Open The Dialogue

As I get back into a regular swing of things as far as blogging goes on this site, I'm attempting to clear out all the things I've tagged and bagged to post about soon, and I'm just about cleared out at this point. One last item I had sitting in FeedDemon was this post from Robert Scoble from *way* back on September 28 (gasp!) regarding the "success" - or not - of the Diggnation video podcast, and he is asking what readers think of comments made here by WaggEd's Frank Shaw on the subject. Frank asks:

If "Diggnation" were on a national cable or broadcast feed, would 250k viewers be seen as success or the road to to cancellation?

I'll answer first with my initial thoughts on the subject. Who cares if it would get cancelled on regular television? Frankly, we live in a world now where shows - take NBC's Kidnapped, for instance - are cancelled at the first threat that they could potentially suck in the eyes of viewers. And to think, a show was put together with Timothy Hutton, Dana Delany, Jeremy Sisto, Delroy Lindo, and others turned out to be, more or less, an abject failure. How much money went into the production of the thirteen episodes we'll see, plus the significant dollars that Sony Pictures Television put into promoting it, along with two of its other shows on the networks this year? And still, we have a group of television developers who don't know what people are going to like, and even if they do, television executives are sometimes quick on the draw, not realizing that they have maxed out the potential audience for that particular program. The latter part of that statement is what's most important.

Let's get back to Diggnation here. So if there are 250,000 downloads (!) of the podcast (which is in both audio and video versions, btw), let's say most people watch at least part of it. Just as the commenter's on Scoble's site are saying, it's not about "broadcasting" here, even though the show is out there for anyone to view and download. It's not even about "narrowcasting" here either, as the show is clearly getting the same kind of viewership as daytime cable news might be getting. If we were able to measure exactly who would be the "target" audience for the Diggnation show, and 250,000 were 50% of that audience, would it be a success? What defines success, anyway, that a certain number that makes sense to someone who is counting beans says is a good amount of viewership / listenership? It just seems so random, when you try and look at the "big media" numbers and apply them to something like a video podcast, and say "well, that would have failed if it were on television." Who cares? A medium that can't measure properly (sorry, start counting time-shifted / DVR'd programs properly and then we'll talk) shouldn't be used as the measuring stick for other media. Ever.

Something that I have a had a pretty good amount of success educating colleagues and clients on, when it comes to blogs (that we're outreaching to or developing for them) is not to look at the numbers as too high or too low. The example I use is something like the $10,000 / year journal that is printed four times, and goes to 500 people, worldwide. In that case, forget the cost, and look at the number. If I'm an advertiser or someone looking to get a client or piece of information into the editorial, that 500 can't seem small, if it encompasses the entire group or population that is interested in said topic. In that same vein, there are blogs that are about marketing, for instance, that are read by either a) the entire audience (or the bulk of it) that are interested in reading about it from that perspective, or b) the other "thought leaders" within the space. Ignore the fact that it might get 1,000 visitors a day. 1,000 doesn't mean it's a small readership. Compare it to passalong rates, if you are looking for something similar.

My colleague and fellow blogger here, Chris Thilk, had some thoughts that I wanted to drop in here as well.

It’s all about the niche. What’s the difference between Diggnation and USA Today if each one only reaches ¼ of your target audience?

I think the most effective product releases or announcements are going to be the ones that target the people who are already engaging in a conversation about that industry/product. That means giving people who might not be in the Technorati 100 access to something new and then working with them to make the announcement as effective as possible. Not everything is going to have a wide audience and Diggnation, USA Today and TechCrunch all are models of mass-distribution in their particular media.

Chris wanted to take a little bit different of tack on this, saying that while Diggnation might have a significant reach within the online / tech space, it doesn't mean it's the end-all, be-all, for what you might be trying to get out there, news-wise. Same with a TechCrunch. Sure, get your story on TechCrunch, and you're *going* to get attention, but that doesn't mean that your conversation will start and end on that particular site. At the same time, he echoes what I was suggesting about Diggnation - to some, it represents a "mass" distribution opportunity, rather than having something show up on 50 blogs that all get a few thousand visitors each. Sometimes, "breaking" news on a TechCrunch, PaidContent or somewhere else with a wide audience is your best bet. But, as we have discussed before, sometimes you get a much better effect in the long run if you have a stack of people - all who are read by those particular sites or the site you are "aspirational" to reach - all write about what you have to say.

At the end of the day, I'd have to give Diggnation a thumbs up when it comes to being a success, because I don't believe that something has to be on television to be that huge of a success in the world today, and comparing it to television isn't apples to apples. If all television content were "on demand," as it were, this might be a different discussion. I'm a subscriber, regularly describe the show as "hysterical" to anyone I've shown it to, and explain to people that it's pretty similar to any kind of roundup-type show that you might see on television, this time giving the nod to big stories that have been on Digg recently - oh, and there's beer.

Moral to the story? Let's forget about trying to compare model to model, and look at what a particular marketplace is on its own merit, and how any particular instance of reach into that market compares to another in the same space. It might be sheer numbers of reader/listener/viewership, it might be products sold, dollars spent, or whatever. But please, stop making everything sound like "well, 2 million people watched so and so on NBC last night."