I do not watch much TV. I have my favorite shows. I don’t miss Community, Fringe, Parks & Recreation and Doctor Who but I do not watch any of the “occupation” shows like Storage Wars or Deadliest Catches or logging or wifery.
But I would like to see a show on craft beer. Especially if it was focused on someplace where I can’t go or can’t go to often enough. But as you can tell by what my current favorite shows are, I am nowhere near the target market of practically any network. I am too old. I do not buy what is advertised. I am way too discerning a customer and I simply do not believe that clutching a BMC (Bud-Miller-Coors) beer will automatically attract ladies to my side.
And that is half of where the problem lies. The average beer geek is not in the demographic that advertisers (floundering as they are in the age of skipping any and all commercials) want to reach. First of all, they buck trends. Something that is practically anathema to an industry driven by watching trends and capitalizing on them. You have a hard time selling a crappy sub sandwich to a person who is actively looking for quality in a product.
Secondly, the craft beer world, though growing as opposed to the downward spiral of BMC, is still but a small percentage of the world of BEER. So even though we are passionate and love to watch our people in action and will tune in and talk about it ad nauseum on the interwebs, still only make for a modest success at best. And you just cannot pit a pittance of viewers against the unlimited ad cash of the BMC and hope to keep a show on the air. Discovery and Dogfish Head and the amazingly magnetic (I have seen the magnetism in person) Sam Calagione could not pull enough to surmount that mountain.
But I am still not pessimistic about the future marriage of Craft Beer and TV. I think it can work. And it will work in two different ways.
First, you will see craft beer in more and more product placement. TV needs to pay the grips and props and actors and if commercials ain’t doing the trick then the in show ads will have to. And with our breweries growing bigger and bigger, there might be some loose cash for a modest placement because it is the step before commercials. I envision seeing Sierra Nevada in a bar scene or being pulled from a fridge in New Girl. (instead of the faux Heisler brau).
Second, there will be a cable show about beer but it will be on the travel angle or the cooking edge. A straight up occupation show it will not be. My crystal ball guess is that a home brew show will be first to make a mark and then a travelogue with a host going from city to city talking with the craft beer folk in each town. Maybe in a van like the A-Team had. Wouldn’t that be cool?
What do you think?
