The Australian Research Council is funding a research project to work out how just people hear about new TV programs.
It will be conducted by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute at the University of South Australia which specialises in market research.
"The nightmare for programmers is the show that could have been a hit, but flops, not because it isn't a great show, but simply because people didn't know about it," said Senior research fellow Jenni Romaniuk.
Yeah, like Damages perhaps?
An interesting problem, but one which should be fairly well understood by our networks already, surely? And if not, one would hope they are helping to finance this, along with the advertising industry.
But I'll give them an answer for free: word of mouth.
Despite all the money spent on marketing in newspapers, billboards, radio, bus shelters, internet and magazines nothing has the influence over word of mouth.
And while we're at it, let's throw messageboards and blogs in there too, something Aussie networks are slow to recognise. In America every new show that is launched has a blogging toolkit on its official website so that fans can add the latest info to their wesbites, MySpace and Facebooks with ease. Ok now I'm just being biased. Back to the story at hand.
"We all miss quality programs because we fail to hear about them and end up watching some programs we wish we hadn't," Professor of Marketing Science Byron Sharp. That's pretty sharp, Professor Sharp.
And as readers of this site will tell him, if networks bothered to advertise some of their other content (Weeds), or didn't confuse audiences with encores (Damages) or didn't drop their shows (Smallville) or didn't bring them back (Veronica Mars) audiences might know where to find their favourite shows in the schedule too.
Otherwise they will find them somewhere else: on downloads.
Source: Herald-Sun.
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