The efforts of Canada’s newest specialty channels to encourage viewers to tune in and turn on appear to have paid off, with early numbers indicating that viewers were only too happy to sample the 11 new offerings during their free trial period this fall.

Nielsen Media Research has released data that shows the audience share for specialty channels jumped to 25.7% in the first 10 weeks of this year’s fall season, up from 19.9% for the same period last year.

This is good news for media buyers who encouraged advertisers to buy into the newest services, which cover everything from cartoons to space to comedy.

‘It’s probably good evidence that a lot of the gut feel and the judgment that people invested in the launch of the specialty channels have come to pass,’ says David Cairns, president of David Cairns & Company Media Management in Toronto.

Despite the promising early numbers, however, a wait-and-see attitude among advertisers and media planners prevails.

‘We’re still in the free viewing period,’ says Cairns. ‘We’re going to have to see where we are two or three months from now,’ when cable companies begin charging an extra $5 or so a month for the right to subscribe. He points out that the impressive numbers are almost certain to drop because the services’ huge promotional efforts have, for the most part, dried up.

The programming with which the stations chose to launch didn’t hurt viewership either, says Cairns. For example, Space, The Imagination Station launched with the premiere of the Tim Burton feature film Mars Attacks, which was bound to attract a great deal of viewers, according to Cairns. This big-bang approach places a great deal of pressure on the services to keep producing the goods, he says. ‘Now they have to come up with content and they have to keep reminding people that they’re there.’

Doug Newell, a partner at Harrison Young Pesonen and Newell, says that what he found promising about the initial figures is that they did not indicate any cannibalizing from existing specialty services. Instead, viewers were choosing the specialties over network television.

‘It looked like most of it came from ctv – that’s the way it was positioned (the data was compiled by the cbc) – but I would say most of it came from American (networks),’ he says. Newell says that’s good news for all media buyers because it means that Canadian advertisers have more share of Canadian viewers.

Newell agrees that it’s next to impossible to read anything into the numbers while the free trial is underway.

‘Until it becomes a subscriber issue, it is too soon to tell,’ he says. The marketing goal, he adds, is for the specialties to pick up 70% of those who tuned in during the trial. ‘That seems like a pretty tall order,’ says Newell, adding that he predicts a much lower figure will actually subscribe.

Sunni Boot, executive vice-president and executive director of Toronto’s Optimedia, says that her agency estimates that about 40% will sign on.

‘That’s very cautious,’ she says. However, the agency is also betting that by the year 2000 – which is only 18 months away in terms of media buying – cable specialty services will account for 22% of audience share. ‘We’re very bullish on cable,’ she says.

Boot says that this was a wonderful time for advertisers to get into new and existing specialty services because the price was right. She adds that, while Teletoon was apparently ranked No. 1 in terms of overall viewership, Home & Garden Television (Canada) hgtv and Space are Optimedia’s top-ranked services, thanks to the level of audience involvement.

‘There’s a correlation between program involvement and commercial attentiveness,’ says Boot, adding that Optimedia has an index that measures the first to determine the latter. She says hgtv and Space both fulfill the mandate of ‘appointment television’ because people put time aside specifically for their favorite shows.

And while History Television may have compelling documentaries, she says, it does not have as high an Optimedia involvement index as do hgtv and Space.

Meanwhile, she sees The Comedy Network – which Boot predicts will do well with the younger demographic and so complement MuchMusic – as driving subscriptions to the services, thanks to its uniqueness.