The little kids have grown up. That’s the notion behind talk of creating a new fall television preview event for the specialty channels, likely to be scheduled for some time next spring.

The event would be similar to the Broadcast Research Council (BRC)/TV Guide fall TV preview event already held every May, which attracts some 400 media buyers and advertisers to see representatives from TV Guide candidly critiquing the conventional fall lineup.

After the specialties failed in an attempt to get in on the existing event, they decided to form their own, says Walter Levitt, SVP marketing at Toronto-based Alliance Atlantis Broadcast Group. ‘Specialties have gone from being the little kid at the table to being the grown-up who sits beside everyone else.’

While the specialties move ahead, David Shiffman, president of the BRC and VP/research director at Toronto’s Starcom Worldwide, says he hasn’t ruled out some kind of involvement by the BRC.

‘But,’ he adds, ‘trying to tackle 30 specialty stations in one evening is pretty tricky, and trying to do it plus a whole whack of conventional programs is even trickier. I do think specialty should have something. The question is what?’

All of this comes on the heels of an ‘Annual Tracking Survey’ conducted by The Strategic Counsel for Alliance Atlantis, which Levitt says provides ample evidence that the specialties should be treated as well as the conventionals. Alliance is considering making this point by commissioning a broader, industry-wide survey to present at the new event.

Selected findings from the study confirm the high level of loyalty viewers have for their favourite specialty channels.

‘The most interesting thing is the value associated with specialty services,’ says Christopher Kelly, president of the Toronto-based Counsel. ‘Individuals reported it gives them more focused programming and it’s more catered to their interests. They do recognize the difference between specialty services and conventional.’

The survey included interviews with 1,315 analogue viewers (viewers with access to the Tier 1 specialty channels) and 1,007 digital viewers (viewers with access to both analogue and digital specialties). It found that 54% of analogue viewers think the programming is better on specialty networks, while 27% feel it’s better on regular networks. Of the digital viewers, 56% feel programming is better on specialties, versus 26% who see better programming on regular networks.

But Bruce Claassen, CEO of Toronto-based Genesis Media, interprets those findings as confirming something most buyers already know: ‘The higher the brand share, the lower the loyalty.’

He notes that ‘conventionals have a higher and broader audience, and as a consequence their loyalty is going to be less than what it would be for niche-focused programming, such as you would find on specialties.

‘It’s not inconceivable that desirability might be high for specialty, but I’m not sure it’s a two-to-one factor,’ he says.

Another of the survey’s findings was that 53% of analogue viewers reported clicking on specialty channels first when browsing for something to watch (when they didn’t already have appointment programming lined up), and 52% of digital viewers did the same.

Again, Claassen says this result could be misleading. ‘Most people have a list of stations that are on their ‘first click’ list,’ he says.

‘For television it’s a dozen and for radio, it’s about six stations, and those are the ones they go to first. If there’s nothing on that short list, then they’ll start grazing to see what else is there. To suggest that the first click list is specialty as opposed to conventional for the majority of the population is a bit of a stretch.’

Finally, asked to select the main difference between specialty and conventional programming, the survey found that 34% of the analogue respondents chose the fact that the specialties focus on one specific area as the key differentiator, while 29% of digital viewers did the same.

In general, the findings painted a rosy picture of the specialties, ‘but this isn’t to say that all those specialty channels have huge audience numbers. They don’t,’ says the Counsel’s Kelly. ‘But among those who are viewing them, they are getting incredibly high ratings among the regular viewers.’

The task now, says Kelly, is to convince advertisers that opportunities with specialty are a validated option. ‘[There] are very satisfied regular viewers that are relatively easy to reach.’

But Claassen sees a different mission for specialty stations.

‘I’d be stunned if there’s an advertiser of any significance that doesn’t already recognize the specialties,’ he says. ‘But, for the specialties, there’s one major drawback: In Canada you can only buy them nationally. The biggest issue the specialties should go after is making a huge case to the CRTC to allow them to sell at least regionally, if not by market. Then, the opportunity for them to snatch up a more sizable portion of the ad pie would be huge.’