y
November 1 — November 7,2010
Bloomberg BusinessWeek
Companies&lndustries
courtesy of a big, orange Conan-TBS-
branded blimp. Online, fans could
follow the blimp's movements, look at
constantly updated photos, and inter-
act with fellow O'Brien fans by "check-
ing into" the blimp on location-based
social network Foursquare. There
was even a 24-hour
Coco Cam on the
Web streaming live
video of Conan and
his crew making
THOUSAND odd preparations
for the new show.
The rollout was
Web users who
viewed the designed to maxi-
24-hour Coco mize Conan's vis-
Cam tracking ibility on the Web.
Team O'Brien So ads featuring
the blimp-like the
print ads in Vanity Fair, the photo shoot
of O'Brien posing with a European barn
owl, and the music video of O'Brien soap-
ing up his desk in slow motion-were
cross-posted on a handful of Conan-cen-
tric websites, including teamcoco.com, a
Facebook page, and a YouTube channel.
One reason for the Web focus: O'Brien's
popularity with younger viewers. "Here's
a guy, Conan, who is in his 40s who at-
tracts audiences in their 20s and 30s,
competing against guys in their 60s who
attract audiences that are virtually the
same age," says Koonin. "The audience
should be the youngest in late night.
That's what advertisers crave."
Since introducing its "Very Funny"
tag line in 2004, TBS has grown into
one of the top-rated channels on
cable, thanks in large part to the net-
work's acquisition and repackaging of
proven comedy series, such as Sein-
feld, Everybody Loves Raymond, The
Office, and Family Guy. Despite the
network's success, TBS is still large-
ly perceived as an accidental destina-
Conan's Competition
Among fans of late-night talk, a larger share of those who view
the cable funnymen (and woman) are younger
LATE NIGHT SHOW
The Tonight Show
The Late Show with David Letterman
Jimmy Kimmel Live!
The Daily Show
The Colbert Report
Chelsea Lately
DATA: NIELSEN DATA FOR SEPT 20-OCT. 24. 2010
tion-a place people stumble on while
channel surfing, not a go-to place for
original programming, says Robert
Thompson, the director of the Bleier
Center for Television and Popular Cul-
ture at Syracuse University.
Turner executives hope Conan's ar-
rival could change that. "There may
be some college students who will dis-
cover what number TBS is on their
cable dial for thefirsttime because they
want to watch Conan," says Thompson.
"Comedy Central has demonstrated that
late night is no longer just the purview
of the broadcast networks," he adds.
"Late night is potentially a cash cow."
A recent study by Advertising Age
estimated that in 2009, CBS's The Late
Show with David Lettennan earned
$271 million in ad revenue; NBC's The
Tonight Show brought in $175.9 mil-
lion; and ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live!
earned $138.1 million. Time Warner
Chairman Jeffrey Bewkes in August
boasted that TBS was already getting
ad rates for Conan on par with its late-
night competitors.
O'Brien's move to cable sets up a po-
tential showdown against Comedy Cen- Retailing
tral's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart fol- In China's Ikea Stores,
lowed by The Colbert Report. So far this
television season, according to Nielsen Loitering Is Encouraged
research. The Daily Show has averaged
1,948,000 total viewers. During the final,
frenzied week of O'Brien's NBC run. The • By letting visitors linger, the chain
Tonight Show averaged 5.3 million view- hopes they'll buy as incomes rise
ers. So do TBS execs think O'Brien is
going to trounce Stewart? "Conan is top • "I'm still living in a dorm, but I want
my future home to look like this"
of the class," says Koonin diplomatical-
ly. "We think his ratings will be extreme- Yang Shuqi paces the aisles ofan
ly competitive with late night both on Ikea store in Beijing, looking for a
broadcast and cable." No potshots from "small bed with toys." She's not plan-
the blimp just yet. —Felix Gillette ning to buy one-her grandson Beibei
just needs to take a nap. Unfortu-
The bottom line Cable network TBS is courting
younger viewers on the Web for its new late-night
nately on this Saturday afternoon,
show featuring Conan O'Brien. every bed in the 43,000-square-me-
ter (463,000-square-foot) store is
occupied, with some children and
adults fast asleep under the covers.
Managers at the Swedish furniture re-
tailer don't mind. They figure that the
more customers choose to relax in its
Western-style showrooms or grab a
cheap snack at the in-store restaurants,
the more likely they'll be to make a
NBC ; 3,739,000 1,270,000
CBS 3,592,000 1,209,000
purchase once their incomes catch up
ABC 1,676,000 , 697,000
with their aspirations.
Comedy Central 1,948,000 ^ , 1 6 2 , 0 0 0 "The idea is that maybe if you've
Comedy Central been visiting Ikea, eating meatballs, hot
E! Entertainment Television dogs, or ice cream for 10 years, then

Visiting Ikea has
become a weekend
pastime for
many Chinese
maybe you will consider Ikea when you
get yourself a sofa," says Ian Duffy, the
company's Asia-Pacific president.
Ikea plans to more than double the
number of its stores on the mainland
by 2015, to 18, on a bet that incomes in
China will continue growing at a fast
clip. (Per-capita gross domestic product
has more than tripled in the past decade
alone). The chain said last month it will
add $300 million to the $1.2 billion al-
ready being spent by a developer it
partly owns to incorporate stores into
new malls. The world's largest home
furnishings retailer also has three out-
lets in Hong Kong among more than 300
worldwide.
Market researcher Euromonitor In-
ternational expects China's home-fur-
nishings market to surge 17 percent this
year, to $28 billion. "Government stim-
ulus spending and favorable policies
toward retailing and consumer lending
have encouraged overall retail growth
in China," says Alex Liu, a Euromoni-
tor analyst in Shanghai. Ikea, which has
been in China since 1998, doesn't break
out sales for the country; Euromonitor
figures the Swedish retailer has the big-
gest share of China's home-furnishings
market, at about 7 percent.
Ikea's Scandinavian-design furni-
ture and in-store cafeterias serving
Western fare are big draws for up-aiin
coming Chinese. "I like the environ-
ment," says Zhang Xihua, a 62-year-old
retired schoolteacher from Wenzhou,
who makes it a point to drop in at an Ikea
store in the northeastern section of Bei-
jing when she visits her son. "It makes
you feel like you're abroad."
China's real estate boom also is
bringing customers to Ikea. Property
sales in the first nine months of this
year rose 15.9 percent from the year
before, the nation's statistics bureau
said on Oct. 15.
Even after years of record-break-
ing economic growth, however, Chi-
na's per-capita gross national income
ranked 120th by purchasing power
last year, according to the World Bank.
So, for now, there's a lot more look-
ing than buying for many Ikea visitors.
At the Beijing store, Xu Nan, a 22-year-
old college student, had one of her
friends snap a photo of her lounging
on a black Vreta sofa that sells for 7,999
yuan ($l,197)-the equivalent of one-
third of China's annual per-capita GDP.
"I'm still living in a dorm, but I want
my future home to look like this," she
says.—Michael Wei
The bottom line Ikea stores are popular with Chinese
consumers, but many browse rather than buy. The
chain, eager to build its brand, doesn't mind.
November 1 — November 7,2010
Bloomberg BusinessWeek
A weary shopper
takes a break
in Beijing
Retailing
Big Chains Rediscover
Urban Food Shoppers
• Wal-Mart and others aim to bring
groceries to inner city dwellers
• "The beauty is there is a relative
lack of competition in that space"
Wal-Mart Stores is gearing up to open
small outlets next year in U.S. cities,
where it hopes to sell a lot of groceries.
Trouble is, at least a half-dozen others
are also seeking accelerated growth in
urban America. CVS Caremark, Wal-
green, Supervalu, and Family Dollar
Stores all are offering more fresh food
at their urban outlets or opening small
stores in neighborhoods with limited
access to nutritious grub.
While selling food is a mature busi-
ness, 23.5 million Americans live in un-
derserved urban areas-a market po-
tentially worth $100 billion a year, says
Jim Hertel, managing partner with retail
consultant Willard Bishop. "It's easy to
go into a liquor or convenience store and
find potato chips," he says. "But in terms
of something you would feel good
serving your family, not so much."
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