Basketball

Posted by Andy Boyer in Sports

What? That’s a stupid headline.  How could the U.S.A. possibly not qualify for a sport in which we have the premier talent in the world and won a gold medal in 2008?  Ludicrous.

Or is it?

1) The 1st way for the U.S. to qualify for the 2012 Olympics is by winning the FIBA World Championship in August/September, aka the World Cup of Basketball.  Seems doable, right? Well, they haven’t won this event since 1994, though they have earned 2 bronze medals since then.  But the Redeem Team is live and well right?  It’s a new era of commitment, yes?  Well according to reports, that commitment does not extend all the way to Turkey, host country of this year’s tournament.  Be it distance or safety concerns, the top USA players look to be choosing to sit this one out.

Ok, so we don’t win in Turkey.  What’s next?  

2) Well the next event is the FIBA America’s Tournament in 2011.  This is a decidedly easier tourney, as the only real relevant power is Argentina, who the U.S. beat by 37 in the 2007 Finals.  In fact, take away LeBron’s game high 31 points, and the U.S. still wins.  HOWEVER, here comes the NBA lockout in 2011.  USA Basketball is run by the NBA now.  Lockout the players from club teams, they become ineligible for USA basketball as well.  So, now the U.S. goes to the tourney with the best college team they can field.

Uh, oh.  What’s next?

3) Well, there’s a last resort, as 3 teams can qualify in the 2012 FIBA World Olympic Qualifier, designed as a last chance for the best of the worst to sneak in.  This is how Greece, Croatia and Germany got into the 2008 Games.  It runs July 2 – July 8, 2012, just before the Olympics.  So, we would have to hope that the 2011-2012 lockout gets done before June 2012.  Or that common sense prevails and USA Basketball lets the guys play either way.  

Now, there’s another doomsday scenario.  Say the USA does win next month and qualifies, but the lockout extends from fall 2011 all the way through summer 2012.  Who plays then?

Your City Council at Work

Posted by Andy Boyer in Seattle

If you are like me, you may have passed by a number of homeless people this week and wondered what our local government was doing to get people back to work.  Or, you may have been stuck in traffic wondering what our city council is doing to fix the snarls.  Well, here’s what they were up to last week.  

(An excerpt from Nick Licata’s email newsletter)

THE EXHIBITION OF HUMAN REMAINS

In 2006, Premier Exhibition’s ‘Bodies: The Exhibition’ debuted in Seattle. Motorists were treated to billboards of bodies frozen in space and time, minus their skin. Those sensational billboards caught my attention, and the attention of many others I suspect. But, was it educational, as the exhibitors claimed?  In looking at those naked bodies, I wondered where they came from. Who volunteers and says, ‘please display my body playing basketball or engaged in some other sporty activity?’ To learn the answer, one must look to China. Its record on human rights leaves something to be desired (a point made as often by conservatives as liberals.) And there is a connection between human rights and these bodies on display.

PROPOSED LEGISLATION

After hearing from constituents and discussing the matter with my colleagues, I introduced a bill making it unlawful to publically display in Seattle human remains for commercial purposes without valid authorization from the deceased. My bill, co-sponsored by Councilmembers Burgess, Godden and Harrell, would not ban these exhibits if valid documentation is presented.

Yesterday, Councilmembers Clark, Harrell, Rasmussen and I discussed my bill during a meeting of the Housing, Health, Human Services and Culture Committee, which I chair. The legislation is modeled on San Francisco’s law. Among those at the table to discuss the bill was Ron Chew, former director of the Wing Luke Asian Art Museum and a scholar-in-residence at the University of Washington. Mr. Chew was joined by Bettie Luke, Administrative Director of the Organization of Chinese Americans of Greater Seattle.  At the conclusion of our discussion, the legislation was approved unanimously. It now goes before the full Council on Monday, July 19th, for a final vote.

I assume they will get to traffic and jobs next week.

social3i Launches – The next great adventure

Posted by Andy Boyer in Entrepreneurism, Social Media

A friend of mine recently commented that they never quite understand what I do for a living, but it always seems cool.  I couldn’t agree more.

Whether it be building batting cages and selling corporate ticket packages in minor league baseball, writing press releases and guiding customers on the top of a ski resort, working for a future Senator and selling the idea of audio and video on the internet, assisting professional athletes and their families raise money for charities, aiding venture backed startups with Go-To-Market campaigns, or most recently, helping guide a social media and community management agency go from 2 to 35 employees, the two common threads have always been challenge and fun.

So July 2010 marks the start of the next great adventure – social3i Consulting.  Xavier Jimenez and I will team up for the 3rd time now, taking what we’ve learned from our last few years working with the largest social media team in the region, and reshaping it to a more focused, strategic, and consultative presence that can work for exemplary brands, where size doesn’t matter.  

Our old colleagues at SCG continue do fantastic work in the realm of community management, and we wish them continued success as they drive forward.  But the focus of social3i will be different.  We’re going to be doing more classic strategic consulting, and lots of team building, training and development.  Rather than execute long-term tactics and serving the role of outsourced engagement and analytics, we’re going to use a data driven approach to deliver Insight, Ideas and Influence (hence, the 3i) to clients tasked with building their own in house programs.  We believe our past experience building these types of teams and our history of working with some of the largest technology brands, positions us well to solve huge social marketing problems for brands that we’re excited to help out.  Plus, we’re going to be able to join forces with some folks down in the Bay Area who I’ve been hoping to work with for years.  It’s too early to talk about now, but it will add a neat new angle to typical marketing analysis.

Like every new venture, I’m sure we’ll have our share of hiccups and bugs along the way.  But it’s an exciting time and I hope you’ll come find us and follow us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.  We’ll look like a bunch of clowns if we only have 4 followers, so if you read this blog, consider following social3i in these social channels the tax you need to pay for all the free content you’ve gotten over the years 🙂

Thanks again to the SCG team for what has been a fun couple of years.  But I’m not sure I could ask for a more exciting way to open up the 2nd half of 2010 than launching social3i.

And Now Back to Marketing Stuff…World Cup Ratings Soar

Posted by Andy Boyer in Media

Well the U.S. World Cup team is out.  Sad day last Saturday.  

But thankfully, a combination of high drama, strong ESPN/ABC coverage and a Saturday afternoon match provides a nice segue from soccer stories back into the world of marketing.

According to TVBytheNumbers.com:

The 2010 NBA Playoffs averaged a 3.6 U.S. rating and 5.7 million viewers across ABC, ESPN/ESPN2 and TNT, up 3% in ratings and 5% in viewership from last year (3.5, 5.4 mil), and up 9% and 16%, respectively, from 2008 (3.3, 4.9 mil).  A seven-game NBA Finals more than made up for several sweeps in the second round and consistent declines in the Conference Finals.  

Given those numbers, I was interested to find out how many more people would watch the NBA playoffs than a World Cup soccer game.  Well, according to ESPN:

Saturday’s game, which began at 2:30 p.m. EDT on ABC, received an 8.2 fast national rating, ESPN said Sunday. It was seen in 9,455,000 households and by 14,863,000 viewers. Only the 1999 Women’s World Cup final, featuring the United States and China at the Rose Bowl, averaged more households (11,307,000) and viewers (17,975,000) for a soccer game. An additional 4.5 million people watched Sunday on the Spanish-language Univision.

Wow.  To put those numbers side by side:

  • US vs Ghana Soccer Game: 8.2 rating, 14.9 Million viewers (ABC), 19.4 Million viewers total (ABC+Univision).
  • NBA Playoff average: 3.6 rating, 5.7 Million viewers

Now I know it’s not a fair comparison, since the NBA playoffs also included cities like Oklahoma City where only 3,500 of the 10,000 people with electricity actually know how to work their remote control.  So to be fair, here’s data from the most watched basketball games of the year:

  • Game 7, NBA Finals: 15.6 rating, 28.2 Million viewers
  • Game 6, NBA Finals: 10.4 rating, 18.0 Million viewers.
  • Game 5, NBA Finals: 10.8 rating, 18.7 Million viewers.
  • Game 4, NBA Finals: 9.9 rating, 16.4 Million viewers.
  • Game 3, NBA Finals: 9.6 rating, 16.0 Million viewers.
  • Game 2, NBA Finals: 9.2 rating, 15.7 Million viewers.
  • Game 1, NBA Finals: 8.6 rating, 14.1 Million viewers.

So the U.S. vs Ghana game comes in just under Game 1 of the NBA finals.  I expect that’s much more than ABC expected.

 

World Cup Review, Round 2

Posted by Andy Boyer in Uncategorized

32 games in.  Everyone has 2 matches under their belt.  A few teams are already thru, a few teams are already out.  So let’s look at how each region has done.

1) Europe

The proud home of former World Cup Champions such as Italy, Germany, France and England.  Plus Spain, Portugal, and others.  The group with the most teams allocated to the tourney – 13.  And they have been an absolute disaster.  Sure, stats wise they may look ok with a combined record of 10-8-8.  But their big guns have all been lackluster.  France has stopped playing, England is asleep, Italy’s effort is unfathomable, and the only team that is unscathed thus far is the Netherlands.  Basically, Europe loses to South America, ties Concacaf, and beats Asia and Africa. Yet still, somehow, almost everyone is still alive, and many will proceed.  They are like watching a really boring movie for 90 minutes because the finale is tremendous.

2) Africa

Poor Africa.  6 teams this year since they are also the host.  And sadly, almost every team has been over matched.  With a record of 1 Win, 4 Draws and 7 Losses, it’s really hard to justify this much African representation.  Especially since the only win came thanks to a penalty.  Quite disappointing since we were all rooting for them.

3) Asia

At 2-3-5 (I’m including New Zealand), this is another group where you have to question why they get so much representation with 5 teams.  Australia’s been unlucky, South Korea crushed Greece, and New Zealand got that tie against Italy.  But really these teams are over-matched.  The only question is why Brazil didn’t run the score up on North Korea.  Maybe Kim Jong Il threatened to test a missile in their direction.  Maybe they paid them.  Maybe Brazil put huge dollars down on 2-1. For whatever reason, the Brazilian team confusingly refused to drub the team like they could have.  Portugal must not have been on the same money line – they crushed North Korea 7-nil.

4) Concacaf

Not a bad showing thus far for our region.  The U.S. has 2 ties vs Europe, and should have a win and a tie. Mexico has a win over France, and their tie came against the host team in the first game.  Unfortunately, Honduras got stuck with Chile and Spain…. Regardless, Concacaf’s 6 points in 6 games is more impressive than Africa’s 7 points in 12 games, or Asia’s 9 points in 10 games.

5) South America

I don’t care who wins the whole thing.  The best soccer/football in the world is coming from South America.  5 teams with 8 WINS, 2 TIES and NO LOSSES.  Africa has 7 points with 6 teams.  South America has 8 WINS.  Unless Paraguay screws it up, all 5 South American teams should advance to the Round of 16.  And remember there was a huge race for 4th, 5th, and 6th place in the qualifying round.  So an extra South American team in the future might not be a bad thing.