The Biggest TV Network You've Never Heard Of

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It was in this turbulent atmosphere that investors and advertisers truly began to notice PRN (which has also been known as PICS and Qorvis Media Group). General Electric's GE Capital and well-known media investors Allen & Co. led an investment round of $14.5 million in 1999 (they now own 12.5% and 8.3%, respectively) to help the company install the network in hundreds of stores; PRN's revenue hit $30.2 million that year. Most important, Wal-Mart and PRN began to develop what is PRN's mainstay to this day: a Wal-Mart TV network shown throughout the retail giant's stores.

First rolled out in late 1999, the full-store network consisted of about a dozen 27-inch TVs hung about eight feet above the ground in high-traffic areas. But it faced a predictable problem: advertiser skepticism. At first, says PRN's executive vice president of sales, Mark Mitchell, media buyers and corporate ad departments didn't get it.

What PRN needed, Cohen decided, was an exec who knew how to build and market a network. In early 2000 he brought in Charlie Nooney, the EVP of affiliate sales and marketing at Disney/ABC Cable Networks, as president. After 18 months of grooming, Cohen, who still owns 10.9% of the company and sits on the board, turned over his CEO job to Nooney, a Birmingham, Ala., native with mischievously arched eyebrows and a mild southern accent. Nooney came to PRN with a reputation for being notably unpretentious (he repairs old loafers by taping loose soles and using a Magic Marker to cover scuffs) and trustworthy (Geraldine Laybourne, the Oxygen Media CEO who founded Nickelodeon, says the trusted Nooney wins negotiations that aggressive tactics cannot).

Nooney's arrival sped PRN's development. His professional relationships got the network into meetings with more senior management at advertisers like DirectTV, where PRN went from pitching mid-level managers to pitching decision makers. He also brought in experienced ad sales execs from Disney, including Mitchell, and his name helped attract cash: In August 2001 the Shamrock Capital Growth fund, which is financed with Disney family money, led a $35 million investment round (it now owns 15.3% of PRN). In three years, annual revenue more than doubled, from $47.2 million in 2000 to $112.1 million in 2003.

Because viewing habits are so different among shoppers and home viewers, PRN had to invent a new genre of programming. "You can spend $10 million on a gorgeous spot for a national network, and it just doesn't work in an in-store environment," says Nooney. "This isn't about putting media in retail; this is about creating retail media."

For the TV walls, where shoppers contemplate buying flat-screen TV sets that can cost $7,000, commercials are usually longer, more "educational" than brand-oriented, and they feature more star power (an average TV shopper will watch for about nine minutes). A typical segment would feature, say, Frasier star Kelsey Grammer using clips of his show to explain why the different screen shape and resolution of flat-screen TVs are worth the investment; this educates the consumer about the products and the show, helping both the retailer and NBC. These segments are usually about 90 seconds and feature long-duration shots. "You're looking at this monitor, then that monitor," says Tom Sebastian, PRN's head of programming, "and you want to compare them."

At the other extreme are product ads on the over-aisle screens, which run as short as 10 seconds. Quick and simple with large graphics, they're designed for mobile shoppers pushing their carts down the aisle. A typical 10-second spot for Lay's potato chips shows the bag of chips above a banner of the Lay's logo, explains the ingredients ("real cheddar and a hint of sour cream"), tells you to buy it (known as a "call to action"), and says where it can be found (the "salty snacks aisle").

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