Family-friendly Equals a Friendly Bottom Line

Looks like Network Ten is experiencing a little bit of the wash from the vile Kylie Sandilands and Jackie O radio stunt of a couple of weeks back.

News this morning reveals that the ratings for Australian Idol audition episodes were 20% down in the key Sydney market.

With Ten belatedly realising that 'family friendly = runaway ratings' by ditching Big Brother and bringing in MasterChef they have, in binning Sandilands, managed to stave off Austereo's fate of losing marquee advertisers in Optus, Qantas and American Express.

The lessons here are clear.

If you're looking for the maximum reach with your advertising dollars, then you put them where families feel the most comfortable.

If you want to expand your audience, you do not keep going for more lurid, outrageous antics.

That might impress your peers and critics but they offer lousy return on investment.

As an example, films from Hollywood which are rated G and PG earn a greater return on investment than films in other categories.

A new study by The Nielsen Co. found that the PG-rated movies with the least profanity made the most money at the U.S. box office.

In fact:

While the average G-rated film earned a profit of US$79 million, the average R-rated film earned only $6.9 million. The trend is even noticeable in the PG and PG-13 categories: the more suitable films are for family viewing, the higher their return is. The average PG film earned $28.3 million and the average PG-13 film earned $23.5 million...

...Even on return on investment (ROI), not just bottom line profit, family-friendly films are also investor-friendly. According to the analysts commissioned by Dove, Kagan Research, a California media business research firm, the ROI on G-rated films produced between 2000 and 2003 was a staggering 94.5 per cent, while the ROI on R-rated films was only 28.7 per cent.

Isn't that a good incentive to create a better social environment too?