NCTA Ads ‘Educate’ Consumers on DTV
$200M Campaign Promotes Cable as Digital TV Transition Nears
By Todd Spangler -- Multichannel News, 9/6/2007 7:57:00 AM
The National Cable & Telecommunications Association kicked off a TV advertising campaign -- which the lobbying group said will be worth $200 million over the next 18 months -- to promote the fact that cable’s digital-video services will work without any changes when the digital-television transition deadline hits in February 2009.
The four initial 30-second ads created by the NCTA feature actual cable customers and emphasize that cable will “work just fine” after the transition date.
The campaign is set to run on both cable and broadcast networks until Feb. 17, 2009, the date by which local TV stations must drop their analog broadcasts under current federal regulations.
While the ads direct viewers to the Web site of the cross-industry DTV Transition Coalition, the point of the ads is to highlight cable as a worry-free option. The NCTA established the DTV Transition Coalition with the National Association of Broadcasters, the Consumer Electronics Association and others, and includes the Satellite Broadcasting and Communications Association among its members.
The $200 million tag the NCTA attached to the campaign is the combination of ad airtime the association plans to purchase on national broadcast TV networks, plus the value of airtime that cable networks and operators will use to run the spots, NCTA vice president of communications Brian Dietz said.
The spots -- three in English, and one in Spanish -- have already started running on Comcast and Cox Communications cable systems in the Washington, D.C., area, Dietz said. The NCTA is making the spots available to cable operators and networks.
Broadcast networks are set to begin airing the NCTA ads this weekend, according to Dietz. He declined to say which networks are scheduled to run the spots or in which day parts they will run, nor would he specify what proportion of the campaign is expected to run on cable versus broadcast.
NCTA president and CEO Kyle McSlarrow on Thursday sent letters about the DTV campaign to leaders of the House of Representatives and Senate Commerce Committees, and copied the letters to all members of Congress.
“As many have pointed out, the simplest and most direct route to communicating with television viewers is through television itself,” McSlarrow said in the letters.
Asked for comment on the NCTA campaign, NAB vice president of digital television transition Jonathan Collegio said in an e-mailed statement: “NAB’s TV Board has made educating consumers about the DTV transition its highest priority, and any group or organization that helps raise awareness of the DTV transition is helping that cause.”
The four ads can be viewed at NCTA.com/DTVSpots. Dietz said the spots feature real cable customers -- not actors -- although he added that they were paid a nominal fee to appear.
One features an elderly, white-haired woman named Eunice Mixon, cited as a cable customer from Tifton, Ga. The ad opens showing a placard that reads: “By law, TV stations will end analog broadcasts on February 17, 2009, and broadcast exclusively in digital.”
Mixon then drawls, “Every TV set you have that’s hooked up to cable will still work just fine. If yours aren’t, just get on that Internet” -- here she holds up a sign with www.dtvtransition.org and 888-DTV-2009, the toll-free number for information on the government’s DTV converter-box coupons -- “and these nice folks will help you learn more.”
The Mixon spot concludes: “Cable’s digital pictures are brilliantly crispy, and they’ve taken care of all that ‘transition stuff’ for us.”
The ads were produced for the NCTA by Strategic Perception, a Los Angeles-based advertising firm.
In addition to the TV ads, the NCTA has created a section of its Web site with information in English and Spanish about the digital transition.
The NCTA also said it will send “education messages and reminders” about the DTV transition to cable customers with their monthly billing statements, and that it will distribute brochures at community and public events.
For cable operators, NCTA said it will distribute a DTV customer-communication tool kit before the end of 2007. That will include messages to be included on billing statements; electronic messages for digital cable boxes; on-screen scrolls for local origination channels; Web site banner ads; telephone "on-hold" messaging for customer call centers; and sample e-mails to send to broadband subscribers.
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