ON Media Companies and Digital Media

I'm very aware that I work for a media company where my digital media background has great value but is not necessarily of great importance to the bottom line. When I travel around the world and talk to the GMs of our local TV stations, digital is the last topic on their board meeting agendas, right after core rev, under "other." Every one of the GM's I've spoken with will cite the importance of digital media, websites, mobile, etc, but most rightly have more important things to worry about, mainly making really good content and getting people to see that content on cable-supported TV. So recently I've changed my tactics and focus to highlight that last point. Perhaps TV websites won't be the greatest money-making enterprises in the company's portfolio, but in order for people to see the content, which is where most of the money goes, you need good marketing, and good marketing means digital. So that's been my new (and old) digital pitch to the board level - you need strong digital properties to push tune-in, and this includes sites, social, and mobile. However, many local marketers are not prepared for this shift. Four years ago when I evangelized SEM, SEO, and Analytics to marketing departments, I didn't find it too surprising that none of them really wanted to invest their budgets this way - in spread sheets and CPM rather than pictures - or that many TV marketers didn't come to TV to look at numbers. To do this work they either hired someone on their team, hired an agency to do the display ads, or gave SEO and SEM to the digital media department. About a year ago, the conversation changed; essentially Facebook made all marketers very aware that they should think twice before giving this "digital" thing to agencies or other departments, and the iPhone went from "cool" to "everyone needs an app." The marketing departments that did the best during this transition where those who had given some 20-year-old the boring marketing job of SEM and display spend and are now able to turn to them to help with this Facebook thing. Others continue to struggle or just outsource the entire endeavor to an agency.