The traditional television business is being eaten away by the practice of selling content to streaming services. Meanwhile, there are more channels available than ever before, and yet the average viewer watches only about 17 of them, creating a paradox of choice that results in diminishing returns.

But as troubling as those trends are for TV, Lee Hunt believes there is yet another concern that is even worse. Delivering his annual PromaxBDA: The Conference session “New Best Practices” on Wednesday, the in-demand media brand strategy consultant told a packed room that selling off inventory to streaming services is akin “to inviting termites into your house and letting them gnaw… But a bigger problem is that cable networks have more promos for their competitors’ shows than they do for their own shows.”

Not too long ago, “networks would refuse to air promos from competitors’ networks, or even air ads with talent from competitors’ networks,” Hunt said. But a study his firm did of TNT during April 2015 found that only 28% of primetime spots were TNT promos, while 26% were “paid or bartered spots in the national break for nine different networks promoting 11 different shows. And 41% were cross-channel promos in the local avail (culled from the Dish network feed so numbers will change depending on the MVPD provider). The remaining 5% of promos were for shows on Turner networks CNN and TBS.

A similar story was told on Comedy Central, where the April promos added up to a mere 37% hyping the home network. The other 63%, whether in the national break or local avail, were for 18 other competitive shows and services. This number was especially tragic because Comedy Central also happened to win, for the second year in a row, Hunt’s honor of being the “Stickiest Network,” meaning its promos retain the greatest percentage of audience coming out of content.

“They may not have a lot of promos,” said Hunt, “but the ones they do have, people really like to watch.”

Pulling no punches, Hunt showed a promo that ABC ran in the national break of Bravo on a Thursday night and ended with the words, “‘Watch the best and DVR the rest…’ In other words, record what you’re watching on Bravo right now and switch to ABC and watch live,” said Hunt. “Pretty smart.”

The long-term downside to this trend, said Hunt, “could be devastating. We even found one channel that actually sold their A position, the most coveted place to schedule a promo, to their competition.”

Overall, Hunt believes that cross-channel promotion within a network’s own portfolio of channels is the most powerful tool for driving awareness and sampling of linear channels, but networks need to be more cognizant of how much inventory is being sacrificed to channels outside their portfolio, either by ad sales departments, local affiliates or sister channels.

There are plenty of diamonds in the rough that showcase the proper way to go about doing it. E!’s launch campaign for The Royals, for instance, was a cross-channel endeavor that even targeted specific channels at the level of their own unique brand personality and demo, including Bravo and Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Syfy and Defiance and Esquire.

The Royals opened to an average of 2.19 million viewers and excluding spin-offs, currently ranks as the top new scripted series in cable for the year.

Hunt ended his presentation with his annual list of the top 5 “Stickiest Promos” from the past year. They include:

- ABC’s “Forever” spot that ran October 28, 2014, inside Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

- History’s Texas Rising, which aired February 19, 2015, inside Vikings

- A spot for Bravo’s The People’s Couch that ran November 11, 2014, inside The Real Housewives of New Jersey

- Discovery’s amazing Shark Week spot with Rob Lowe aired during the July 13 episode of Naked and Afraid

- Comedy Central’s Roast of Justin Bieber spot that aired inside Tosh.0 on February 17, 2015.

Hunt noted that beyond the top five, there was an outlier on NBC. Part of the criteria for stickiness was that the given spot had to air in an internal break. But the promo with the highest retention actually aired in a squeeze or in this case, embedded credits. It was for America’s Got Talent and aired in the credits of The 2014 Miss USA Competition on June 8, 2014.

Image courtesy of Image Group LA.

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