Month / May 2019

by Frank Maduri

Red Nose Day 2019: Fight To End Child Poverty

Red Nose Day in the United States is today, May 23rd, and as I have done each year here on this blog, I wanted to try to spread awareness of this very important fundraising event to end child poverty.

Red Nose Day is run by Comic Relief USA in conjunction with major relief aid partners and national sponsors. The national sponsors again for the 2019 Red Nose Day event are: Walgreens, Mars Confectionary Company, Comcast NBCUniversal, and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Since the first Red Nose Day event in the US in 2015, about $150 million has been raised to help fight child poverty. These funds have helped 16 million children in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The funding has brought education to about 1 million children, essential medical services to 13 million children, and has helped 75,000 homeless children.

In addition, the funds raised by this event have provided 36 million meals to American children living in poverty, a major issue that is often overlooked because of the perception of our country’s wealth. In 2018, the Red Nose Day programs and events raised $47 million in the United States.

NBC is back as the main broadcast partner and will dedicate three hours of primetime television air time tonight to the Red Nose Day fundraising effort. The special program begins at 8 PM Eastern tonight with Kelly Clarkson and Blake Shelton among other stars that will highlight a two- hour block of coverage dedicated to raising awareness of childhood poverty. This includes a short film comedy sketch routine, and an appeals film by Milo Ventimiglia from “This Is Us”.

The network will close out the night from 10 PM to 11 PM Eastern with a special edition of “Hollywood Game Night” for Red Nose Day. Please tune in tonight to NBC for this important event.

Walgreens returns as a key sponsor of this event and the drugstore chain has sold 40 million of the iconic red noses since 2015 across their over 9,000 US locations. The healthcare retailer has made Red Nose Day a major event through store signage and advertising campaigns.

Mars Confectionary Company and their ubiquitous American brand, M&Ms have again donated $1 million to Red Nose Day in 2019. The company also raises additional money and support for the program through a month of events across their corporate locations aimed at raising awareness, funds, and volunteer hours across several communities in America.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is among the most well known in the world. Their mission is focused on children, and they provide funding and programming support for the donations raised from the event and how they are utilized to provide the maximum benefit to children in poverty.

We live in the wealthiest nation in the world. We all can do something within our means to help support Red Nose Day. The amount of children living in poverty in America is staggering 15 million, or 21% of all children in our country live in poverty according to various census related sources. The need is great both here and in underdeveloped areas of our world in Latin America, Asia, and Africa.

We can help children, who cannot help themselves, to have their basic needs met. Please support this important event today by going to www.rednoseday.org and by following @RedNoseDayUSA on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Please share this with your friends and family.
The eradication of childhood poverty is the goal of Comic Relief USA and is shared by the sponsors of this event. I think we all need to share that goal, and each do our part to help this important event to succeed. Thank you all for your support of Red Nose Day 2019 and may God bless you for your efforts to help children in need.

(Background information courtesy of RedNoseDay.org, NBC.com, Walgreens.com, and the 2010 US Government Census Department)

by Frank Maduri

Content Wars: Disney Gains Full Control Of Hulu

The content wars in the media landscape, a frequent topic of past articles on this site, took a surprising turn on Tuesday with the news that Disney has obtained what the press release deemed as “full operational control” of streaming service giant, Hulu.

The analysts and other media experts had predicted that Comcast would try to oppose ceding full control of Hulu to Disney, especially given their contentious recent bidding wars for Sky TV and 21st Century Fox. Comcast owns 31% of Hulu through their subsidiary business unit, NBCUniversal.

The deal announced Tuesday between these two media goliaths is a “put/call”. The terms of the deal translate to provide mechanisms to both sides. Comcast could by January 2024 initiate the mechanism that would require Disney to purchase their 31% stake at a market valuation determined by independent analysts.

Furthermore, Disney could require Comcast to sell their stake if certain market factors are realized in the future. It depends upon the performance of the service and reports state that Disney has committed to a minimum value of $27 billion. Disney stock jumped Tuesday to over $130 per share and is nearing an all-time high based on the Hulu acquisition news.

The agreement also includes that Comcast will continue to stream Hulu over the X1 set top box and that Comcast has extended the rights to their NBCUniversal content to be streamed through Hulu for another three years. However, the fine print of the deal also allows for some of that content to be pulled in a year to be streamed through a Comcast streaming service at a later point.

The timing was very good for Disney as they needed to gain full control of Hulu at this point in time with the planned launch of the streaming service known as “Disney+” by the end of this year. Some analysts have predicted that the Hulu platform is where Disney will put some of their “non-family” content, which would make sense.

The deal makes sense for Comcast because the advertising revenue and the subscription bases for Hulu and Hulu Live TV services will both grow exponentially with the trend toward “cord-cutting” in the next four to five years. They will also have options on whether they want to pull their NBC and Universal based content in the future, once their streaming service is optimized. In the meantime, they will get a deal for sharing that content with Hulu from Disney. Comcast is going to get a big check from Disney in five years.

Disney has now stated that they plan to position a future offer to customers that “cord-cut” from cable and satellite a package to buy two or all three of their streaming services: Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ for a bundled rate. That is an interesting approach and signals the way of the future for television that is becoming increasingly customized and internet streaming reliant.

The agreement today puts pressure on the other players in the industry, especially CBS, which has to figure out how they will grow to compete in a world that is being dominated by Disney and Comcast. The DirecTV Now service is losing subscribers already to Hulu Live and You Tube Premium because DirecTV changed their packages for channel offerings and increased prices.

These changes alienated long-time customers and drove them to seek alternative service providers with better rates and packages. This deal today is only going to strengthen Hulu and their tiered offerings: $5.99 per month for commercials, $11.99 per month for commercial-free streaming, and $44.99 per month for Hulu Live television service which is a 60 channel package.

Disney took another step toward dominating the relatively new industry space of the subscription streaming services. It remains to be seen how the rest of the industry will respond, how it will impact the NBCUniversal streaming service set to launch in 2020, and what Comcast will do with the money it will receive for their stake in the “put/call” arrangement they made in five years.

One thing is clear: times are changing in the television programming industry.

(Some industry background information courtesy of: Fox Business, USA Today, and CBS Market Watch)

by Frank Maduri

XFL 2020 Announces Broadcasting Deal

The XFL reboot of the professional football league founded by Vince McMahon of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) fame, also known as XFL 2020, announced today a major broadcasting deal.

The burgeoning league will broadcast games on Saturday and Sunday primarily on both network television and cable television outlets. The XFL agreed to terms with ABC/ESPN and FOX on a three- year contract on Tuesday. The networks will broadcast the eight-team league with four games each weekend: two on Saturday and two on Sunday.

The Saturday games will be back-to-back and start at 2 PM Eastern and the Sunday games will be in the afternoon hours as well. The broadcast partners will feature games on broadcast television on ABC and FOX nationally and will broadcast on ESPN and FS1 as the primary cable outlets. However, the press releases seemed to indicate that some games would also air on secondary cable outlets ESPN2 and FS2.

The opening game of XFL 2020 will be held on February 8, 2020 and the season will span 10 weeks with two weeks of postseason games. The top two teams from each four-team division will move into the playoffs. The championship game will be broadcast on ESPN.

The scale of this broadcasting deal is impressive for a new league and will certainly help grow the interest in the league by having regular time frames for games and two highly visible broadcast partners. It will be easy for fans to access the games and to ultimately drive the excitement around this new league.

Some people, myself included, were very surprised that the XFL was able to leverage a broadcasting deal that was so extensive with network broadcasts of games on major networks such as ABC and FOX. This is especially profound given the recent failure of the AAF (Alliance of American Football) which had a broadcasting deal in place with CBS, Turner Sports, and NFL Network.

The AAF folded and ceased operations before the end of their first regular season. The ratings for the broadcasts were abysmal. The risk is certainly there for the broadcast partners of any new league, but the “ x factor” no pun intended, in this deal is McMahon who is seen by many as an outstanding marketer and businessman.

The XFL Commissioner, Oliver Luck, is also a mastermind of marketing the sport of football. The league chose larger media markets than the AAF as well. The AAF went with small markets that had no NFL presence. The XFL took on the approach of being in large markets to grow the game and reach a larger audience.

The rebooted XFL will have teams in: Dallas, Houston, Tampa Bay, Washington D.C., New York/New Jersey, Los Angeles, St. Louis, and Seattle. Those locations all make sense from a strategic business sense and from the fan base perspective. The sport of football has a tremendous amount of support in states such as Florida and Texas. The New York, D.C., and Los Angeles markets make sense from a media and population/demographic perspective.

The St. Louis market makes sense because they lost their NFL team to relocation, and Seattle is a great sports city that gives them a major market in the Northwest. The broadcasting agreement today also indicates that with the trends in media moving toward the importance of content, live sports content is still so highly desirable for the networks. It is especially important in reaching the key demographics of men age 18 to 34 and also for men in the 25 to 54 and over 55 age demographics.
These groups of men tend to spend more money than the other demographic groups as well as demonstrated the willingness to be more likely for an impulse purchase. The broadcasts of the XFL games will most certainly feature sponsorships with heavily male product areas.

In a personal note, I remember the first XFL iteration which debuted back in 2001. I recall the night of the inaugural game and watching that game with my father. I remember all my buddies were watching it too. The first XFL failed because they tried too many gimmicks.

I also recall watching the New York Hitmen who played at the former Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands complex in New Jersey, and they drew a good-sized crowd to those games. The league back then just had too many trick plays, off the wall rules, and they did not have enough star players.

Commissioner Luck has stated that XFL 2020 will not have the gimmicks and they will provide a highly visible platform for players who are looking to make the leap to the NFL especially at positions where real-time game reps are what is needed for scouts to evaluate their talent.

The XFL 2020 took a big step forward today with this broadcasting deal. The team names, uniforms, and schedules will be the next big news from this new league. It remains to be seen if McMahon is a great salesman or if the product on the field will back up the expectations being set for this reinvented football league.

(Some background info courtesy of Fortune, Wall Street Journal, and ESPN.com)