The CW at TCA: "We are No Longer Looking at Digital Pennies. We Have Achieved Digital Dollars."

Great big bombs were dropping throughout the television industry yesterday Steve McPherson retained a powerhouse legal team to handle issues surrounding his abrupt resignation from ABC ABC Family chief Paul Lee was rumored to be ABC39s only choice in replacing McPherson Fox announced Ellen DeGeneres will not be returning to American Idol Jennifer Lopez was rumored to be replacing her But it was relatively quiet at the summer 2010 Television Critics Association tour There was no real excitement throughout the day which included sessions for several series on Showtime and The CW But a press conference with The CW Entertainment President Dawn Ostroff proved more informative than usualIn addition to the usual cheerleading on behalf of her shows Ostroff used her appearance at TCA to talk about the way The CW will now program its highly successful companion Web site She spoke in detail about the network39s new online sales initiative unveiled just a couple of months ago that seeks to facilitate accurate measurement of all viewers of CW shows across multiple platformsquotIn essencequot she explained quotwe are putting full commercial loads within full episodes of CW shows streamed on cwtvcom the only place you can legally get full episodes for freequot Users cannot fastforward through those commercials she notedquotWhere the real innovation comes in is we39ve developed a system with our new video player in the way that we now measure and sell online demographics that has been wholly embraced by the advertising community and has turned our online episodes into a significant revenue stream for us So we are no longer looking at digital pennies We39ve achieved digital dollarsquotAsked how difficult it is for The CW to get a full grasp on how many people are actually watching its shows Ostroff replied quotWe always say our young viewers are the first to migrate to other platforms More and more of them are migrating to DVR or to streaming or to iTunes Needless to say there needs to be a way in which we can measure all of them What we have done with our new sales initiative is the first step for us to be able to start to account for the people who are streaming our episodesquotquotThe days of waking up and looking at the overnight ratings just are gone especially for the younger demographicquot Ostroff declaredReporters wondered Will the placement within CW programs online of a full commercial load that cannot be fastforwarded through prompt people to return to watching television and using their DVRs After all one of the reasons they watch online is to enjoy television shows without commercials quotWe have learned that a lot of people would rather be watching TVquot Ostroff revealed quotThey watch online because it39s convenient for them particularly young people if they didn39t TiVo it or they didn39t watch it live We39re fine if we drive them back to the TV setquotquotDon39t you fear every network39s going to copy you and ruin the online viewing experiencequot asked one nervous young online reporter fearful that his world was about to changequotNo I think that this may become a blueprint for the rest of the industryquot Ostroff saidquotThat39s what I39m afraid ofquot the reporter sighedReminded that younger users are savvy enough to know where to go to illegally download shows Ostroff was asked if The CW is especially vulnerable given that it targets a young demographicquotIt has been a problem all alongquot she said quotWe fight it all the time I think every network deals with it on a daytoday basis and it is growing As soon as we find a site or we find someplace that a show is on the studios contact them They are the owners of the content They try and get all content off of the site or shut the site down but there39s only so much that we can do As soon as you get something off it pops up somewhere else I mean we all deal with that as you know the music industry as well as the television industryquotWhen McPherson exited ABC early this week Ostroff became the longestsitting network president in broadcast television that39s five years at The CW and four at UPN before that This distinction did not go unnoticed by the press quotI always say it39s a rented seatquot Ostroff said of the top network programming position quotI39ve seen a lot of people come and go from these jobs Everybody comes and goes for different reasonsquot

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The CW at TCA: "We are No Longer Looking at Digital Pennies. We Have Achieved Digital Dollars."

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The CW at TCA: "We are No Longer Looking at Digital Pennies. We Have Achieved Digital Dollars."

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