A while back
Last year the then-GM of Buzzr, Ron Garfield, appeared at an industry confabulation on diginets. A lot of water has washed over the dam since that meeting, and Ron is no longer working for Buzzr. But his comments are still interesting. It turns out that Buzzr's general strategic approach was in the making for a while.
Ron started by telling people just what Buzzr is. He noted the Goodson-Todman library and highlighted Buzzr's original reason for existence: make money off those 40,000 eps of old G-T shows.
Ron really caught my attention when he said that Buzzr has bought an "entry-level" package of ratings from Nielsen. So those precious numbers are out there, except none of them are published. Gawd, I'd like to know just how many eyeballs are staring at the diginet.
Another key point was that daytime, and not prime time, is the biggest window for Buzzr. That's because direct response advertisers get the most phone calls during the day. Hm, maybe that's why Classic Concentration will play at 1:00 PM. And maybe that's why Buzzr doesn't waste Match Game on prime time. (There was a comment about "a lot of Gene Rayburn.")
Of course, Ron admitted that general advertisers are a lot more lucrative than the direct response guys. But for now Buzzr is pretty much stuck with "DR," as the execs call it. Ron also talked about the documentary Game Changers, which so far is Buzzr's only foray into original programming. By the way, thanks for the show poster, Ron. It's on the wall of my study and I'm looking at it as I type.
Ron also mentioned the other distribution channels for Buzzr which have now become so prominent in the diginet's strategy, like Amazon Prime and Twitch. The switch away from strictly linear TV was in place a while back. Though no doubt the exec shakeup that made Ron the ex-GM accelerated the move, especially the live feed on Buzzr's web site.
Finally, he played a bit of Match Game from the Twitch feed. It's the greatest game show ever, after all.
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