Number One After All These Years
Bragging Rights
They've taken sixteen years to get to this point, so it's perhaps not best described as an overnight success - but TV3 last week managed their grandest achievement ever - the Number One peaktime share position across all three key broadcaster demographics: TV1's 25-54 target, TV2's 18-39 demographic and their own 18-49 age group. The result was powered by strong performances from CSI and the Rugby but other shows played their part as well.
In the interests of truth, justice and the Armenian way we should observe that TVNZ's shows had the edge in terms of individual programme performances - CSI could only manage second place across the selected demographics, somewhat behind TV2's Desperate Housewives, while the ABs' best performance (off the field) was in the Number Eight position with 25-54s. Most of the rest of the Top Ten positions in the three selected demographics were TV1 or TV2 shows. But last week was a watershed for TV3, demonstrating that Top Dog is no longer a position to be taken for granted by any broadcaster.
We live, as the famous curse would have it, in interesting times. Launched today: the PlayStation Portable, not just a gaming machine but also a tool for downloading TV programmes from the internet and watching them anywhere, anytime. The technosavvy are already equipped with third generation phones from Vodafone or Telecom which bring us video news, sport, music or entertainment at the touch of the inevitable button. MP3 music players are giving way to MP4 versions which also deliver the videos of your choice.
Further disruption? Sky's Personal Video Recorder is unveiled next week, to be in the hands of early adopters by Christmas. The BBC have just announced plans to launch MyBBC, a service to allow the download of their programmes (free to licence-payers) for up to a week after the initial broadcasts. Telecommunications companies are jostling with technology companies and television programme creators to be the gateway to tomorrow's consumer. The humble local broadcaster has a tough road ahead.
And what about the poor old advertiser? Is all doom and gloom, as audiences splinter and mass marketing diminishes in impact? Actually, no - there are pathways through the wilderness for the enlightened. If you'd like to know more, drop us a line at newsletter@mediacom.co.nz. Sorry, trade not supplied.
Nights In White Saturn
Unless you live in Kapiti, Wellington or Christchurch you may not be aware of TelstraClear's Saturn Cable Network, which provides cable television services to some 62,000 homes across those regions. Saturn, which began life in the early nineties as Kiwi Cable with a dream of cabling New Zealand, has represented something of a white elephant in recent years, the victim of new technologies - most specifically ADSL, the acronym behind JetStream, and the KuBand Satellite services which power Sky Digital - which make it unnecessary to dig huge trenches everywhere to deliver enhanced television and telephone services.
Saturn took a significant step forward last week, finally offering digital television to its captive subscribers. The main benefits of this enhanced service, according to the official propaganda: "high quality digital viewing, stereo sound, wide screen format and access to 92 television, radio and pay to view movie channels".
Don't fret, TV junkies, you're not missing much if you don't live in the designated coverage areas - Saturn mostly channels Sky TV, with only a smidgen of extra (international) content which some local channels in other regions also occasionally feature.
If you advertise on Sky, your ads already appear on Saturn. The cable infrastructure allows for more robust interactivity than the simple red button service currently offered by Sky, but Saturn's numbers just aren't large enough to justify the equipment investment that would be required. We'll just have to sit back and wait for TVNZ Interactive - if the politicians can stop fiddling with the remote. Keep it here, you'll be the first to know.
Food, Glorious Food
Sky's satellite transponders are currently operating at full capacity, as the network awaits the launch of their newest satellite, now scheduled for the first half of 2006. Thanks to new compression technology currently being installed at Sky's palatial Mt Wellington headquarters, however, Sky will be able to squeeze an extra four digital channels out of its existing bandwidth.
First off the block and scheduled for a 1 November debut: Food TV, a spin-off from the Living Channel.Coming to digital channel 38, Food TV will feature series hosted by celebrity chefs including Nigella Lawson, Rick Stein, Ainsley Harriott & Jamie Oliver and will also broadcast other food related programmes covering nutrition to ethnic food, wine and entertaining.
Freed from its diet, The Living Channel will move to show more travel, gardening, crafts, entertainment, woodwork, motoring magazine, real estate and housing shows.
What else lies in store for Sky digital viewers? Sky aren't saying as yet - negotiations for other channels are still ongoing. But the focus next week shifts to the long-awaited unveiling of Sky's PVR, which you can bet we'll be eagerly inspecting with our xray vision. Don't touch that dial.
Meddle To The Peddle
The story so far: Jim and Peter wanted the worm to turn for them on TV3, but the newsmeisters said No. So J&P took their righteous indignation to court and met a judge with a predilection for programming, who said yes. So Jim and Peter had their day in court and their night on telly - but will we still love them tomorrow? Meanwhile Helen and Don suddenly decided they should be seen and not heard during the Radio New Zealand debate, and said No to Sky who wanted to show them, warts and all. Sky, surprisingly, opted not to go to the courts for a second opinion but screened something interesting instead. Meanwhile United Future - perhaps realising that worms were not after all fit for viewing at dinner time - are now proposing a 9.30pm start time for adult programming. In response the New Zealand Television Broadcasters' Council says that over 90% of New Zealanders know that adult programmes start at 8.30 pm and should be allowed to decide what they want to watch in the privacy of their own homes. It's not yet known if Ian Wishart (with microphone hidden in plain sight) has interviewed anyone in relation to these burning issues. It's also not known if anyone cares. Taxes have been cut, student loans slashed, reputations sacrificed to the public trough of expediency. What a mini-series!
Watch for the season finale on September 17, when hopes are dashed, surprises sprung and coalitions cobbled.
Dead Tree Talking
The latest Nielsen National Readership Survey, covering the 12 months from July 2004 until June 2004, has come hurtling into our email inboxes in the form of a flood of news releases from publishers small and large. Hiding under our desks to escape the electronic onslaught we've scribbled down the following notes - topline results confirming last year's reading habits of those 15+, compared with their obsessions twelve months earlier.
For newspapers, significant movers & shakers:
What does it all mean? Frankly, not a lot - gentle erosion here and there, occasional improvements when reformatting or hot topics draw a crowd.
Scanned & Deliver
New York's The Container Store has come up with an interesting retail innovation: shoppers are given a portable scanning device which they carry with them as they wander through the store. If they should come across an item they wish to buy, they simply scan the barcode and move on. At the end of their jaunt through the aisles, shoppers wander unencumbered to the checkout and pay for the selected items. Said items are subsequently gathered up by Container Store staff and delivered directly to the shopper's home.
Call it a hybrid of Clicks & Mortar, retaining the in-store experience but removing the hassle of lugging it all home. Might be a little over-the-top for grocery (for now) but would certainly improve the mall experience in the lead-up to Christmas (who says it has to be a single retailer?) Westfield, take note!
Paper Google
In a seriously weird move the lord of online advertising is moving over into the world of Charles Atlas, Franklin Mint and other classified small space magazine advertisers.
Search giant Google, which makes 99 percent of its revenue from Internet ads, is quietly testing the waters of print advertising sales, buying ad pages in US technology magazines such as PC Magazine and Maximum PC, and reselling those pages--cut into quarters or fifths--to small advertisers that already belong to its online ad network, dubbed AdWords.
Even for the notoriously quirky and experimental Google this is a lateral leap. The very things that make Google AdWords so successful - context-sensitive, highly-targeted text-only placements - are simply not the stuff of magazine classifieds.
This can only end in tears.
They've taken sixteen years to get to this point, so it's perhaps not best described as an overnight success - but TV3 last week managed their grandest achievement ever - the Number One peaktime share position across all three key broadcaster demographics: TV1's 25-54 target, TV2's 18-39 demographic and their own 18-49 age group. The result was powered by strong performances from CSI and the Rugby but other shows played their part as well.
In the interests of truth, justice and the Armenian way we should observe that TVNZ's shows had the edge in terms of individual programme performances - CSI could only manage second place across the selected demographics, somewhat behind TV2's Desperate Housewives, while the ABs' best performance (off the field) was in the Number Eight position with 25-54s. Most of the rest of the Top Ten positions in the three selected demographics were TV1 or TV2 shows. But last week was a watershed for TV3, demonstrating that Top Dog is no longer a position to be taken for granted by any broadcaster.
We live, as the famous curse would have it, in interesting times. Launched today: the PlayStation Portable, not just a gaming machine but also a tool for downloading TV programmes from the internet and watching them anywhere, anytime. The technosavvy are already equipped with third generation phones from Vodafone or Telecom which bring us video news, sport, music or entertainment at the touch of the inevitable button. MP3 music players are giving way to MP4 versions which also deliver the videos of your choice.
Further disruption? Sky's Personal Video Recorder is unveiled next week, to be in the hands of early adopters by Christmas. The BBC have just announced plans to launch MyBBC, a service to allow the download of their programmes (free to licence-payers) for up to a week after the initial broadcasts. Telecommunications companies are jostling with technology companies and television programme creators to be the gateway to tomorrow's consumer. The humble local broadcaster has a tough road ahead.
And what about the poor old advertiser? Is all doom and gloom, as audiences splinter and mass marketing diminishes in impact? Actually, no - there are pathways through the wilderness for the enlightened. If you'd like to know more, drop us a line at newsletter@mediacom.co.nz. Sorry, trade not supplied.
Nights In White Saturn
Unless you live in Kapiti, Wellington or Christchurch you may not be aware of TelstraClear's Saturn Cable Network, which provides cable television services to some 62,000 homes across those regions. Saturn, which began life in the early nineties as Kiwi Cable with a dream of cabling New Zealand, has represented something of a white elephant in recent years, the victim of new technologies - most specifically ADSL, the acronym behind JetStream, and the KuBand Satellite services which power Sky Digital - which make it unnecessary to dig huge trenches everywhere to deliver enhanced television and telephone services.
Saturn took a significant step forward last week, finally offering digital television to its captive subscribers. The main benefits of this enhanced service, according to the official propaganda: "high quality digital viewing, stereo sound, wide screen format and access to 92 television, radio and pay to view movie channels".
Don't fret, TV junkies, you're not missing much if you don't live in the designated coverage areas - Saturn mostly channels Sky TV, with only a smidgen of extra (international) content which some local channels in other regions also occasionally feature.
If you advertise on Sky, your ads already appear on Saturn. The cable infrastructure allows for more robust interactivity than the simple red button service currently offered by Sky, but Saturn's numbers just aren't large enough to justify the equipment investment that would be required. We'll just have to sit back and wait for TVNZ Interactive - if the politicians can stop fiddling with the remote. Keep it here, you'll be the first to know.
Food, Glorious Food
Sky's satellite transponders are currently operating at full capacity, as the network awaits the launch of their newest satellite, now scheduled for the first half of 2006. Thanks to new compression technology currently being installed at Sky's palatial Mt Wellington headquarters, however, Sky will be able to squeeze an extra four digital channels out of its existing bandwidth.
First off the block and scheduled for a 1 November debut: Food TV, a spin-off from the Living Channel.Coming to digital channel 38, Food TV will feature series hosted by celebrity chefs including Nigella Lawson, Rick Stein, Ainsley Harriott & Jamie Oliver and will also broadcast other food related programmes covering nutrition to ethnic food, wine and entertaining.
Freed from its diet, The Living Channel will move to show more travel, gardening, crafts, entertainment, woodwork, motoring magazine, real estate and housing shows.
What else lies in store for Sky digital viewers? Sky aren't saying as yet - negotiations for other channels are still ongoing. But the focus next week shifts to the long-awaited unveiling of Sky's PVR, which you can bet we'll be eagerly inspecting with our xray vision. Don't touch that dial.
Meddle To The Peddle
The story so far: Jim and Peter wanted the worm to turn for them on TV3, but the newsmeisters said No. So J&P took their righteous indignation to court and met a judge with a predilection for programming, who said yes. So Jim and Peter had their day in court and their night on telly - but will we still love them tomorrow? Meanwhile Helen and Don suddenly decided they should be seen and not heard during the Radio New Zealand debate, and said No to Sky who wanted to show them, warts and all. Sky, surprisingly, opted not to go to the courts for a second opinion but screened something interesting instead. Meanwhile United Future - perhaps realising that worms were not after all fit for viewing at dinner time - are now proposing a 9.30pm start time for adult programming. In response the New Zealand Television Broadcasters' Council says that over 90% of New Zealanders know that adult programmes start at 8.30 pm and should be allowed to decide what they want to watch in the privacy of their own homes. It's not yet known if Ian Wishart (with microphone hidden in plain sight) has interviewed anyone in relation to these burning issues. It's also not known if anyone cares. Taxes have been cut, student loans slashed, reputations sacrificed to the public trough of expediency. What a mini-series!
Watch for the season finale on September 17, when hopes are dashed, surprises sprung and coalitions cobbled.
Dead Tree Talking
The latest Nielsen National Readership Survey, covering the 12 months from July 2004 until June 2004, has come hurtling into our email inboxes in the form of a flood of news releases from publishers small and large. Hiding under our desks to escape the electronic onslaught we've scribbled down the following notes - topline results confirming last year's reading habits of those 15+, compared with their obsessions twelve months earlier.
For newspapers, significant movers & shakers:
- NZ Herald down 28,000 to 563,000
- Dominion Post down 19,000 to 237,000
- NZ Truth down 13,000 to 89,000
- Sunday News down 27,000 to 436,000
- Sunday Star Times down 20,000 to 632,000
- Auto Trader down 40,000 to 305,000 (Trade Me influence?)
- Buy Sell & Exchange down 33,000 to 130,000 (and again?)
- New Idea up 42,000 to 515,000
- TV Guide down 41,000 to 857,000 (the Electronic Program Guide takes its toll)
- NZ Woman's Weekly up 38,000 to 950,000
- Australian Women's Weekly up 49,000 to 692,000I
- nvestigate up 21,000 to 61,000 (Tamihere topics appeal)
- NZ Gardener down 37,000 to 229,000
- Trucking down 29,000 to 70,000
- Foodtown Magazine up 50,000 to 261,000
What does it all mean? Frankly, not a lot - gentle erosion here and there, occasional improvements when reformatting or hot topics draw a crowd.
Scanned & Deliver
New York's The Container Store has come up with an interesting retail innovation: shoppers are given a portable scanning device which they carry with them as they wander through the store. If they should come across an item they wish to buy, they simply scan the barcode and move on. At the end of their jaunt through the aisles, shoppers wander unencumbered to the checkout and pay for the selected items. Said items are subsequently gathered up by Container Store staff and delivered directly to the shopper's home.
Call it a hybrid of Clicks & Mortar, retaining the in-store experience but removing the hassle of lugging it all home. Might be a little over-the-top for grocery (for now) but would certainly improve the mall experience in the lead-up to Christmas (who says it has to be a single retailer?) Westfield, take note!
Paper Google
In a seriously weird move the lord of online advertising is moving over into the world of Charles Atlas, Franklin Mint and other classified small space magazine advertisers.
Search giant Google, which makes 99 percent of its revenue from Internet ads, is quietly testing the waters of print advertising sales, buying ad pages in US technology magazines such as PC Magazine and Maximum PC, and reselling those pages--cut into quarters or fifths--to small advertisers that already belong to its online ad network, dubbed AdWords.
Even for the notoriously quirky and experimental Google this is a lateral leap. The very things that make Google AdWords so successful - context-sensitive, highly-targeted text-only placements - are simply not the stuff of magazine classifieds.
This can only end in tears.
posted by MediaCom New Zealand at 4:40 PM
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