Also in this report:

TV Specialty Services: New nets get qualified thumbs up: page 23

A word from the sponsors: There is evidence the new nets are making their own inroads into the promotion arena: page 29

Despite the marketing hooplah surrounding the launch of seven commercial specialty services last January, their addition has not fundamentally changed the way media planners evaluate the television environment on behalf of their clients.

While everyone agrees the new specialty services have provided marketers with more targeting options – namely by allowing advertisers who could not afford a traditional television buy to participate via sponsorships or value-added promotions, or by providing a more suitable programming environment for niche products – most media directors say they are using the new specialties on an opportunistic basis to provide ‘top spin’ to a conventional tv buy.

As Terry Sheehy, senior vice-president, media services, at Toronto-based ad agency Leo Burnett, puts it:

‘If we have a budget, and if we satisfy our basic tonnage requirements in terms of [gross ratings points] via conventional television, and if we have realized some savings, and if our clients agree that we can invest that money in the marketplace, then we may choose to take a small segment of that and commit it to a specialty channel that has some desirable demographics.’

Not exactly a sea change, but an attitude that is shared by a cross-section of media directors.

Karen Newton, vice-president of broadcast operations at Toronto-based Media Buying Services, agrees the addition of the seven commercial television options – Bravo!, The Discovery Channel, Life Network, New Country Network, Reseau de l’information, Showcase Television and WTN – has not had a huge impact on the way her agency plans its media strategy.

‘It’s a small piece of the pie,’ says Newton, adding the new specialty services are not yet the driving force of a television plan, merely a consideration.

Sunni Boot, senior vice-president and managing director at Toronto-based Optimedia, is decidedly less generous in her assessment.

Boot calls the addition of the specialty services ‘a non-event,’ saying, from her perspective, ‘it has not changed anything.’

Given all of the pre-launch hype, why has the addition of seven television services had so little effect on the experts who decide where to place their clients’ media dollars?

There are several reasons.

According to a number of media directors, most of the new services were wildly optimistic when projecting the number and share of viewers they would attract.

Newton says wtn, in particular, is falling far short of its target audience, with some of its programs drawing only about 3,000 viewers nationally.

‘That’s less than show up for a Blue Jays game, even today,’ Newton says.

‘What do you do with that?’ she asks. ‘That’s spitting in the wind.’

According to Boot, most of the services made the mistake of asking consumers whether they would be willing to pay a nominal fee – 35 cents to 50 cents a month – to receive their particular service, without taking into account the significantly greater cost to get a number of services combined.

She says it did not help that the carrier, Rogers Cablesystems, became the target of a widespread and well-publicized consumer revolt.

(Many consumers cancelled their cable subscriptions in response to the company’s practices of negative optioning, in which consumers are automatically billed for services unless they say they do not want them, and packaging, in which consumers are forced to choose from among predetermined packages of services and cannot simply pick and choose the services they want.)

Boot says rather than see the new services as a value-added proposition, a lot of consumers felt they were being shoved down their throats.

Overly optimistic audience estimates and consumer rebellions aside, perhaps the biggest hurdle faced by the new specialty services was differentiating their products in the minds of consumers, marketers and media planners.

Three of the services got off to a false start, changing their names and their positioning in the months leading up to the launch, and, even today, say the media directors, some viewers would be hard-pressed to distinguish between at least two of the services.

‘The toughest part, from where we sit in planning and buying, is continually trying to understand what supposedly differentiates some of these stations,’ Newton says.

‘I recall when they were all pitching, before they went to air, they all seemed to have the same target group and the same niche, and, yet, somehow, they were supposed to be different,’ she says.

‘And even when they came on-air, it wasn’t always apparent from a targeting standpoint. They were all targeting this upscale, urban, culturally interested, 25-54 year old, and I just don’t know that many people that fit into that group.’

Newton says, not only that, but all of the services had difficulty convincing the tv listings magazines to publish detailed program descriptions, making it hard for viewers to grasp the various programming concepts.

‘People are still stumbling into the programming, as opposed to really understanding what their lineup is and making a point of tuning in,’ she says.

‘And with all of this cruising through the channels, it’s sometimes easier to fall back on what you know and what you are familiar with.’

David Cairns, president of David Cairns & Company Media Management, says while most of his media colleagues now understand the distinctions between the new services, there is still a lot of confusion on the part of advertisers.

‘I think there is a tremendous overestimation in the media’s minds, of the ability of marketers, as marketers, and of marketers as consumers, to remember all of this information and to understand it,’ Cairns says.

‘Not only is it typical that advertisers don’t know what wtn or Life Network is, they don’t even know what a top 20 show is, because they don’t watch it, or probably don’t watch it,’ he says.

‘There are many tv programs that have been on for several years, with loyal followings, that are completely unfamiliar to marketers.

‘So to assume that you can launch a channel and put some support behind it, and, nine months later expect everyone to have wide awareness is really misguided.’

Asked what it would take for the new specialty services to become top-of-mind with clients, consumers and media directors alike, Cairns says they have to do two things:

‘I think [the specialty services] are going to have to provide greater and more detailed information about their viewers, because the chances are that the advertiser is not one of them,’ he says.

‘The second plank is that these new specialty channels need to continue to market themselves in a very visible manner, not just at the start of the tv season, but on a continual basis, and they need to build themselves as brands that stand for something – to the public.

‘And, of course, part of the public are advertisers and media buyers.’

Sheehy concurs, but adds one condition.

He says before the new specialty services can build the ‘critical mass’ necessary for a media director to execute a program exclusively with them – as they now do with established specialty services tsn, ytv, MuchMusic and Newsworld – they are going to have to deliver better programming.

And while he appreciates the chicken-and-egg scenario in which the services find themselves – without greater advertising support, the new services cannot afford to invest more money in programming – he says he can only pay them for the value of what they deliver.

Boot agrees with Sheehy that the programming ‘is not great,’ but is quick to point out that when established specialty services tsn, MuchMusic, ytv and Newsworld started out, their programming was ‘major league pathetic’ and she fully expects the situation to improve over time.

‘Let’s not forget, we’re judging these people by products that have been on the market for 10 years, who, over time, have enjoyed the funding, the experience, the knowledge and the staffing that these poor buggers don’t have,’ Boot says.

As for Newton, she says it would help if the new services were to build portfolios of successful case histories, showing that sponsorships and value-added promotions helped build sales.

‘Those are the kind of things advertisers and people like ourselves need to see in order to rationalize the kind of expenditures beyond, ‘Well, if I’ve got anything left over, I’ll toss them a bone,’ she says.