There are four separate videos of the interview covering the following:
Video (Length in minutes)
Artie's Background (3:00)
The Fan Experience Research Study (8:16)
Media Lab (9:48)
CTAM (1:55)
CW:
Artie, you are a member of the CTAM
Research Committee. Can you tell us about your involvement with the committee?
AB:
I look at the CTAM Research committee as a way to get together with really
smart people, sharing work that we have done and also help guide the terrific research
initiatives of CTAM. I also co-chaired one of the CTAM Research conferences. It
has always been a fabulous conference and one that uniquely gets to issues that
other conferences don’t. We continue to be avid supporters of CTAM on the
research side because the type of research that CTAM does is different from
other organizations and more specific to our needs. Our roots are still in
cable television. We still need to know the needs of our operators and how we
can grow our business together. We have issues like set top box measurement that
need to be addressed. We now have the issues of addressability which need to be
understood. There is more focus on these issues with this research committee
which makes it very important to us.
CW:
Where do you think is the most dramatic
change in the industry has occurred in the past 5 years?
AB:
When I came on board at ESPN thirteen years ago the focus was purely on cable
television and television ratings. I think all of us on that side of the
business who were focusing on strengthening audience measurement for cable
networks realize that it has evolved. We have created multi-faceted research
departments ranging from audience research, which is established, to primary
research that measures consumer insights for building brands and understanding
consumer behavior. For many of us, especially at ESPN, we are currently focused
on really understanding cross media behavior. Not just television behavior but
how people are using all digital outlets. We are in the audio business. We are
in the print business. So it is not just about tv anymore. It’s about
understanding the holistic viewer experience. We call it the “Fan Experience”.
CW:
Can you share some insights about the
“Fan Experience”?
AB:
We have invested a lot of time and money in the past few years researching
sports fan media behavior culminating most recently in a major study we did
with Sequent Partners and Ball State University where we shadowed 50 young male
sports fans to help understand how they use the individual media touch points,
the role that sports and media play in the context of life itself. From that we
created the seven principles of cross media measurement and behavior. The
fundamentals are this: Sports fans consume much more media than the average
American does because they have to consume sports in the moment. Very little
sports on television is consumed on a time shifted basis. Virtually all of it
is consumed live. There is this phenomena of “social currency” – big sports
fans have to follow the information on a daily basis. So the new digital media,
whether it be a PDA, a laptop, any sort of access to the web or web video has
been embraced by the sports fans because they can be in contact with sports on
a daily basis. So they consume a lot of sports but traditional media has not
suffered. Media use is not a zero sum game. Media use continues to grow. And
that is because these new digital technologies create what we call “new markets
of time”. We have new opportunities to consume media where we never could
before.
The
other thing we know a lot about is the “available screen philosophy”.
Television continues to thrive because if television is available it is
certainly the best screen to watch sports. But if I can’t be near a tv I will
go to my computer or what is really growing now is the use of mobile
devices. In fact it could be the most
prolific and perhaps the most engaging device in the next few years.
CW:
Is there anything that you would like to
add?
AB:
The only thing I would add is that there is a lot of misinformation in the
industry which slows us down. When you come to work each day there are things
that come through the email or in the press that are actually ill-informed.
What worries me is that many major decisions are made on this information that
is actually misinformation. So we have to work harder as researchers both on
the client side and on the vendor side to be more responsible as to how we
communicate findings. There is a lot of bad research out there. There is a lot
of great research out there. We have to be very focused as to how we separate
what is mediocre and not good from what is. Researchers, particularly new
researchers coming into the industry, have to focus on methodology quality –
really understanding what works and what doesn’t. We have to be very careful of
falling into the trap of doing “fun” things that fall into the qualitative area
but are not really projectable to anything. We have to understand that the
scientific method in research is absolutely necessary before producing results
for decision making. It is not about one type of research – one type of
research doesn’t do it. There are roles for different types of research –
ethnography, set top box data, sample based data – it all has to be able to
work together. That is why there is a need for trained professionals in the
research industry to know what works and what doesn’t.
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