It is possible – just – that there are people in this country who feel they don’t already get enough Hollywood news.
Now, those souls can breathe easily: Star! is coming to the rescue. A CHUM-backed specialty channel scheduled to launch in September, Star! will deliver entertainment news and information, 24 hours a day.
Why introduce such a service into the Canadian marketplace?
Simple, says Marcia Martin, vice-president and general manager of Star! ‘We are all fascinated by celebrities and the mysteries behind the box. There’s an element of voyeurism.’
That may be something of an understatement. According to information that Star! has culled from various sources, such as the Audit Bureau of Circulations and Nielsen Media Research, Canadians spend more than $1 billion annually on entertainment magazines. In all, nearly 20 million copies of celebrity-focused publications such as Vanity Fair, People and US are sold in this country every year.
Star! is modeled on the U.S. service E!Entertainment Television. Through a partnership arrangement with E!, it will carry a number of the latter’s most popular shows, including E!True Hollywood Story, Talk Soup and Mysteries and Scandals.
In addition, the channel will carry original homegrown shows such as StarNews Daily, FashionTelevision and MovieTelevision. All told, some 30% of the programming will consist of Canadian content (25% in prime time).
The emphasis on Canadian content doesn’t, however, mean that Star! will overlook important U.S. news stories. (Will Julia Roberts shave her armpit hair?) It just means that the channel will provide a Canadian take on these issues, Martin says.
A magazine show like Startv (which currently airs on CHUM’s Toronto station Citytv) may well pick up many of the same stories as an American entertainment show, she explains. But it will handle them in a different style and format. ‘We’ll put our own spin on it.’
CHUM is, of course, already an established player in the specialty world, with such properties as MuchMusic, Bravo! and Space: The Imagination Station. Martin, however, says Star! will have a look quite unlike any of the others.
‘We call it the ‘White Channel’ – clean, simple and bold,’ she says. The visual identity is one that CHUM believes will appeal strongly to the 25-49 target audience.
Ads promoting Star! are currently running on all CHUM television and radio stations, but a full-scale campaign won’t begin until cable distribution arrangements have all been worked out.
The distribution issue is the primary concern for Star! right now, says David Kirkwood, vice-president, sales and marketing for CHUM’s specialty services. The station can’t wait until the matter has resolved itself to begin selling advertising, he explains, because the fall media buying season is right now.
Accordingly, Star! has decided to offer an ‘early adopter’ deal – those advertisers who come in now, while the distribution numbers are still low, will pay only for those viewers. If, at some later date, Star! gets the prime distribution it’s seeking – preferably packaged with the likes of Bravo! – then the early birds will have scored themselves quite a bargain.
Even if Star! doesn’t secure the distribution it wants right away, Kirkwood says it wouldn’t be hard to stir up grassroots support that would put pressure on cable companies to add the station to their bill of fare – much as MTV did in the mid-1980s, with its ‘I want my MTV’ campaign.
Star! is now also in the midst of talking to various entertainment companies with a view to arranging co-promotion and sponsorship deals. Eventually, Kirkwood says, Star! could become to film distribution companies what MuchMusic is to record labels.
Also in this report:
– The future is now: With digital cable on the horizon, Canadian specialty services are having to prepare for competition the likes of which they’ve never seen before p.B2
– Uncertainty clouds Quebec’s specialty decision: CBC appealing CRTC decision to award licences to four new French-language services p.B5
– Canadian Learning Television to add energy to educational TV: New CHUM service to be more than videotaped lectures p.B11
