Is Twitter the anti-DVR?
Major television networks have been talking aout DVR-proofing shows and commercials for a long time. On way they’ve done this on the advertising side of things is by making greater use of product placement. A really clear example of such product placement was Conan O’Brien giving away 20 Chevy Cruze’s. Each night in his program he would promote the contest by basically doing a live commercial for the Chevy Cruze.
But television really can’t be DVR-proof. People catch on to the product placement and fast forward through those segments…And while a lot of research has been done on which time slots are least likely to be DVR’d networks still find themselves trying to catch up to the DVR and online sites like HULU.
Then came Twitter. If you’ve watched any major live programming (Grammy’s, Oscars, Superbowl, State of the Union Address) you’ve noticed that your entire Twitter feed is overtaken by the topic of the programming. Everyone is live micro-blogging their thoughts on the what people are wearing, doing, and saying. I’ve found that it’s increasingly frustrating to watch such live programming via DVR because you remove yourself from the ability to sign on to any online social networking and participate in the conversation lest you ruin the element of surprise by seeing what others have already said about events you haven’t yet seen.
Just two weeks ago Howard Stern spontaneously decided to tweet behind the scenes stories and commentary while his 1997 film “Private Parts” aired on HBO. Apparently Stern was at home, saw it on TV, and decided to start Tweeting. It became news all over the internet almost immediately driving people to start following Stern and tune into HBO. This resulted in increased viewership for the movie and cause people to watch it in real-time so that they could follow Stern’s tweets accordingly.
My guess is that networks will find a way to take advantage of Twitter as a means of DVR proofing certain programming.
Just a thought.
