With the better part of two seasons under their collective belt, not one of Canada’s 40-plus digital channels has yet been kicked off the island. In fact, a couple of them are even occasionally outdrawing the analogues in some prime-time slots.
Their mere survival defies early predictions that at least a few of the diginets that launched in September 2001 would be extinct by now. The logic of the doomsayers was that relatively minuscule audiences and correspondingly lacklustre advertiser interest would naturally result in some of the digitals drowning in red ink.
But by all accounts, that’s not what’s happening. Although none has yet boasted about being in the black, several of the top-15 channels listed below – including DejaView, BBC Canada, Scream and Mystery – have doubled their average-minute audiences for viewers 18-plus since last year.
Sounds impressive, but good or bad, any diginet audience numbers should be taken with a grain of salt, says Jim Patterson, president and CEO of the Toronto-based Television Bureau of Canada.
‘I’m not saying the numbers published by BBM and Nielsen are wrong. But I would say that they are still struggling to get big enough samples to measure the audiences accurately.’
The real story, says Ottawa-based Janet Yale, president and CEO of the Canadian Cable Television Association, ‘is that digital penetration is now approaching 25%, which means that about 1.3 million households are now subscribing to digital channels.
‘That’s very much on track with our forecast at the outset, which was that we would see a slow build to about 1.8 million households by September 2003,’ she explains. ‘With three months to go [till then], we still think that may happen.’
That wouldn’t surprise Michael Allen, VP/GM at Toronto-headquartered Rogers Cable, which has seen its digital subscribers jump by 33,100 in Q1 of 2003, bringing its total number of digital customers to 434,000 – or 42% of Rogers’ overall customer base.
Official confirmation of digital subscriptions ought to come from the CRTC, says Mario Mota, publisher and editor in chief of Ottawa-headquartered Decima Publishing, but the Commission’s most recent report is nearly a year old.
‘However, our quarterly reports have shown modest subscription growth of about 5% on average, quarter over quarter. We expect to see a much clearer picture when the results of our research study of consumer attitudes regarding the digital channels – which is the largest one undertaken to date – is ready in July.’
Phyllis Yaffe, the Toronto-based CEO of Alliance Atlantis Broadcasting, doesn’t have to wait until then to know that two of her company’s six diginets are kicking analogue butt.
She says Alliance’s Showcase Action channel not only ‘continues to be number one for adults 18 to 19 and 25 to 54, but has an average-minute audience (AMA) in prime time that’s higher than five or six analogue channels that have five million viewers.’ As well, Yaffe says that BBC Canada consistently outranks some analogues in certain prime-time slots.
Meanwhile, CTV’s six diginets ‘have grown their AMA audiences by 71% between Jan-Mar ’02 and Jan-Mar ’03,’ according to Toronto’s Bart Yabsley, EVP of CTV Specialty Television.
How did they do it? Yabsley says CTV Travel is a prime example. ‘By having our [consumer] research team and our programming team work together closely, we came up with a fairly dramatic change. CTV Travel began as a how-to channel and it has now evolved into more of an escapist-entertainment [focus].’
And that, says the Television Bureau’s Patterson, just goes to show that viewers are developing favourites among the diginets.
‘Probably no digital channel is actually replacing one of the main channels, but each of them is carving out its niche. And that’s exactly what the digitals promised – that they would not be ‘broadcasting’ channels, but niche channels, each of which would reach out and find its audience.’
And thanks to research by the channel owners, those audiences are getting better defined by the month.
CanWest Global – which has three diginets among the top 15 this time around – wants media buyers to understand that its Mystery channel, for example, targets a key demographic of ‘older married females, middle income, without children at home, who spend a great deal of time and money on upgrading their residence and its contents and are concerned about health and nutrition.’
Similarly, DejaView watchers are described as ‘hard-working, middle-aged adults with families, employed in skilled occupations…middle income with a propensity for domestic, non-sedan automobiles and beer and are generous with their kids.’
And Fox Sports viewers are ‘athletic males, residing in major markets, upper income and middle-aged with a propensity to drive imported automobiles and a fondness for high-tech gadgets like DVD players, the Internet and cell phones.’
But despite this success at hyper-niching, media buyers such as Florence Ng, director of broadcast for Toronto-headquartered Optimedia Canada, remain unimpressed because the audiences are still so tiny.
‘If you group them all together, for the 18 to 49 [segment], they’re only slightly over 1% of total viewing. So if what your client wants is mass eyeballs, digitals are not the right vehicle.
‘However,’ Ng concedes, ‘if you want to be extremely specific in terms of target audience, and you want to do more than a brand sell – say, product integration, content or promotion – the appropriate digital channel can be the right vehicle.’
Another factor advertisers should consider, according to diginet reps, is the increasingly aggressive promotional activities they are undertaking. Showcase Action, for example, is leveraging ‘Arniemania’ for the July release of Schwarzenegger’s latest Terminator, T3: The Rise of the Machines.
Not only will the channel present a simultaneously timed ‘Arnie Double Bill,’ but it is now in the midst of a national retail promotion with 850 RadioShack stores offering a free month of Showcase Action to those who purchase a Star Choice Satellite system – plus mail-ins for DVDs of T2: Extreme.
Meanwhile, Allen says that Rogers is doing ‘some very interesting marketing with some of our diginets, [including] themed weekend previews,’ sometimes on analogue channels. Additional efforts by Rogers include ‘constant’ advertising on some U.S. cable channels and ‘a very large campaign’ on conventional television this spring, which will be repeated in the fall.
All in all, are the diginets maturing a little more quickly than was predicted? Wayne Sterloff, Calgary-based VP specialty at Craig Media, which owns TV Land, says yes.
‘The greatest trend I see…is a move by the audience to treat these ‘new specialty’ networks as conventional; that is, the audience has stopped sampling schedules and has moved to appointment viewing.’
Alliance Atlantis’s Yaffe echoes that optimistic opinion. ‘We don’t even call them ‘digital’ anymore. We just refer to them as ‘the new services’ because…if you’re an ExpressVu or Star Choice [satellite] subscriber, you don’t have analogue and digital channels, you just have channels.’
What’s new for the fall
The top 15 diginets
Channels are ranked by average-minute audience, adults 18-plus, during the weeks from Oct. 13, 2002 to May 5, 2003 inclusive. All audience data is from Toronto-based Nielsen Media Research.
Lonestar
(CanWest Global)
Average-minute audience: 10,600 (13.3% share of adult 18-plus digital audience)
Target demo: Adults 25 to 54, skewing male
Major advertisers: Financial, pharmaceutical, farming/rodeo events
New shows:
* The Lone Ranger five weeknights and Wells Fargo on weekends.
* New Calgary Stampede highlights.
Showcase Action
(Alliance Atlantis)
Average-minute audience: 7,100 (8.9% share)
Target demo: Males 18 to 49
Major advertisers: Direct-marketing companies, entertainment, financial and insurance services, food, automotive
New shows:
* Walker, Texas Ranger stars Chuck Norris as a contemporary Texas Ranger from the eye-for-an-eye school of crime fighting.
* The Canadian premiere of Is Harry On the Boat?, a dramatic new series about the adventures of a neophyte travel rep setting up shop in Ibiza, Spain.
* Network movie premieres include Enter the Dragon, Lethal Weapon 1, 2 and 3; On Deadly Ground; Tango and Cash.
DejaView
(CanWest Global)
Average-minute audience: 4,500
(5.7% share)
Target demo: Adults 18 to 49
Major advertisers: Financial, online, music, theatrical releases, retail, alcohol
New shows:
* Nothing announced
What else is new:
* Both The Dick Van Dyke Show (above) and Three’s Company, the channel’s most-watched weekend show, move from weekends-only to five nights a week as well.
Court TV Canada
(CHUM and subsidiary Learning & Skills Television)
Average-minute audience: 4,300 (5.4% share)
Target demo: Adults 18-plus
New shows:
* Coverage of the trials of Scott Peterson and Robert Blake.
* Network feature film premieres depicting ‘famous and infamous criminal figures drawn from the headlines, [plus] top-notch fictional suspense and action films.’
BBC Canada
(Alliance Atlantis)
Average-minute audience: 4,200 (5.3% share)
Target demo: Adults 25 to 54
Major advertisers: Entertainment, automotive, household cleaning products and services, travel and transportation
New shows:
* Servants, a contemporary drama, albeit in period costume, ‘revealing the secret lives, dreams and ambitions of servants in an 1850s English country house’ (North American premiere).
* Real Men, in which Ben Daniels (Cutting It) stars as Detective Inspector Matthew Fenton in a two-part drama about ‘sexual manipulation, betrayal of trust and the loss of innocence’ (North American premiere).
* Strange, a murder mystery described as ‘Agatha Christie meets The X-Files,’which follows a modern-day demon-hunter and former priest John Strange (Richard Coyle, Coupling) as he tracks unexplained deaths in a medieval cathedral city in present-day England (North American premiere).
* Swiss Toni, a comedy about a super-suave salesman who’s actually hopeless at selling cars without the help of his oddball staff
* Celeb, based on a long-running British cartoon strip, stars Harry Enfield (Harry Enfield and CHUMs) as an over-the-hill rock star who’s rolling in royalties in a country manor with his ex-model wife Amanda Holden (Cutting It).
* A new lifestyle series about simplifying and streamlining domestic life called Life Laundry.
* Feature film premieres include Batman, Batman Returns, Beetlejuice, It Takes Two, Curly Sue, Little Big League and The Secret Garden.
TV Land
(Craig Media)
Average-minute audience: 4,100 (5.2% share)
Target demo: Adults 18 to 49
Major advertisers: Sony Entertainment, BMG Music, Labatt, Paramount, Popular Records and Rogers
New shows:
* Classic series MacGyver; My Three Sons; The Addams Family; The Phil Silvers Show; Family Ties; Car 54, Where Are You?
What else is new:
* An interactive Web site (www.tvlandcanada.com) offering schedule information, contests, classic TV trivia and a request line.
Scream
(Corus Entertainment)
Average-minute audience: 3,800 (4.8% share)
Target demo: Adults 18 to 49
Major advertisers: Alliance Releasing, 20th Century Fox, Nintendo, Rogers Communications, Northern Response, EMI Records, Primus Canada, Buck-a-Day Computers
New shows:
* New episodes of Scream-exclusive series The Screaming Room.
* New-to-Scream feature films including Independence Day, Speed, Highlander, Aliens, Young Frankenstein, Edward Scissorhands, Die Hard, The Abyss and Broken Arrow.
What else is new:
* Scream’s all-night movie schedule will now begin at 8 p.m. rather than 10 p.m. nightly.
* In celebration of Halloween, Scream’s October schedule will be packed with ‘the very best in horror,’ including exclusives Dead Alive (from Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson), Evil Dead 2 (from Spider-Man director Sam Raimi), The Texas Chainsaw Murders, The Night of the Living Dead, Carrie, The Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Creature From the Black Lagoon.
Drive-In Classics
(CHUM Television)
Average-minute audience: 3,200 (4.0% share)
Target demo: Males 25 to 54
Major advertisers: Beverages, automotive, movie companies
New shows:
* Canadian premiere of comic book-based series Witchblade, in which a New York detective battles ‘Earth’s darkest evil forces.’
* Black Scorpion, an action series featuring a former Miss Kansas as a ‘sexy crime fighter.’
* The Immortal; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World.
* Tremors, a TV series in which Michael Gross reprises his role from the three Tremors feature films.
What else is new:
* Premieres of 100 Rifles, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes III and IV, Daydream Believers, Deadly Bees, Dillinger, In Like Flint, Gorilla at Large, Killer Bees, Our Man Flint and That Touch of Mink on Drive-In’s weekend Steamy Windshields.
* Salem’s Lot and Horror Marathon blocks.
Mystery
(CanWest Global, Groupe TVA, Rogers Broadcasting)
Average-minute audience: 3,200 (4.0% share)
Target demo: Adults 35 to 54, slight female skew
Major advertisers: Beer, music, theatrical releases, Internet, alcohol, travel, cosmetics
New shows:
* British detective dramas The Big Easy and Dangerman.
* The New Dragnet series.
* Season two of 24.
* Haunted Theatres and Spy Games.
Animal Planet
(CTV, CanWest Global, Groupe TVA, Rogers Broadcasting)
Average-minute audience: 2,800 (3.5% share)
Target demo: Adults 18 to 49
Major advertisers: Pet-care products and services, insurance brokers, Maple Leaf Foods, McDonald’s, Nestlé Purina, McCain Foods
New shows:
* In the Wild, showcasing black bears, turtles, crocs and belugas.
* Beverly Hills Vet, ‘a light-hearted look at the often peculiar pet problems faced by L.A. eccentrics.’
* Animal Precinct, which follows animal enforcement officers devoted to investigating crimes against animals.
Discovery Civilization
(CTV, Bell Globemedia)
Average-minute audience: 2,700 (3.4% share)
Target demo: Adults 25 to 54
New shows:
* In Their Own Words with Sir David Frost, a new series which presents classic interviews with Robert Kennedy, John Lennon, Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela and other newsmakers.
* Classic Albums, which uses original music and footage to delve behind albums such as Paul Simon’s Graceland.
* Specials include Thomas Friedman’s Roots of 9/11 and The New Face of Late Night, a close-up look at the development and launch of a late night show called Jimmy Kimmel Live.
SexTV: The Channel
(CHUM Television)
Average-minute audience: 2,600 (3.3% share)
Target demo: Men 25 to 54
Major advertisers: Beverage alcohol, direct response, automotive
New shows:
* None announced.
Showcase Diva
(Alliance Atlantis)
Average-minute audience: 2,300 (2.9% share)
Target demo: Adults 25 to 54
Major advertisers: Entertainment, direct marketing, household supplies, financial and insurance services
New shows:
* Canadian premiere of Kath and Kim, an Australian comedy series about the lives of a house-proud fortysomething mother and her spoiled-rotten twentysomething daughter.
* Network movie premieres include The Pelican Brief and The American President.
Biography Channel
(A&E Television Networks, Rogers Media, Shaw Communications)
Average-minute audience: 1,900 (2.4% share)
Target demo: Adults 25 to 54, well educated, affluent
New shows:
* Gzowski in Conversation with notable Canadians including Wayne Gretzky, Natalie MacMaster, Christopher Plummer, Sandra Schmirler, Jean Beliveau, Karen Kain and Pierre Trudeau.
* New biography subjects including Ariel Sharon, the Saudi royal family, Keanu Reeves, Diane Keaton, Tom Clancy and Bernie Mac.
* The Cold Case Files.
* City Confidential, which investigates the pursuit and resolution of long-unsolved cases.
* Special presentations include Role Reversal, in which two women and two men explore gender stereotypes by swapping sexes.
What else is new:
* New week-nightly programming blocks include ‘Bio-by-Day,’ which offers back-to-back mix of inspirational, entertaining, spiritual and captivating biographies.
* ‘Our Stories,’ an all-Canadian block to ‘capture the essence and spirit of what makes up Canada from coast to coast.’
* ‘Connections,’ a new block of collected themed programming events.
* ‘Famous Faces,’ a block featuring behind-the-scenes look at ‘the hottest stars from today and yesterday.’
* ‘History Majors,’ a block chronicling the lives of some of history’s most interesting and influential individuals.
* ‘After Hours’ block, a wee-hours look at ‘an eclectic mix of edgier, darker and sinister biographies, movies and documentaries.’
* ‘Saturday Night: Uncovered,’ a three-hour block of ‘personal, diverse and stimulating documentaries that are equally entertaining and educational.’
* Friday-night ‘Bio-on-Demand’ block, during which viewers will be asked to play the role of TV programmer, voting online for which biography they wish to see.
* New hosts for Biography are champion skater Kurt Browning and radio personality Terri Michaels.
mentv
(CanWest Global, Groupe TVA)
Average-minute audience: 1,700 (2.1% share)
Target demo: Adults 18 to 54, male skew
Major advertisers: Alcohol, automotive, computers/office equipment, music, hair colouring, exercise equipment
New shows:
* Nothing announced.
