Mainstream media — best practices

New-media experts have a habit of criticizing traditional media for not doing certain things right. However, despite valid criticism, mainstream media uses various best practices to promote and monetize a particular media property — online and offline.

• Online
  • Content hub: Television networks, such as ABC and NBC have created content hubs, where fans can locate various types of media and activities in a single location. For example, NBC’s myNBC provides blogs, videos, and forums for fans to interact and seek content for any given show.
  • Interviews: While late-night television is a popular promotional venue for television and movies, various networks are starting to provide talent for online interviews. Example: In order to promote NBC’s new show, Chuck, NBC permitted an online fan site, ChuckTV.net to interview Yvonne Strahovski.
  • Advertising: Similar to traditional advertising, mainstream media promotes television and film programming via various online advertising programs, including Google AdSense. On the contrary, very few, if any online shows use advertising as a means of promotion.
  • Supporting-content: For the past few years, major networks have been using supporting content for their most popular series. Example: NBC offers serial based webisodes of The Office. Similarly, ABC produces the ‘Official Lost Podcast‘ to promote Lost.

• Offline
  • Advertising: Mainstream media has long used various forms of traditional advertising, including, billboards, buses, and available TV spots to promote a particular show. Usually, these advertising materials are placed in high-visibility areas to drive viewers to the show.
  • Promotion: Late-night shows, news programs, talk-shows are all part of a press tour that many traditional media properties go through. Not only does this drive in viewers, but also exposes the show to a large audience at minimal cost. On the contrary, very few, if any new media producers take this route to promote their online show.
  • Production quality: Production quality is always top-notch for content produced by traditional media, regardless of it’s destination. For example, the production quality of Sorority Forever, produced by the WB is far superior to most web shows. Although the quality of online shows is increasing at a rapid pace, there are still large gaps between high quality and low quality content.
  • Focus on business: At the end of the day, online media and traditional media are business entities that need to be profitable in order to survive. Before picking up a show, every TV network goes through an intensive screening process to determine the market and the profitability of the show. This does not exist for online video, which hampers monetization activities and increases failures.