{"id":87309,"date":"2024-04-11T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-04-11T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=87309"},"modified":"2024-04-09T13:10:04","modified_gmt":"2024-04-09T18:10:04","slug":"twenty-reporters-walk-into-a-bar-over-and-over-and-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=87309","title":{"rendered":"Twenty Reporters Walk Into A Bar, Over And Over And Over…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As we noted yesterday, the sports bar “A Bar Of Their Own” – which opened on March 1 to paeons of praise and wall-to-wall coverage from local media – has a unique-ish marketing hook; the TVs are all tuned to womens sports. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s all well and good. I support anyone and everyone <\/em>bringing a new product or service, or bar for that matter, to the market and letting the market decide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, again as noted yesterday – if I were the proprietor of another sportsbar, I might be wondering what marketing hook I could come up with to get pretty much every single news outlet in town <\/em>to come back, not once but several times, to provide breathless, adulatory coverage to my <\/em>establishment?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“A Bar Of Their Own” (henceforth ABoTO) got the sort of gauzy, soft-focus, “lifestyle” coverage – sometimes not just bordering on cheerleading, but sailing right past it it into borderline unseemliness<\/a> – that money can’t buy . <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But – what if money did <\/em>have to buy it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How much free advertising (called “Earned Media”) did ABoTO get over this past few months?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Method To (March) Madness: <\/strong>Advertising costs money. And while rates and revenues have dropped sharply on traditional broadcast and print media over the past decade and change, it’s still not cheap. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So here’s what I did:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. I took the six biggest media outlets in the Twin Cities, other than <\/em>Shot in the Dark and the Northern Alliance; WCCO (Channel 4), KSTP (Channel 5), KMSP (Channel 9), KARE (Channel 11), MPR and the Strib. <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. I figured out how many times each of the outlets ran stories on, or prominently referencing, ABoTO. This is the “Story Count” for each outlet. <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. I multiplied the number of stories by the number of “newscasts” on which the piece of hard hitting journalism appeared (the “Newscast\/Publication Count” in the table below. (In the case of the Strib, this refers to many days it appeared in the paper). <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. I multiplied the number of appearances by an adjusted, estimated spot ad rate. See “Assumptions”, below. That gave us a “Total Advertising Equivalent”. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Now, the goal is to provide a ball-park figure, not an academic or legal disquisition. But just so we’re clear, I made a few assumptions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Assumptions<\/strong>: Here’s what I included and excluded, and why. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \n
    • I included unique<\/em> stories that appeared on the station website. Some outlets run the story online multiple times on the same date with different headlines. It’s a marketing thing. <\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • I counted the number of newscasts <\/em>that would have likely run the story. (With the Strib, I figured a story would run in one day’s edition). <\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • I assumed each outlet would run the story for one day’s worth of newscasts. I know that the story ran for longer than one day on some TV stations, but I had no way to measure that. <\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • I left out longer-form pieces, like appearances on “magazine” or “features” type shows (“Twin Cities Live”, “The Jason Show”, “Good Day” and the like). <\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • The rates, I fudged – downward. <\/em>A one minute spot on a major metro TV station newscast runs (according to local broadcast sources) between $1,000 and $1,500. There is of course a quantity discount (and the amount and frequency of some outlets coverage would seem, if only sarcastically, to appy), and ratings do count; I gave a 10% bump to Channel 4. <\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • The rate and number of appearances on MPR are a semi-educated guess. <\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • The rate at the Strib is evel less educated, and is based on the price of a prominent display ad. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

      With all that understood, here are the numbers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Station<\/strong><\/td>Story Count<\/strong><\/td>Newscast\/Publication Count<\/strong><\/td>Total “Spots” (Broadcasts\/Publications)<\/strong><\/td>Rate per “Spot”<\/strong><\/td>Total Advertising equivalent<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
      WCCO TV (Channel 4)<\/td>3<\/td>7<\/td>21 <\/td>$1,100<\/td>$23,100<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
      KSTP TV (Channel 5)<\/td>5<\/td>11<\/td>55<\/td>$1,000<\/td>$55,000<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
      KMSP TV (Channel 9)<\/td>6<\/td>15<\/td>90<\/td>$1,000<\/td>$90,000<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
      KARE TV (Channel 11)<\/td>6<\/td>7<\/td>42<\/td>$1,000<\/td>$42,000<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
      MPR<\/td>2<\/td>2<\/td>4<\/td>$150<\/td>$600<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
      Star Tribune<\/td>5<\/td>1<\/td>5<\/td>$2,000<\/td>$10,000<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
      <\/td><\/td><\/td><\/td>Total<\/strong><\/td>$230,700<\/strong><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

      The estimate is inexact – there might be other ways of estimating the numbers, but I can’t think of many objectively better<\/em> – and I’d be amazed if any of them showed less <\/em>benefit to ABoTO. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      This is the spot where a lesser writer might throw in “doing this is more fun than watching most women’s sports” – but as I noted yesterday, I’m distantly related to women’s nordic skiing royalty, and let’s be honest, who doesn’t love beach volleyball, so I’m going to let that trope go. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Anyway – I guess if you’re thinking about opening a business, the path to free advertising is clear. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      As we noted yesterday, the sports bar “A Bar Of Their Own” – which opened on March 1 to paeons of praise and wall-to-wall coverage from local media – has a unique-ish marketing hook; the TVs are all tuned to womens sports. That’s all well and good. I support anyone and everyone bringing a new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,4,130,77],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market","category-media","category-tc-media-bias","category-the-rare-sports-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=87309"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87319,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87309\/revisions\/87319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=87309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=87309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=87309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}