Press review: Seven gets into infomercials; more ACP cuts; Harold vs WPP
In tough times for TV, Seven Media Group is developing new revenue streams, reports Neil Shoebridge in the Australian Financial Review.
He reveals that the organisation is moving into the world of the infomercial, and has hired Sally Williams, the face of the Brand Power ads.
The group will create Infocus packages to run as advertorials across the Seven Network, Pacific Magazines and Yahoo!7. Advertisers will be required to commit at least 60% of their budget, Seven sales boss James Warbuton tells the newspaper.
Meanwhile, Seven is trimming its costs, the AFR reports. However, the paper says that the network is better placed in the declining TV market than rivals Nine or Ten because of its current healthy cash surplus.
Oddly, I can’t recall Michael Bodey being in any of my Statistics lectures – but then again I wasn’t in any of his journalism lectures.
We’ve gone from a system where ONE person at the door accepted diaries for EVERYONE in the home (and guess who was more liable to agree and fill it in more diligently), to knocking on the door (using random geographic locations proportional to population – just as the textbooks say you should do) and asking for the person who has had the most recent birthday (can’t get much more random that that !). And guess what – you have to knock on more doors to get the same sample size, and when you do, you end up with a better demographic representation.
While I agree that the new survey numbers are DIFFERENT … this does NOT make them flawed. Just maybe the old system wasn’t quite up to the rigour that the new system is. Some people just don’t like change – even if you end up with better quality.