In the early days, the popularity of a TV program could only be shown from a long ratings curve, and TV stations could only know the audience's views through newspaper questionnaires and random telephone interviews, which was very inefficient and inaccurate.

With the rise of the internet in recent years, this has changed rapidly. After the broadcast of "American Supermodel Contest", although it was not very popular in traditional media, its popularity among ordinary viewers was very intuitively shown on the Internet.

Yahoo Forum's "Top Model Contest" section added nearly 180,000 new members in just one week, and "Top Model Contest" quickly became a buzzword in Yahoo's search engine business. Cindy Crawford's personal page has skyrocketed, with just over 10,000 followers before the show airing, but within a week of the show, that number skyrocketed to 120,000 and is still growing rapidly.

Because the personal homepage business has just been opened, although the overall number of users is large, the related social networks are still in the cultivation period, and the number of fans on the personal homepages of most popular people is also at the level of 100,000, which is far from the scale of millions of fans later. Therefore, with the popularity brought by "America's Top Model Contest", the scale of Cindy Crawford's fans has far left everyone in the industry behind, and even attracted traditional media coverage.

Catalyzed by the unconsciously spreading topic, a week passed quickly.

Although because of the audience feedback in the previous week, everyone is full of confidence in the ratings of the second episode.

However, when the ratings statistics of the second season of "American Supermodel Competition" were released. It's still a surprise to be overjoyed.

The highest number of viewers was 3.5 million. The average viewership is 2.8 million. The rating reached 1.6, once again breaking all ratings records for Lifetime TV.

While the viewership numbers are nowhere near par with those of PR TV, the ratings of the 18- to 49-year-old core audience that advertisers value the most, because the audience for "America's Top Model Contest" is concentrated in young women, and the rating of 1.6 is already on par with the average series on public television.

The production and promotion of "America's Top Model" and "The Pride of the Flyover" have always been closely linked.

Affected by the accumulated popularity of "America's Top Model Contest", on the following Thursday, the first episode of "The Pride of the Bridge" also achieved an average of 2.6 million viewers, and the highest viewership easily exceeded 3.1 million.

Although "The Pride of the Flyover" is a fashion production show. But under the control of Eric and the "Survivor" team, this reality show is not at all professional and rigid as the audience imagined, and the audience who was originally skeptical of a more specialized reality show like "The Pride of the Bridge" quickly accepted the show and talked about the open and dark tearing with the contestants and the pleasing feeling of making any material into beautiful fashion.

As viewership rose, traditional media keenly seized the news potential of these two reality shows and began to report on them, which further contributed to the rapid spread of the fame of "America's Top Model Contest" and "Flyover".

In the weeks that followed, the ratings of the two reality shows showed a side-to-head upward trend, less than a month ago. The average viewership of the two reality shows exceeded the 4 million mark at the same time, and the popularity of "America's Top Model Contest" was finally higher than that of "The Pride of the Flyover". The highest viewership of the fourth episode even reached 4.6 million.

At the same time, in just one month, with the popularity brought by the two reality shows, more and more people began to notice Lifetime TV.

Because of the viral spread speed of "America's Top Model" and "The Pride of the Flyover", or because of curiosity or wanting to follow up on the topic direction of the people around them, many people chose to change their packages when they found that there was no Lifetime TV in their cable TV package.

As a result, Lifetime TV subscribers easily exceeded 40 million in the following month, from the initial 34.5 million.

Operators with Lifetime signals are better, and can easily change their subscription plans after getting a request from a user. But the operators who did not carry the Lifetime TV signal did not have such a good time, and the most unlucky of them was undoubtedly Time Warner.

When the two reality shows were confirmed, Katzenberg personally contacted the executives of several operators such as Comcast, Telecommunications and Time Warner, hoping that they could carry the signal of Lifetime TV on a larger scale.

However, because Lifetime TV has been unpopular, several major operators have been very lukewarm to Katzenberg's requirements, and Katzenberg lobbied everywhere, but with little success, until the launch of "America's Top Model", the number of subscribers only increased by a mere 3 million.

Comcast and Telecom, these operators are just that, they do not have large-scale self-owned TV stations, increase or decrease the number of lifetime TV subscribers, most of the time the reference is based on the lifetime TV ratings data.

But Time Warner is different, after learning of the Firefly Group's reform plan for Lifetime TV, considering that once Lifetime TV station rises, it will definitely compete with WB TV, which is also facing young audiences under Time Warner, therefore, Time Warner not only did not cooperate with the increase in the number of users of Lifetime TV, but before the fall file, by changing the form of packages, the number of users of Lifetime TV was reduced by 800,000, and, even more gloomy, some of these users cut by Time Warner are concentrated in New York, Los Angeles, these metropolises.

Fashionable women in Los Angeles and New York are the most potential user groups of the two reality shows "American Supermodel Contest" and "Flyover", and after hearing the news, Katzenberg called directly and scolded the director of Time Warner's cable TV department.

But. may be in response to the sentence of settling accounts after the autumn.

This autumn has not yet passed. Time Warner has already been retributed for the little tricks at the beginning.

If "American Supermodel Contest" and "Flyover Pride" didn't become popular. Then, for the 800,000 users who have been cut off from the Lifetime signal, Lifetime TV is naturally dispensable, and no one will care about anything.

But the current situation is far beyond everyone's expectations, with the broadcast, "American Supermodel Contest" and "Flyover" have become a topic of conversation among many young women, when everyone is discussing the "American Supermodel Contest" contestant was unfortunately eliminated, when girlfriends are chatting about a certain amazing outfit in "Flyover". Because all the packages of the cable operator at home do not have a lifetime TV signal, you can't plug in a sentence at all, and the embarrassing situation can be imagined.

In order to avoid unnecessary competition, operators such as Comcast, Long-range Communications, and Time Warner have very tacitly divided their own territories, and in some more remote areas, residents can often only choose one operator to access cable TV signals.

If you are unfortunate enough to encounter such a situation, you will naturally consider yourself unlucky. But in metropolises such as New York and Los Angeles, where major operators are basically competing for every inch of land, this potential monopoly situation does not exist.

Thereupon. Those who can't find a lifetime signal on their Time Warner cable plan are trying to watch "America's Top Model" and "Flyover." They have turned to operators such as Comcast and Telecommunications.

In October, when Time Warner's cable division counted the number of subscribers again, it was shocked to find that in just one month, the number of subscribers of Time Warner had rapidly lost 460,000.

What a concept this number is!

Time Warner's total number of cable TV subscribers is only 15 million, and after cutting 800,000 Lifetime TV subscribers at the beginning, there are only 3 million remaining lifetime TV subscribers, which is the lowest level among several major operators, and the root cause of all this is, of course, because of the competitive relationship between Time Warner and Firefly.

But at this time, the loss of 460,000 subscribers a month is equivalent to 3% of the total number of Times Warner cable TV subscribers, which is only a month's time, you know, in the entire 1994 year, the number of Time Warner subscribers increased by 1.6 million, and, if this situation is allowed to continue, Time Warner's cable TV business this year will not only not grow, but will return to the point of two or even three years ago.

Terry Semele, who was being troubled by the failure of the summer film business again, heard the news and called the head of Time Warner's cable TV department to scold him.

For a while, the news of "Time Warner's cable TV business has declined sharply" flooded the media, although everyone knows what is going on, Time Warner completely wants to suppress the development of Lifetime TV, but because of the strong rise of "American Supermodel Competition" and "Flyover Pride", in the end, it is not a loss.

If you lose 3% of users in a month, how much will you lose in that year?

Many people can't help but ask, and there are undoubtedly many people in Time Warner's shareholders who think this way, so the management is once again under pressure from all sides.

In order to calm this matter, someone must come out and take responsibility.

Time Warner's internal forces are intertwined, a cable TV department, all entrenched in several forces, everyone knows the ins and outs of this matter, in fact, which one to switch, if this situation is encountered, they will basically do it. Therefore, this wind pluck cannot be regarded as a business mistake at all, and Terry Semel will not be able to stir up internal disputes under external pressure, so he can only knock out his teeth and swallow it in his stomach, and find his own spokesman in the cable TV department as a scapegoat.

In just a few days, Time Warner announced that a vice president of the original cable TV department was about to leave due to a decision-making error, which was an explanation to all parties.

But of course this is not the end of the matter.

Lifetime is still growing in popularity, Time Warner has lost 460,000 subscribers, and if it doesn't reconnect to Lifetime as soon as possible, the situation will certainly get worse.

In a hurry to deal with outside public opinion and shareholder pressure, Terry Semel personally dialed Katzenberg's phone.

The call was routed to Katzenberg's secretary's office, and the reply did not seem to come as a surprise: "Mr. Katzenberg is not there...... When will I be able to get in touch...... I don't know. ”

After several attempts to no avail, Terry Semel had to call Robert Iger, who had just taken the helm of the Firefly television business.

Robert Iger was very eager, saying only that because AE Television Network is a joint venture with the Hearst Group, it is not easy for him to meddle in the affairs of Lifetime TV.

Once again, he deigned to call Anne Sweeney, president of the AE television network.

Anne Sweeney was more direct: "I'm sorry, Mr. Semel, but the decision-making power is no longer in my hands. ”

In the office of Time Warner's headquarters in Manhattan, three times in a row were rejected, and Terry Semel almost threw the phone out of his hand.

Looking at the gray sky outside the office window, Terry Semel took several deep breaths in a row, and then calmed down.

Terry Semel, of course, understands that this is a firefly's counterattack to Time Warner's original decision, and wants to deliberately hang Time Warner for a few months.

However, in the current situation, Time Warner definitely can't afford to wait.

If Time Warner's cable subscribers drop by hundreds of thousands next month, he, the CEO, may be involved in this matter.

Frowning and thinking about it for a long time, just as Terry Semel was considering whether to fly to Los Angeles to meet Katzenberg in person, he suddenly remembered that the young man behind the firefly should be in East Hampton now.

Although he had not visited him, it was not difficult to inquire about Eric's residence, and after a few phone calls, he quickly obtained the address of Eric's estate in East Hampton.

After a moment's consideration, Terry Semel instructed his secretary to prepare a car, and he planned to rush to East Hampton himself.

After all, as the absolute controller of the Firefly Group, if you can directly get Eric Williams' promise, it will definitely be far more than repeated entanglements with Katzenberg and other high-level executives.

And, although he admired this young man for creating a huge industry in just a few years, deep down, Terry Semel still felt that Eric Williams was young after all, and he must be much easier to deal with than the shrewd Katzenberg. After all, he has always believed that a person's experience must be closely linked to age, and even those geniuses are unlikely to break out of this law. (To be continued.) )