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sales@spotsndots.com Copyright 2017.The Daily News of TV Sales Friday, July 7, 2017

CORD CUTTING - COULD IT BENEFIT TV SELLERS?MIGHT RESULT IN REDUCED AD LOADS Nearly 14 million households have so far cut the cord from cable or satellite services and those numbers are only expected to grow as more Americans embrace so-called Over The Top (OTT) services like Netflix, YouTube, Hulu and Amazon Video. ComScore says 51 million households used an OTT service in April. It’s presenting an existential crisis for some cable networks left on the cutting room floor of the skinny bundles which offer fewer channels. What does it mean for local TV stations? So far, less than one might imagine. “It’s been really important for these services to have TV stations on them—so this is an evolving story but one that holds a lot of upside for the business,” S&P Global analyst Robin Flynn said at a recent conference. S&P’s survey of cord-cutters found the cost of pay TV is the top reason for not subscribing, cited by nearly four-in-ten. And 18% said over-the-air broadcast TV stations meet their needs. Another 12% said the combination of broadcast and an OTT service is all they need. “I think that’s a very positive sign for station ownership,” Flynn said. Tribune Media interim-CEO Peter Kern predicted local TV ad sellers could even benefit from cord-cutting when they approach clients. “Local broadcasting is a beneficiary as it remains the only place to kind of catch everybody from an advertising standpoint,” he said on a recent conference call. But before sales reps hit the streets with that pitch in hand, Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser predicts it will be years before that sort of thinking takes root with ad buyers. “I don’t think it makes much difference to local TV advertising,” Wieser tells Spots N Dots. “The way budgets are allocated to local stations and MVPDs [cable and satellite TV companies], advertisers wouldn’t likely change [budget allocation] unless cable subscribers fell by a significant amount, like by a quarter or more, which would take at least a decade to play out if it ever did happen.” In the near term Standard Media Index director of market intelligence Christine Hayes says what OTT services could do is put pressure on broadcasters to reduce ad loads. In a recent op-ed in Fierce Cable she said consumers’ ability to manage what they watch, when they watch it, and how they watch—including skipping commercials—is changing the ad game. Already SMI data shows the number of ads airing on broadcast and cable networks during Q1 declined 5% compared to a year ago. And Hayes points out during one Saturday Night Live episode in March, NBC cut the ad load by 14% while at the same time it booked 13% more in revenue. “In this high-demand program, a reduced-ad-load model can be offset with revenue increases,” Hayes wrote, adding the big question is whether clients are willing to pay a premium on low-ad shows.

ADVERTISER NEWS Costco says net sales rose 7% to $12.17 billion during the five weeks ended July 2, from $11.33 billion in the similar period last year. RetailDive says same-store sales rose 6.3%, and 6.5% at the company overall, according to the company statement, blowing past the Retail Metrics consensus expectation for a total company same-store sales rise of 3.7% and a core U.S. rise of 3.9%. Costco shares had retreated on the news

that Amazon will buy Whole Foods for $13.7 billion as investors worried about the inevitable disruption in grocery sales and operations but bounced back after its June sales report.... A report from FoodDive says under Amazon’s ownership, Whole Foods will likely offer price matching, digital coupons and guaranteed low pricing rather than traditional paper coupons and circulars, according to experts interviewed by CNBC. Coupon redemption dropped 4% last year, while the average value

and overall volume of coupons fell as well, according to coupon processing company Inmar. Last year was the first year that digital coupon redemption topped traditional coupon redemption, according to data from Inmar....Sears Holdings may soon lose its No. 3 market share position in the appliance market to Best Buy as it continues to fall further from the No. 1 ranking it held as recently as 2013, according to an analysis from The Motley Fool. It has been four years since Sears lost the market lead to Lowe’s, and later the No. 2 market position to Home Depot. Together, Lowe’s, Home Depot and Sears account for about 58% of all appliance sales. However, Best Buy is closing in on Sears’ third-place 13% market share, according to the analysis.... Nissan will unveil push-button automatic-parking on the second-generation Leaf electric car as a new upgrade to its ProPilot autonomous driving system. The feature will allow the Leaf to self-park in parallel, angled, front-in and straight back-in spots by automatically taking over the accelerator, braking and steering, according to autonews.com...VolksWagen Credit plans to make an equity investment in AutoGravity Corp., which has developed a car shopping and financing mobile app and Web platform. With AutoGravity, customers can shop for a car, select a nearby dealership that has the vehicle, choose from up to four finance or lease offers and get preapproved....L Brands shares fell more than 14 percent Thursday after the specialty retailer reported a decline in same-store sales in June. The operator of stores such as Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works said same store sales fell 9 percent last month, worse than the 7 percent decline expected by analysts.

PAGE 2 The Daily News of TV Sales @ www.spotsndots.com

NETWORK NEWS Hollywood’s small but vocal Asian-American community is speaking out supporting former Hawaii Five-O stars Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park. The two left the CBS series just as production on the eighth season was about to begin. Guy Aoki, founding president of the Media Action Network for Asian Americans wrote in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, “Unfortunately, the racial hierarchy established in the original 1968-1980 series remain intact in the 2010 reboot: Two white stars on top, two Asian/Pacific Islander stars on the bottom.” Kim and Park had requested and were denied pay equity alongside fellow original cast members Alex O’Loughlin and Scott Caan. In a Facebook post, Kim noted that his decision to leave the show was the result of the inability to reach an agreement on a new contract. He added, “The path to equality is rarely easy.” “Daniel and Grace have been important and valued members of Hawaii Five-O for seven seasons,” CBS said in a statement Wednesday, “We did not want to lose them and tried very hard to keep them with offers for large and significant salary increases.” A CBS insider stressed that supporting actors Kim and Park’s contract dispute had nothing to do with race……. The popular mobile phone game Candy Crush is coming to CBS on Sunday night at 9 PM (ET). The new game show will be a one-hour, live action competition which requires players to complete levels by swapping colored pieces of candy on a game board to match three or more. The TV version of Candy Crush is a mega-version that requires the players to use their entire body, suspended on a harness, to form the candy-coated combinations. CBS, Lionsgate, and King Digital Entertainment joined together to create the new format, which will be distributed domestically by CBS Television and internationally by Lionsgate……An analysis of ratings for the network morning shows published by TVNewser revealed that all three programs are posting audience declines relative to last year. For the week of June 26th, ABC’s Good Morning America finished number one in total viewers among the three but was down by 12% over its viewership in the comparable week in 2016. The program was down by 16% year-to-year in the news demo of 25-54. NBC’s The Today Show remained in the second position in total viewers and number one in the demo. But like GMA, The Today Show was down 9% in total viewers and down 15% in the demo from the same week last year. CBS This Morning remained in third place and only fell by 3% in total viewers, but took a -16% hit in the demo.

CABLE NETWORK NEWS Less than a month after inking a new contract with Fox Business Network, the host of Making Money with Charles Payne has been pulled off the air under a cloud of sexual-harassment accusations. Deadline reports that Payne has been suspended immediately, and Making Money will use a series of “sub-hosts” in the coming days. Deadline says the married host admitted to the National Enquirer that he had an affair with an also-married female political analyst who was a frequent guest on FBN from 2013 until last year.

AVAILS WTAT FOX 24 in Charleston, SC is searching for a Digital Sales Manager. The ideal candidate must be able to coach, train, and lead our team of account executives to attain individual and collective Digital goals across all of our platforms. This candidate must have a proven history of developing and executing successful client-specific campaigns, and professional knowledge of SEM, SEO, and all aspects of targeted display advertising. Resume to jobs@foxcharleston.com and include “WTAT-

DSM” in the subject line. No phone calls please. EOE. 8 News Now, KLAS Las Vegas is looking for a General Sales Manager. The GSM develops and executes sales strategies which result in exceeding revenue targets in local, national, digital and new product revenue, and provides strong management and leadership for the broadcast/ digital managers and sales teams. A bachelor’s degree and a minimum of five years’ experience in

media sales required. Keen negotiating skills required. Please CLICK HERE for more info or to apply now. EOE. If you’ve ever wanted to work in one of America’s best places to live, here is your opportunity! WKOW, the ABC affiliate in Madison, WI has an immediate opening for an account executive. The AE will help an established client list grow its bottom line with Green Bay Packers Football, Big 10 Football, local sports and news from the 2016 Wisconsin Broadcasters Association Station of the Year. This is your chance to live and work in the home of the Wisconsin Badgers! Resume to bbeer@wkow.com. No calls please. EOE.

AD AGENCY NEWS WPP plans to combine agencies Wunderman and Possible, creating a super group of 9,200 employees and 200 offices. Despite the new arrangement, Possible will continue to operate as its own brand, but it will be placed under Wunderman, according to Adweek. Wunderman global CEO Mark Read said he is “most excited about what we can do together for Microsoft.” Possible and Wunderman both count the brand as a client in Seattle. Another focus will be leveraging technology partnerships that both agencies have developed and nurtured over the years. To date, the agencies have a combined 2,600 tech experts working with clients like Amazon, Google, IBM and Salesforce. Meanwhile, Ad Age says Publicis Media is retiring the Mediavest brand, which handled some of the biggest media accounts in the U.S., including Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Kraft Heinz, for nearly 20 years. Mediavest and sibling media shop Spark merged in 2016 -- part of a broad corporate restructuring at Publicis Group to create Mediavest | Spark. That entity is now being renamed Spark Foundry. The rebranding is designed to better reflect the company’s expansion beyond media to include analytics, technology and innovation, insights, content and commerce.

7/7/2017

FunnyTweeter.com

First week of my diet I gained 3 pounds. However, I found out if I stand further away

from the mirror I look thinner.

The Daily News of TV Sales @ www.spotsndots.com PAGE 3

WORKING CAPITAL IS STILL A CHALLENGE The economy may be growing, but the quarterly report on private capital access from Dun & Bradstreet and Pepperdine Graziadio School of Business and Management finds that more small and medium-sized U.S. businesses report having working capital challenges in the last three months than during any other period in the last five years. The report shows that 66% of businesses that were surveyed reported working capital as the reason for seeking financing in the last quarter, an all-time high for the survey since its origination in 2012 and up 22% from Q2 of 2016 (54%). Women-owned and minority-owned businesses are feeling the effects of a working capital crunch more acutely, the latest survey has also found. Both women-owned (72%) and minority-owned (80%) respondents cited working capital challenges as the lead reason for seeking capital last quarter. Slow payments are also a problem. 22% of small businesses (under $5 million in annual revenues) reported that their accounts receivables payments have slowed over the past three months. This has impacted their ability to grow. Slower accounts receivable payments disproportionately impacted women- and minority-owned businesses, with 47% of women-owned and 44% of minority-owned businesses reporting that their ability to grow was impeded. “While access to capital for small businesses has steadily increased since the Great Recession, these businesses are still feeling the effects of being the last paid on the totem pole,” said Bodhi Ganguli, lead economist at Dun & Bradstreet. “While it’s great that banks and alternative lenders are lending at more accessible rates, the capital issues businesses are facing are unfortunately coming from the slowed payments from their business partners. As the Federal Reserve continues to raise the interest rate and the cost of borrowing increases, small businesses will likely feel this crunch more and more.”

BACK TO SCHOOL MARKETING ALREADY? Summer may be in full swing, but back-to-school season for some marketers began long ago—in some cases before students even closed last year’s textbooks. Campaigns from Office Depot and Lands’ End, for example, have been running for weeks, and more brands are expected to push out campaigns in the next few days. Compare that to 2016, when back-to-school TV commercials did not begin airing until mid-July. “As soon as you’re past Fourth of July, you’ll see more brands and retailers talk about back-to-school, which I think is still early,” said Scott Madden, director of empathy at Boston-based advertising agency Connelly Partners. “It’s reached the tipping point where the commercialization and reliance on big data tells them the earlier they get to market, the more likely those shopping in that timeframe will spend more.” Not necessarily. Though The $75.8 billion shopping season is the second-biggest (after holiday) for retailers, the bulk of spending occurs in late July through mid-August, according to ad tech company MediaMath.

LOTS OF VARIETY FOR SVOD USERS Lots of people pay monthly for a subscription video on demand service (SVOD) like Netflix—and their numbers are still growing. But analysis from The Diffusion Group (TDG) points out that not all SVOD users are alike, especially when it comes to TV viewing and the role that subscription streaming of video plays. A group that TGS’s analysts call “Pay-TV Substituters”—a small but growing segment—spend 68% of their TV time watching SVOD, about 25 hours per week. Substituters not only spend a far greater proportion of their TV time

watching SVOD, but spend far more time than other segments watching TV in general (about 34 hours/week). By contrast, those using SVOD to augment their TV sources, “Pay-TV Supplementers,” spend only 20% of their TV time watching SVOD, 3.5 hours per week. Notably these viewers spend only just over 14 hours each week watching TV, far below Substituters and least among the four segments. “Quantum Viewers” and “Luddites”

spend about the same amount of time each week watching TV SVOD (about 5 hours per week). However, SVOD’s contribution to their total TV time varies significantly. For example, Luddites spend 35% of their weekly TV time watching SVOD, while Quantum Viewers spend 26% of their weekly TV time watching subscription on-demand streaming services. “The industry continues to speak of SVOD viewers as if they are a homogenous group with common behavior and preferences. Nothing could be further from the truth,” says Michael Greeson, TDG president and principal analyst.“TV streamers are as varied as TV viewers in general, and understanding these differences is critical to operators and networks hoping to carve out a larger share of TV time,” said TDG president Michael Greeson.

7/7/2017

Seth Meyers

A new poll found that 10%of people post vacation

photos on social media to make others jealous, and 100

percent of people click on them to see co-workers in a

bathing suit.

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