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[Programme Viewing Preferences] [New Segmentation Models] [Huge Advertising Campaigns] [Some Failures]
This is an industry with huge economies of scale and each of the major participants has set out to acquire a mass audience. Sport, films and entertainment are the main attractions to the mass market.
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| Once market share has been acquired additional channels will need to
increasingly address niche markets, with many programmes on a pay-per-view
basis. This is because digital viewers are already exhibiting different viewer
behaviour (see table and Viewer Behaviour Survey
and the table on the right).
These niche markets are likely to include premier sporting matches, new movies, specialist documentaries, arts, religious, and information programmes aimed at the business community. Modern cable systems are able to deliver over 1,000 channels as well as a selection from 10,000s of movies. Fight for Christmas ViewersChristmas TV is always a battle ground for the TV companies but in Christmas 2000 the terrestrial channels were in for a shock. The two digital broadcasters, Sky digital and ONdigital saw their Christmas Day audience share increase by 50% over the previous year to 14.9% between them. Other days over the holiday period were equally higher. These were overall national figures. In homes with access to multiple channels (including cable) viewers watched even less (see box). The top programme was the commercial soap Coronation Street with 13.7m viewers. The top 10 were dominated by soaps and quiz shows. |
Recent Research
Figures from Television Research Partnership, November 1999
Christmas Day 2000
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| BBC1 | 29.7% |
| BBC2 | 3.8% |
| ITV | 27.6% |
| Channel 4 | 4.9% |
| Channel 5 | 3.0% |
| Other Channels | 31.0% |
Figures from the Audience Research Board.
This fragmentation will require companies to move from simple ABC1 type models and adopt a range of new segmentation models.
Recently the BBC announced a fresh approach to assessing audiences based on the idea that we tend to belong to tribes. Over 70 journalists were involved and they interviewed over 7,500 viewers. Tribes use a number of factors to categorise people:
As a result, people can find themselves associated with more than one tribe and companies can find that they have a multitude of tribes (the BBC at first had a 100 plus) so there is a need to reduce these to the most prevalent. Having identified the 9 or so most prevalent the BBC then identified the types of programmes most relevant to these tribes. This process identified gaps in its programme output or poor communications or scheduling.
For a niche player it may be more relevant to identify the smaller tribes.
In Britain Towards 2010, the report from the E&SRC's Foresight Programme, they suggest society is fragmenting into life style and prosperity segments:
This survey of 1,000 people showed that many prefer to eat what they like, when they want to:
| A recent survey by Harris Interactive looked at people's approach to buying on the Internet. Less that a quarter were primary motivated by the technology. Most people's motivation was in some way linked to the real world. This is not surprising yet many sites, with their Flash graphics and use of Java, seem to be targetted at those possess and are excited with the latest technology. |
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| An Arbitron NewMedia USA survey in 1998 looked at the reasons why people went to the movies. It was expected that the main attraction was going to be the big stars. In fact it was social reasons. |
Since the fifties there has been an explosion of colourful magazines with many of them addressing niche life style and special interest markets. With low circulation figures and a fight to get shelf space in the newsagents their lifespan have often been short, but on the whole they have brought variety and a refreshing approach to the written media.
The more famous of these magazines are now looking to debut on digital TV with magazine style programmes on a new channel called, unsurprisingly, the Magazine Channel. IPC Magazines, the owner of Loaded and Marie Claire, joins forces with DC Thompson, publisher of the The Beano, plus Haymarket Publications, and with the British Associated Publishers, owner of The Puzzler. Launch is planned for the end of 1998. The launch of this channel has been facilitated by the lifting on restrictions on masthead programmes - i.e. programmes named after well known printed magazines or newspapers.
Already the trend to meet the needs of special interest groups can be seen in the myriad of shopping catalogues. For example, GUS, the major home shopping company, has Disney World and Sports Elite, Grattan has Eddie Bauer, Empire has La Redoute and Freemans The Book. There is no reason why these couldn't migrate to DTV. Home shopping sales are forecast to rise significantly.
SkyDigital has allocated a budget of £60m to launch its digital services. Promotion is spread over television, radio, magazines, newspapers and the Internet. With the Internet it had banner adverts on the search engines that flashed up whenever users tried to find information about its rival ONdigital. 32 page supplements appeared in The Times, Sunday Times and the Daily Mail.
By August 2000, SkyDigital with 3.8m digital viewers, had clearly won the race (ONdigital had 0.75m and cable 0.45m - see Number of Digital Customer by Provider). The company announce that it was deploying new tactics. SkyOne announced plans to poach about 60 stars from BBC, ITV and Channel 4 over the coming years. They will produce many new popular light entertainment programmes with the aim of changing the audience from 16 to 24 year old males to families in their thirties.
ONdigital plans to spend £90m during its first year of operation.
Digital Television is just like other medias, not all programmes are successful. Here are some failures.
The Bookshow was a BSkyB programme running for 8 years from before the digital era. In May 2001 BSkyB dropped the programme saying it had lost £365m. (The BBC had already axed its book programme). Not having seen the programme one cannot say what was wrong with it. Do BSkyB viewers not read books? Was it presented in a dry fashion? Was the choice of books poor? And a key question must be, did the programme adapt to exploit the interactive facilities of digital TV? For example, hot links to Open to order books, extracts on Digital Text, readers feedback from those that had read the book with an opportunity to win free books, readers recommendations, etc.?
See New Services
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