Debt is one huge challenge media managers and content providers are unable to surmount. The Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON) says there is no more media debt, but the Chief Executive Officer of Digital Interactive Media (DIM), Sola Fajobi, counters that the problem remains.
In this interview with Senior Correspondent, GODDIE OFOSE, the producer of Next Movie Star and Supermom also speaks on the effects digital migration will have on television production.
Half year performance
The media business in 2014 has been very tough. Content owners or providers, including television stations, are complaining about the volume of business done in the past six months.
In real terms, most content houses will not say they have done 50 per cent of their projections in the first half of the year. This is because of two reasons: the economy and insecurity.
Insecurity did not allow most brands to sell the kind of volume they projected for themselves, with all the fears in the Northern part of Nigeria.
For example, football goes well with alcohol, and beverages go with football too; a whole lot of things go with football. Now when people cannot even watch in viewing centres because of the fear of Boko Haram, definitely it reduces volume sales.
Once advertisers have challenges with business volume, the first item that usually gets reduced is marketing and advertising budget; and all of us, content owners, feed on that budget. That is one major issue.
The third challenge should be the World Cup. In the year of the World Cup, a greater part of the budget is spent on football and sports related activities.
Nigerian brands, even if they are not necessarily using the football property during the World Cup, tend to do one thing or the other to show support for the Super Eagles or portray themselves as lovers of Nigerians.
One of the major passions of Nigerians is football. Because of the World Cup, the bulk of that budget went into sports and football related activities.
Generally, our economy is in serious trouble and that is seriously affecting content providers. Beyond content, the only industry that is thriving in 2014 is the political industry. The integrated marketing communications industry is suffering.
Digital switch over and challenge facing independent producers
Since the past four to five years, we have all been anticipating the digital switch over. Independent producers are preparing to latch on to the opportunity provided by digital television.
Contents will become king by 2015 because then, opportunity for TV stations will be properly defined. It would no longer be the question of a big TV station, it will no longer be about the reach; it is going to be about specifications, content specific TV stations, such as TV stations with entertainment, music, children programming edge.
Specialty will become the order of the day, where you focus attention on your business or what you are very good at, and become competent. If your competence lies in entertainment or movies, you will go ahead with it.
In 2015, the digital migration will help all of us, it will help brands to achieve precise targeting.
In digital, we can measure who is watching at a particular point in time, and where they are watching from, and what they are watching. Based on that data, brands will spend money and divide how they spend a very small budget. Specialisation will become the order of the day.
Digital migration and terrestrial TV challenge
Not in the beginning. Of course we know that terrestrial TV might need to migrate to the digital platform, and what that means is that there is not going to be this big TV station versus this small TV station any more.
Everybody will have 24 hours to play around with and they have the same audience and they have the same digital platform to run their services. So, definitely, everybody becomes almost equal.
The advantage for terrestrial TV stations is that they have the name and the brand equity. So content will determine what people watch.
Independent producers and media debt
Media debt is still very much around and this affects all of us. Let me say, it is not the fault of the agencies alone; it is a 360-degree thing. The fault is from the advertisers, the agencies, the tracking agencies, and even the content providers too.
There is a whole lot of cycle of payments for media placements, and this takes 360 degrees.
For instance, when you pitch your programme, you’ve to chase agencies and clients and they will look at it, and when they are interested or when it is fitting to what they want to do, and they make their bookings, after an LPO, you will be expected to run the campaign the way it is stipulated in the order.
After you have run the campaign, you are expected to submit an invoice to the agency for payment, then the agency can invoice client or the advertiser, who will decide between 30 and 60 days to process it.
In between the time of running the campaign and the time the invoice gets to the client, the client will tell you he is waiting for media tracking or for monitoring agencies to provide details of what was run and what was not run, basically to prove the details on compliance.
Then either the agency or the client comes to you in the fourth month after you’ve run the campaign to say, ‘we discovered that out of the 10 spots of adverts we gave you, you ran only four and did not run six’ – which in most cases is also caused by the tracking agencies, because we do not know how they do their thing such that it is rear to have a perfect situation.
Because if you are given 10 slots but ran 15 to compensate a client, and what you get from a tracking agency is that you did not comply, it is annoying.
When you get it after four months, you will have to go back to the TV station to get an off-air dub of what you have run and demand that the tracking agency do a back track. Don’t forget that it took you four to five months to get the rejected invoices to the client.
When the tracking agency is satisfied with your compliance, made possible by the TV station off-air dub, you have to go back and start the process all over again, and at that point it must have been 10 months.
This has been a circus, and in most cases, you may not even get your money in eight to 10 months, or even one year.
Effect on business
This affects business in every way, because you have to pay TV stations 100 per cent. All the TV stations in Nigeria are cash and carry, so you have to pre-pay.
Let me give you an example. You have a drama series, then you want to shoot it, but you have to call on writers who will write the series; producers, directors and actors. Now all these people you have called to do your job, you are pre-paying them.
When you have finished the job, and editors have done theirs, it is beautiful. You now need to pay TV stations to put it on air. After you have paid for content, you have to pay TV stations; and you are now chasing adverts for the programme, but you won’t get paid until one year.
Besides the lengthy payment cycle in the industry there is an obnoxious banking system that all of us run to for funds to finance our business. While this circus is going on, the bank is calculating its interest.
For the job you are doing in the first quarter, you will be paid in the fourth quarter. That is why you see very few independent producers you’ve known for 10 years still being able to sustain business. It is tough.
It is not enough to have ideas. A lot of people have fantastic content ideas but cannot sustain the business side of it. Importantly, if people want to go into the media contents business, they need to understand all the dynamics.
However, I am believing that with digital migration, things will be a lot easier because compliance will be available for everyone to see. It’s not like somebody is sitting to watch which advert was run and which was not.
Fantastic contents will definitely be getting good advertising, which means they will be getting good money to run the business. In the era of digital migration great contents will be king.
Waning equity of reality TV shows
Every format has its time span, its shelve life. Every show on TV has a life cycle. There is a duration for excitement.
For example, if you love ice-cream, and you get a good tasting ice-cream in your hand and take the first lick, you are so excited till you take the lick halfway. All of a sudden somebody dumbs 20 cones of the same kind of ice-cream on you. Definitely your interest will wane at some point.
This means content providers need to continuously find ways to refresh their offerings. Refreshing content offerings sometimes can mean changing the directions for that platform; it could mean sometimes that you create a new platform.