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Zenith Optimedia has made gloomy predictions about the immediate future for television advertising. Their analysis suggests that part of the problem is inappropriate public spending affecting UK economic growth, but there may also be other problems closer to home.



It might surprise you to know that, even in the era of Starbucks, Americans drink less coffee than they did in the 1960s. There are many reasons put forward for this, and you can read some of them here. It seems that the quality of American coffee declined considerably from the 1960s, but it did so in small stages that the coffee industry hoped consumers wouldn't notice. Each slight change in the blend or reduction in roasting time was tested on consumers and proved in itself to be imperceptible. Many 'imperceptible' degradations in quality later and the coffee market began to shrink.



Others argue that the growth in alternative drinks such as Coca-Cola and bottled water have eroded the coffee market, whilst some commentators have suggested that the gradual decline in coffee standard since the 1960s is what has made the premium coffee market possible today - premium coffee is essentially reinstating coffee standards from a bygone age.



What has this to do with television advertising? I would suggest that, macroeconomic considerations aside, television advertising is in decline because:

• there are more activities in the home that compete with television time such as DVDs, video games, and the Internet.
• very simply, more channels divided the audience so far into low volume, low value segments.
• whilst one can debate whether the quality of television programmes is improving or declining, UK broadcasters have certainly yet to produce television programmes that reliably deliver the right quality of audiences to advertisers in the right numbers.
• using PR to place feature items in news and infotainment programmes is often cheaper and easier than making an ad. Creating the programmes, rather than the bits between the programmes, can be better value for your marketing money.

It's interesting to note that in the US, there are signs of recovery in TV advertising. The US television advertising market is polarised between those very cheap and often parodied promotions-based ads and unbelievably expensive high-production numbers. American TV programming is similarly polarised, and it isn't a coincidence. The big adverts go into the major TV shows like Friends, Frasier, Seinfeld, 24, Buffy, and The Superbowl. A 30 second spot in the Superbowl costs advertisers $1million. Why? Because as well as being great shows in themselves, these programmes deliver a specific and valuable market segment to advertisers that they can quantify and value.



Christopher Hitchens once ironically described journalism as 'scribbling on the back of adverts'. It's time for UK television producers to wake up and smell the coffee, catch up with the American-style multi-channel market, and start to produce commercial, big, British, blockbuster, demographically targeted entertainment that will fuel the recovery of the UK advertising industry.