Ratings Review: BARB Week Ending 15th October 2006

It has taken a day or so of analysis of the publicly available BARB data, but there are one or two interesting conclusions out of this week's data.

It doesn't happen very often with multi-channel programmes, and it is more memorable because of it, but one programme on one of the multi channels did reach the 2 million mark. It was Sky Sports 1's coverage of England's international football game, which scored a massive 2.03 million viewers. This helped the channel to gain a 2.0% share / 15.3% weekly reach.

In the wake of the recent Sunday Times story about NASN possibly being sold to ESPN, I thought it might be a good idea to check out the ratings data. Unfortunately, there is no publicly available ratings data for NASN, or indeed any of the Setanta channels. However, I am able to look at ratings for the channels owned by Disney, ESPN's parent company.

ABC1 dropped to 0.3% share / 5.6% weekly reach.

Disney Channel achieved 0.4% share / 5.5% weekly reach, whilst its +1 got 0.2% share / 4.5% weekly reach.

Disney Cinemagic got only 0.1% share / 2.2% weekly reach, whilst the +1 got 0.1% share / 2.1% weekly reach.

And finally, ESPN Classic, barely registers in terms of share and only 0.9% in terms of weekly reach.

ESPN have beenn trying to get into the European market for years, part owning EuroSport for a time, but have never truly broken through. A deal for ESPN to buy NASN may well be on the cards. We'll wait and see.

ITV2 once again wins the ratings battle this week with 2.1% share, and ITV4 is improving ratings wise, now up to 0.6% share with a 13.3% weekly reach.

Sky One's recent steal of Lost from Channel 4 may well be the boost it needs ratings wise, as they still languish at 1.6% share / 22.3% weekly reach. This is despite a good 1.189 million viewers tuning in for the Sunday premiere of an episode of The Simpsons. In fact, there are no top 10 entries in the Sky One chart for any other programme, which kinda highlights how poor their shcedule really is. Unsurprisingly, Sky Three gets more viewers than Sky Two, but there is little really between them. Sky Two is 0.5% share / 12.6% weekly reach, whilst Sky Three is 0.6% share / 16.4% weekly reach.

Other programmes of note scoring well, include the More 4 premiere of the controversial documentary-style drama, Death Of A President, which gained 293,000 viewers on Monday 9th October. Two repeat showings on Friday and Saturday BOTH scored over 130,000 viewers, putting the three showings at numbers 1, 6 and 7 in the More 4 Top 10. Indeed, the Channel 4 multi-channels did well this week, with all of E4's top 10 shows gaining over 300,000 viewers, which demonstrates an incredible degree of consitency, and Film 4's showing of Forrest Gump got 638,000 viewers, which boosted the channel's ratings this week to 0/8% share / 14.4% weekly reach. Film 4 has definitely benefited tremendously ratings wise from moving away from a subscription model.

With most +1 channels, they significantly less viewers than the original. However, this does not apply to the Travel Channel. In terms of Weekly reach, the original gets 126,000 viewers whilst the +1 manages 207,000. Not exactly something to celebrate though!

That performance though does keep them out of this week's bottom 5, by about 3000 viewers. Not exactly a lot, but worth a glass of something strong, none the less.

In reverse order, then, at number 5 is All In Sport, the repackaged Poker Channel, with a paltry 123,000 viewers. Number 4 is Eat Cinema, with 107,000. That's more than double any of the bottom 3 channels. At number 3 is Sky Travel Shop with just 49,000 viewers,only marginally better than Number 2's Redemption TV with just 45,000. But the worst performing channel this week, is MUTV with just 42,000 viewers weekly reach.

AIMing wide of the mark, with old news

Cliff Kincaid should really be a little more on the ball than this if he wants his "Accuracy In Media" organisation to be treated seriously, and do a little more research.

In his latest Media Monitor column, dated October 24th 2006, Cliff highlights a headline on Al-Jazeera's english language website "Death Becomes Bush" which is a headline for a story about the Film 4 / Newmarket Films production "Death Of A President" which recieved an international premiere at the 2006 Toronto International Film Feastival in September and won the Fipresci Prize. It was also aired recently on both More 4 and Channel 4 in the UK.

The Media Monitor column is full of the usual Republican talking points about Al-Jazeera, referring to the fact that it airs a lot of terrorist produced video and stating that it's another reason why Al-Jazeera International should be kept out of the USA.

Now, the problem here is that the story Cliff Kincaid is referring to, is 12 days old. The date stamp on the Al-Jazeera story is October 12th 2006. It has taken Cliff 12 days to write this article and put it on his website. The timestamp on the RSS feed indicates it was added at 6am UK time. I picked up the RSS feeds at about 10.30 am UK time, and sat down to write this response. I advise you to look at the time stamp on this article. It has taken me far less time to put together this response, including the research of the various articles and items, that I have linked in this story.

I would also advise Cliff Kincaid to go and watch the film, when it is released to cinemas in the US on October 27th. He might discover, as I did when I watched it on More 4, that the real story in the film, is not the assassination of President Bush, despite the title, but how a country copes with an event like this, and how it can get it wrong, even when the evidence points to something completely different.

The film is controversial, of that there can be no doubt. It is also very provocative. But, if you go into it with an open mind, not a closed one, you'll discover a film that challenges and provokes thought. But then, I have yet to discover an open-minded conservative.

Bias In The Media - Don't conservatives get it?

I have noticed something in my observations of the various blogs and commentators on the internet, and that is that there is no single "enemy" organisation for conservatives. Bill O'Reilly, Michelle Malkin, Natalie Solent and others regularly target almost all other mainstream media outlets. The BBC, The CBC, The ABC in Australia, US network newscasts, Al-Jazeera and Air America Radio are among the favourites, as are The New York Times and The Washington Post, but nearly every news organisation cops it from conservatives, except one.

Fox News Channel is about the only major news provider than conservatives do not attack for reasons of bias. Why? Because Fox News is as biased as they are.

They accuse everybody else of being biased, and yet cannot see their own bias. Perhaps they should challenge their own opinions every once in a while, like I do on a daily basis. Maybe they'd realise that it's just slightly possible that the majority may be right and they may be wrong.

Mixed Feelings

The touch of skin
the closeness of being
the heat of passion
the pleasure of joining.

The feeling of loneliness
the abscence of love
the coldness of life
the pain of rejection.

The seductiveness of sex
the beauty of womanhood
the power of lust
the need for love.

First, Fair, Fox? A fair and balanced commentary

The world of 24 hour news channels is as varied and diverse as the news itself. Some, like CNN and Sky News, have been around so long that they have become familiar and accepted by us all, even those who don’t watch 24 hour news. Some, like BBC News 24, have developed to become well-respected services, whilst others, like the ITV News Channel, didn’t survive long enough to grow into the potential they were showing.

But none have ever created as much controversy, in both political and media circles, as the Fox News Channel.

Back in the mid 1990s, several commentators on the right wing of the political spectrum in the United States saw the media as generally too favourable to the liberal agenda, with not enough pressure being applied to the then-US President, Bill Clinton. That was all to change over the next few years – but nobody knew that then.

In 1996, with Clinton fighting for a second term in office, NBC closed a channel called America’s Talking. It was basically television’s version of the many talk radio stations that are available throughout the United States. It had been spun off from CNBC, the Consumer News and Business Channel, launching on July 4th 1994, and was based at CNBC’s then headquarters at Fletcher Avenue in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

The trouble was, it was a spectacular flop. It had never gained much of an audience, and little cable carriage. The only show to survive the channel was Politics with Chris Matthews which moved to CNBC and was retitled Hardball with Chris Matthews. The show then later moved to MSNBC.

America’s Talking was closed to make way for an additional news channel from Microsoft and NBC, called MSNBC. But in many ways, America’s Talking only moved networks, from NBC to Fox. In 1996, Roger Ailes, who at the time was head of both America’s Talking and CNBC, was approached by Rupert Murdoch to launch a new news channel. Murdoch, who also part-owned British Sky Broadcasting, had been behind the launch of Sky News on February 5th 1989, and wanted to launch another news channel, this time in the US.

However, unlike Sky News, the conservative Murdoch wanted this news channel to counter some of the “liberal bias” that he perceived in the US media. Ailes agreed to head up the channel and managed to persuade some of his colleagues from CNBC and America’s Talking to join him at the new venture, notably, Steve Doocy from America’s Talking AM, and Neil Cavuto from CNBC’s Power Lunch and Market Wrap. Both are still with Fox News Channel today.

Another commentator who has pretty much been there from the beginning is Bill O’Reilly. He had been a local news reporter for some years, before becoming a correspondent for CBS News. He was based in Buenos Aires and covered both the Falklands War and the El Salvador war. In 1986, he jumped across to ABC as a correspondent for the main news programme, ABC World News Tonight.

In 1989, he joined Fox’s syndicated current affairs programme, Inside Edition as Senior Correspondent and reserve anchor for Sir David Frost. However, David left the show and Bill O’Reilly became the Senior Anchor. In 1995, O’Reilly was replaced by Deborah Norville, who had anchored NBC News at Sunrise, and was famously remembered as “the other woman” in the Today set alongside hosts Bryant Gumbel and Jane Pauley. When Pauley left Today, Norville was promoted to co-host with Bryant Gumbel, but disastrous ratings followed and she left the show, initially only on maternity leave to have a child, but since temporary co-host Katie Couric had helped boost ratings, NBC announced that Norville would not return. Deborah Norville still holds the fort at Inside Edition today.

In 1996, Bill O’Reilly joined Fox News Channel as host of The O’Reilly Report, which later became The O’Reilly Factor. O’Reilly has faced much the same claims about his own political standing as Fox News has about the channel’s perceived political bias. He has often been referred to as a Conservative pundit, despite constant denials.

The programme advertises itself as a “No-Spin Zone”. His style is often confrontational, and always direct. He described himself is his book, The O’Reilly Factor, as being “conservative on some issues, liberal on others and sane on most.” Exact percentages, though, have yet to be determined.

The Fox News Channel itself has been on the wrong end of many accusations about its own bias. The infamous documentary, Outfoxed, directed by Robert Greenwald, made a lot of claims regarding Fox News and its perceived right-wing bias. The film had been researched by a team of volunteers sitting down and watching Fox News Channel non-stop for a period of several months. That research project has gained a life of its own outside the film and continues online under the name News Hounds, with the slogan, “We watch FOX so you don’t have to.”

However, the film has received substantial criticism itself. Claims, for example, of editing clips so that comments were taken out of their real context, and former employees who in fact never worked for Fox News, continue to hang over the production.

Personal ‘Talking Points’

Having been a fairly consistent viewer of the channel over the past six months or so, I have to say that, personally, I find some things about the channel quite disagreeable. So, in true Fox News style, here are my own ‘Talking Points’ about the channel.

For a start, I do not like the channel’s reliance on dramatic music and sound effects, ominous sounding stings and flashy graphics. It says to me that the channel places more emphasis on the presentation of the story than on the content. To my mind, that is like putting the cart before the horse.

I also find the channel’s continual assertions about supposedly being “Fair and Balanced” come across too strongly, as though they want that impression to be uppermost in people’s minds when talking about the channel. It reminds me of the quote from Hamlet, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

I also dislike the way some anchors and presenters interrupt some of their guests when the guest is giving a different stance to the anchor/presenter. Now, there’s nothing wrong with the presenter or anchor taking the opposite viewpoint or taking a challenging viewpoint in an interview situation – it’s their job after all, and they want to get the best from the interviewee. However, by talking over their victim, it gives the impression that the viewpoint they are taking is in fact their own strongly held belief, and rather than trying to get the best from the interviewee, they are in fact trying to talk them down and make them look bad.

I find the ‘Fox News Alert’ use to be inconsistent. Sometimes, you hear those sweeping sounds, and that ominous chord, and it gets followed by a very important piece of breaking news. On other occasions, such as one time during an edition of Your World with Neil Cavuto, the sting was played, and then they proceeded to announce that the UN was still in deadlock on the third day of discussions about Iran. That’s hardly breaking news. In fact, when it comes to the UN, it practically seems to be business as usual: I don’t see what the justification was for playing the Alert.

I personally dislike the way News and Opinion get mixed in the schedule. The channel comes across much more like a News/Talk radio station than a 24 hour television news channel. Their breakfast programme, Fox and Friends has discussion between the hosts at the top of the hour about the top stories as they see them, rather than just reporting the facts. Also, some of the hosts seem to regard themselves as the stars of their shows, instead of being just a facilitator. I find this especially to be the case with Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. I have never liked the style of news programmes where the anchor’s name is part of the title. For instance, why does it have to be NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams? Why not just “NBC Nightly News”? I do not see these people as the stars of their particular shows: I see them as people with big egos who need to be taken down a peg or two.

Whilst Fox News might be one of the higher-rated news channels in the US, it has far fewer viewers over here in the UK. Official BARB ratings show that whilst BBC News 24 reaches 5.7 million viewers a week and Fox News’s sister channel, Sky News, reaches 4.2 million viewers over the same period, Fox News limps in with around 200,000. While it might be to the taste of many Americans, and some other viewers around the world, it seems that Brits are not so embracing of it.

Those are my ‘talking points’. And one more thing: while you’ve been reading this article, you have been in a ‘No-Spin Zone’.

(Also published on Transdiffusion.)

Granada Industrial Dispute in ITV's Future?

Media Guardian reports that staff at Granada Media belonging to the NUJ, Bectu and Amicus will vote on strike action in a pay dispute after Granada imposed a 2% pay rise.

If the strike went ahead, it would affect output across all seven of Granada Media's ITV franchises.

This is a large blow for ITV and Granada, coming just a couple of months before the merger between Carlton and Granada takes place.

This highlights the danger of allowing ITV to be consolidated into one company. ITV's strength lay in the fact it was not one comapny but many companies. Such a strength should be particularly obvious now. Under the old-style ITV, you had 15 major production centres, and 15 companies that could have by now been working separately to create a myriad of channels in the multi-channel arena, alongside network ITV's efforts.

Instead we've had 3 companies trying to enter multi-channel arena, Carlton via cable channels and OnDigital, Granada via GSkyB and Scottish TV via Sky Scottish. Of all of these, mainly lacklustre efforts, only GSkyB remains with Plus and Men & Motors, alongside ITV2 and the ITV News Channel. GSkyB may not survive much longer as there are plans to transfer the material that Plus uses into an ITV Gold channel, and Men & Motors is hardly able to run by itself as a "primary" channel without Plus to pull in some prestiege advertisers for the prestiege programming.

Add to this, that this industrial dispute could take out, temporarily, half the ITV network in one go, and the ever present possibility that this new ITV plc company could fail, and by doing so take out not only most of the ITV network, but about a third of all new production in this country, and we are talking serious consequences that very few people seemed to have noticed. It could mean the end of the UK as a major television producer, with the US becoming more dominant than ever before.

BBC Three liquidises Liquid News

It has been speculated on since the death of Christopher Price in 2002, but now we know for sure. BBC Three is bringing the axe down on Liquid News.

The entertainment news programme, which grew out of BBC News 24's Zero 30 slot, became a digital phenomenon, mainly due to the attitude the presenter, Christopher Price, brought to the show. These days, hosted by Patrick 'Paddy' O'Connell and Claudia Winkleman, the show has been desperately trying to recapture its former glories, and sadly failing.

On Thursday 13 Nov, BBC Three controller Stuart Murphy pulled the plug on the programme, praising the programme's achievements, but stating that BBC Three was an evolving channel and sometimes, tough decisions had to made.

Whilst it was clear that Liquid News was perhaps having a rough time, I am yet to be convinced that Liquid News was out of time, or indeed had run out of steam. Replacing it in the schedules will be no easy task. This move may also serve another purpose, allowing BBC News 24 to create an entertainment bulletin to fit their channel, and bringing all the information programming under one roof, so to speak. Liquid News will finish in April 2004, it is clear that if any replacement is to be created, it must be done soon.

ITV in crisis

ITV has been facing up to some major problems recently, and arguably, it has not been coping very well with them. In what has been a tough time for the commercial broadcaster, the ITV companies have faced major problems with ITV Digital, falling revenues from advertising, falling audience figures with BBC1 and Multi-channel TV benefiting the most and a greater than average number of new programme failures, including some very high profile ones such as Shafted. The question is, what happened to ITV to allow it to fall so far?

There are a number of potential reasons why ITV’s fall has been so bad. One potential reason can be traced all the way back to the creation of Independent Television back in 1954. Originally, the Independent Television Authority was supposed to have created 2 commercial networks, each with additional licenced programme providers. But it ended up being only one commercial network, and no additional programme providers, which made things difficult for Associated Rediffusion and ATV London in the initial months of Independent Television. These days, such an arrangement with additional programme providers licenced for ITV would undoubtedly have seen more of the old franchisees become production companies, and also some good companies that never quite made it to being franchise holders, providing programming. It would also make for a more competitive ITV in terms of programming.

Another potential reason why ITV is in possible crisis goes back to the 1990 Broadcasting Act. In the act, it allowed the ITV companies to merge with each other, and potentially be bought by other companies too. Why was this a bad thing? Well, ironically for the same reason that lack of additional licenced programme providers was a bad thing. Instead of having a competitive ITV with 15 companies and the threat of losing their franchise if they didn’t perform up to scratch, you now have just 5 companies, who know their licences are pretty safe, and therefore less competitive, less challenging and less satisfying in terms of programming.

Another potential reason lies in what has been recently a major situation in broadcasting terms, and that is the situation between ITV and Sky. In 1998, ITV decided not to launch on Sky Digital, despite the fact that BBC1, BBC2, Channel 4 and Channel 5 were all launching on both Sky Digital and On Digital. On Digital, nowadays know as ITV Digital, is owned by Carlton and Granada, the two biggest ITV companies. Granada have some history with Sky as Granada was involved in the British Satellite Broadcasting venture of 1990, which ended with BSB merging with Sky. Carlton had channels of its own that it didn’t want on Sky, and had previously restricted them to just Cable. Carlton and Granada felt that On Digital needed an advantage over Sky Digital, and they felt that ITV would give them that advantage. So ITV refused to launch on Sky Digital, and also refused to launch ITV2 on Sky Digital. This move was to prove costly in financial terms with many millions of pounds of advertising revenue missed because of this one move. ITV1 and ITV2 were to launch in 2001 on Sky Digital, but the damage had been done. The move had cost them advertising revenue, and it had cost them viewers too, and the longer they stayed off Sky Digital, the more it was going to cost them in terms of viewers and advertising revenue. So, they finally put up and launched on Sky Digital.

Another potential reason lies in the fact that On/ITV Digital always looked to compete with Sky Digital. Alongside the fact that ITV had been having something of a tiff with Sky for many years, going back to the lack of agreement between Sky News and ITN, over ITN acting as programme producer for Sky News, in 1988, and continuing through Sky’s failed attempts to replace ITN as ITV’s news provider, when you put all that together, you see ITV trying to compete with Sky, one by not providing ITV and ITV2 on Sky Digital, also by trying to use ITV’s advantage as a terrestrial broadcaster to persuade people to go to On Digital, owned of course by two of the biggest ITV companies. Put that very complicated mix together, and what do you have? You have a channel provider on Digital Terrestrial, trying to compete with a channel provider on Digital Satellite, where really they shouldn’t be competing at all. On Digital was the only licenced digital pay-TV provider for Digital Terrestrial, and Sky Digital was the only digital satellite pay-TV provider. In theory, they shouldn’t have been competing with each other as they were two different markets. However, in practice, people were comparing the Sky/On situation to the Sky/BSB situation of 1990, long before either side were actually transmitting digital programmes, and this wasn’t helped by On Digital themselves, whose advertising was at least initially quite blatantly stating their competitive agenda.

Whichever reason it was, and whichever way you look at it, it comes down to competition. Sky had had no real competition in the Multi-channel arena after their merger with BSB, and ITV in itself was less competitive because the number of ITV companies had dropped from 15 to 5, and because the franchises were no longer being seen as under threat every whit and while, so there was no pressure on ITV to perform. Now ITV is in this situation. To this writer, it looks like a crisis, a crisis of ITV’s own making. They wanted the ability to merge stations, to eventually become 1 giant national ITV. They wanted the franchises to be easier to renew, therefore creating less pressure, and supposedly more time for increased investment. They wanted the greener, less regulated grass on the other side of the fence. Now they’re there, they are finding it’s leaving a foul taste in their mouths, but instead of backtracking, ITV seek to blame the BBC and Sky for their own problems. There’s an old saying. It says, “You reap what you sow”.

So, how can ITV get themselves out of this predicament? Well, the only way they can do it is to go back to being more regulated, and back to being a commercially funded, not commercially driven, public service broadcaster. They must waste less money on unnecessarily extravagant set designs, cut down the amount that is just given away to shareholders, and start re-investing in the people who really count, the viewers.

GWR In Trouble

Back in the late 19th Century, ask anybody in the South West what GWR stood for, and they'd say either, God's Wonderful Railway, or Great Western Railway. Now in the 21st Century, ask that same question, and you'd probably get a reply along the lines Gormless, Worthless Radio or words to that effect.

Here in the 21st Century, GWR is known as a radio conglomerate and not a particularly popular one among the listeners. Their listenership is down, and the advertising market is down too, meaning that their profits slumped 70% in the last financial year. These are troubled times for a company which started off from a merger between Wiltshire Radio and Radio West back in 1985. So just what has GWR done so wrong in the past year?

Well, it could be that they created a bad strategy within the past couple of years, when they bought up a whole raft of stations, when the ownership rules were last relaxed. The company had a new station, only on Digital Satellite, called The Mix. The Mix was and is basically what GWR wanted their local FM stations to be, albeit with a few changes to reflect the smaller, more localised audiences the local stations had. So, where the local stations had local info, The Mix usually had promos. Then on top of that, The Mix was networked for at least 11 hours a day from 7pm to 6am, consisting basically of a listeners top 30, late night love, and an overnight programme.

However, the worst was yet to come. Over on AM, there was a completion of a process that had been going on for years. Those AM services that had not been assimilated under the Classic Gold brand were then brought under that brand, among them, Plymouth Sound AM, who had been running a successful local service on AM separately from FM for 9 years. In the 6 months following that re-branding, Plymouth's AM service dropped from a regular audience of well over 60,000, to a regular audience of barely over 20,000. Similar patterns were happening right across commercial local radio with every service losing listeners, but the GWR owned services seemed to be worst hit out of them all.

This meant that advertising revenue fell away, quite sharply in some areas, as advertisers looked for bigger audiences elsewhere. The Radio Authority also intervened saying there should be a minimum local requirement of 16 hours on FM. This meant that suddenly 3 extra hours of local programming had to be found in the stations' schedules. Most took an early breakfast slot of 3am to 6am, but some did go for the 7pm to 10pm evening slot. However, they were only local versions of the Top 30 listeners' chart.

GWR was expecting advertising revenue to pick up in 2001, but two things prevented that from happening. One was the Foot and Mouth outbreak, which did not help business confidence generally and caused a lot of problems for many local economies across the country from Devon to Scotland. The second incident was September 11th, and although this didn't have as great an impact as Foot and Mouth, it did help to keep a downer on business confidence. It is now expected that the advertising market won't pick up until the second half of 2002, and although commercial radio has seen a pick up in the number of listeners again, GWR is seemingly lagging behind the rest of the sector.

It is this writer's opinion that GWR needs to rethink its network-orientated strategy. Stations that are truly local by name and by nature are doing well again, in some cases, even better than they were before. It would therefore seem to indicate that locally produced programming is far better at getting listeners for any potential advertiser, than a semi or mostly networked schedule.

Regional Rollercoaster

Out of all the channels that currently exist, only 3 channels provide a terrestrial regional service to the English regions, BBC-1, BBC-2 and ITV. Every other service available is national, pan-European or even international in focus.

So why are there so few regional services? The short answer is money. To provide a basic regional service, for instance to the West, South, East, Midlands, North, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, you have to find eight new locations for studios. To run the entire service from your broadcast headquarters, at least eight new transmission suites need to be built and suddenly we're talking hundreds of millions of pounds. Currently only Sky could even consider something like that.

The BBC offer a 14-region terrestrial service, covering the South West, West, South, South East, East, East Midlands, West Midlands, North West, North, North East and Cumbria, Channel Islands, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, and are in the process of carving a 15th region out of the South East for London. A comprehensive service like this is the most expensive route to take, with the pick of the regional bunch, ITV, having 27 regional divisions operated by 15 licensees in 14 regions. A 27-region service requires 27 transmission suites, at a time where ITV tries to consolidate into a single company.

Even without consolidation, regional output has already suffered. The BBC used to produce some great regional feature programming, including "Floyd on Food" and "Secret Nature", both from the Southwest. The BBC picked up these shows nationally as well as many other programmes from the regions. The three main regional production centres for the network, Bristol, Birmingham and Manchester, specialise in certain types of productions. The only things the individual regions produce are local news, weekly topical news documentaries and a regional parliamentary programme. All are news based with no feature-based material at all - no fun stuff.

You might have expected ITV to pick up the slack here but the picture is similarly bleak. For instance, Westward and TSW had been great providers of regional programming, some of it being shown on the network. Successor company Westcountry, however, have produced only news and factual programming, with a tiny amount of entertainment-related material produced by local independents. Even after Carlton rebranded Westcountry, things did not really improved. Although the "Carlton Production" slide is seen a lot, the great majority of these productions are from London and the Midlands.

So regional programming has already suffered on television, and it looks like it will continue to suffer under a single ITV company coupled with light-touch regulation. Because being regional eats up money and profits, expect to see even less in the future.

The first word in jingles - PAMS

2001 marked the 50th anniversary of a company which in its own way, revolutionised radio worldwide.

Until 1951 any jingles that were heard on a radio station in the United States of America had been produced locally. An example of this was KLIF, a station that went live in 1947. The station had its own staff singers, which might seem strange now, but it was fairly common practice back then.

The station's music director, Bill Meeks collaborated with the singers to produce the station's first on-air jingle package. In 1951 Bill Meeks left KLIF and founded a company called PAMS, which promoted itself as a commercial music production house and advertising agency whose initials originally stood for Production, Advertising, Marketing and Sales, the four areas that Bill felt clients needed help in. In later years, the S was changed to mean Service.

The company was based in Dallas, Texas. But this was not by accident, rather, it was by the design of a gentleman called Bill Harris, who was the local director of the American Foundation of Musicians. He pushed for musicians to be paid transcription rates rather than the much higher national advertising rates. Had this not happened in 1951, its quite possible that PAMS might have been based in New York or Los Angeles and as such it might have meant that radio stations today would be traveling to those locations rather than Dallas for their jingles.

Soon after, PAMS sold the very first syndicated package of jingles to KDNT in Denton, Texas. This was to become known as the Series 1 package. The package was basically a collection of pre-recorded backing tracks, an economical and flexible way of producing station ID's. However the package had no consistent logo melody. The package was produced specifically for the station, therefore it was not a custom package, but a syndicated package.

In 1955, PAMS started to face some serious competition in the sector with the formation of Commercial Recording Corp., and three former PAMS employees got together in 1958 to form Futuresonic, but despite the competition from these and many other companies including Music Makers, Jingle Mill and Pepper Sound, PAMS became known as the world's most creative and dominant supplier of radio jingles.
In all, PAMS created 49 numbered packages with numerous variants, many named packages for clients across the world. Among the stations that used PAMS jingles were

• BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2
• WABC in New York
• WMGM
• WYNR
• WFUN
• WXYZ
• KFWB
• KGW
• WGAR
• WWDC
• WLS
• KLIF
• KNX
• and many others including pirate station Radio London.

Some of the more well known backing tracks include Series 15, originally produced for WABC in New York, but never actually used by the station and Series 18, the package that introduce the electronic voice of “Sonovox” to the world of radio jingles. PAMS also produced a series of jingles based on the hits of The Beatles at a time when Beatlemania was sweeping across all 50 states of the US.

In the late 1970's, PAMS ceased trading because of financial problems, but the company never went into bankruptcy, nor was it dissolved. For over 10 years the future of the company and the jingles themselves were left hanging on legal threads.

Then in 1990 another former PAMS employee, Jonathan Wolfert, who had left PAMS in 1971 to form his own company, JAM Creative Productions, bought the shares of the company.

You might think that the story ends here, but you'd be wrong. Because in the years since the company became inactive, several other companies, including the Creative Productions Marketing Group (CPMG), had started offering re-sings of the PAMS packages. It meant extensive legal research had to be carried out to determine who held the valid copyright to the PAMS material. It was eventually determined that the original PAMS corporation, that had been bought by Jonathan Wolfert, still owned the jingles. PAMS had to resort to legal proceedings to resolve all the conflicting claims.

A settlement was reached in February 1997 and since then, JAM have sold re-sings of the classic jingles out of Dallas, Texas, whilst a company called KenR offer re-sings out of Toledo, Ohio.

Brand X

ITV has become ITV1, SkySports.comTV has reverted to being known as Sky Sports News - two recent examples of just how important the correct brand is to television stations and networks. But branding isn't just the station name, it's also everything that identifies the station as being what it is. So, just why is the brand so important?

One reason is to help viewers build a familiarity with the station. Westward's brand was a very strong one in the South West of England, and indeed still is, despite the fact that it disappeared from our TV screens at the end of 1981. Why is it so strong?

One reason is that although Westward changed their idents a few times, they never changed their symbol - it was always the Golden Hind - and the continual use of this symbol for 20 years meant that people built a familiarity with it. Every time that ship appeared on the screen, you knew you were watching Westward.

Another thing that helped build familiarity was the regular team of station hosts, otherwise known as Continuity Announcers. When Roger Shaw told you that now on Westward was The Avengers, again, you knew you were watching Westward, because his face and voice became associated with Westward, and many years later, TSW as well. Familiar faces, familiar voices and a familiar symbol, amongst other things, helped to create a very strong brand for Westward, one which survives almost 20 years of disuse.

By way of an aside, in the United States, consumers regularly rate General Electric second out of 10 manufacturers for Blenders. The company stopped manufacturing white goods of this type more than 20 years ago. A powerful and quality brand is self-perpetuating.

Another reason why brand is so important is that it helps identify the sort of programming you can expect. Cartoon Network shows nothing but cartoons, Discovery Channel is all about documentaries, Disney Channel is children's and family entertainment, brands like that are familiar and give a good idea what the station is about.

But what about a brand like Boomerang? Now what kind of channel is that? It sounds like something to do with Australia or thrown weapons. In fact, Boomerang shows classic cartoons, such as Tom and Jerry, Droopy and Barney Bear. But again, if you'd never heard of the channel before, would you know that it showed classic cartoons? Possibly not, which is why it was initially introduced to the viewing public as a strand of programming on Cartoon Network, before it was launched as a separate channel.

Getting brands associated with whatever the channel wants you to associate it with, has always been a problem. Before 1956, would anyone have associated the word Granada with the North or North West of England? Possibly not, but it is now, and has been for quite some time, associated with the north. On the other hand, could you associate Rediffusion with any particular part of the country? Possibly not, because in the station name, there is no geographical indication of where the channel broadcasts or in this case, broadcasted, to. That's why from about 1964, you saw the words Rediffusion London on screen, in order to build that kind of association.

EuroNews or EuroSport have a similar kind of association, but this time you know they broadcast right across Europe, because of the Euro in their name. Other station names, such as Thames, Southern, Grampian and Ulster, are geographic names, in order to gain the respect of the local audiences. Names like that have a distinct advantage over names without any such geographic reference, such as Rediffusion, ABC, ATV or Carlton.

Also names that are based on the programming that's on the channel, such as Sky Sports 1, UK Gold, Travel Channel and BBC Knowledge have an advantage over channels where the name of the channel has no immediate reference to the programming, such as Q, Hallmark, Trouble and Bravo.

So, if you want your brand to stand out from the crowd, especially in today's very crowded multi-channel market, you need every advantage you can get. Just having your logo permanently on screen all the time won't cut it any more. Not distinctive enough, everybody's doing it. You need to make your station symbol, ident or logo very distinctive, something that will grab your viewers attention.

You need to have your announcers present it distinctively, you have to promo your station and programmes consistently and judiciously, so that you're viewer doesn't think they've seen everything the programme or channel might have to offer.

But most importantly, the brand has to become familiar in people's minds fairly quickly, and the brand has to be respected, otherwise your potential audience might not turn to your channel and that will prove disastrous.

DigitalTV.com

The biggest revolution in broadcasting history since the birth of commercial television began in the UK in 1997 with the launch of digital television.

More channels and more choice were promised to the viewer. Today, in 2001, we see that digital has brought us more channels to choose from, but they are not all successful.

The Money Channel has had some well-reported financial problems. Simply Money was simply losing money and relaunched itself as a shopping channel.

Some of the Asian-language services have gone from subscription to free to air and back again in order to tempt subscribers to their services.

Add to that the reports that some programmes on the major digital channels such as BBC Choice, E4 and ITV2 have had no viewers at all, and you can see that the digital channel revolution has suffered similar problems to the dot com revolution.

But why? Simply, there are so many channels and services out there fighting for your attention and viewing time but not enough hours in the week, never mind a day, to view them all.

Plus, the services are as diverse as they come with channels all about fashion, computer games, health, dance music and extreme sports, mixed in with the more traditional multi-channel fare of entertainment, news, movies, sports, pop music and classic television programmes.

With so many new channels coming on stream almost on a weekly basis, it is quite easy to forget that before the digital era, several analogue satellite and cable channels also found the going somewhat tough.

Country Music Television, The Weather Channel and The Family Channel, amongst others, all had difficulty getting their services accepted by enough viewers to make running a channel worthwhile. Even Sky with their deep pockets had troubles with The Comedy Channel, Sky 2 and Sky Sports Gold in the pre-digital era.

But these and other quite high profile difficulties haven't put off the television companies who have launched new channel after new channel or brought existing channels to Sky Digital.

Okay, you say, so satellite and digital channels have had some problems, but what's that got to do with dotcoms? Well, the parallels between the dotcom revolution of the late 1990s and the multi-channel revolution that began in 1997 are quite astounding.

The dotcom revolution saw a massive increase in the number of online shopping websites, a rise that was not supported by an equivalent rise in the number of online consumers.

In the same way, the expansion in the number of channels available to the viewing audience has not been reciprocated by a similar increase in the number of households able to view these digital channels.

Therefore, there will be a point when the number of channels will be so large that the viewing audience and the advertising market will be unable to support them all.

To a small extent we have seen that already, but with the continued expansion of channels, it will not be long before this particular bubble does what the dotcom bubble did and bursts, leading to a number of quite high profile channel failures right across the spectrum of digital channels

We all know that 2000 was the year when the dotcoms began meeting with their logical conclusion, leaving a lot of casualties in their wake. 2001 has seen the first few failures of the digital TV revolution.

Could the next year see the bursting of this bubble? The only people who can decide that are the ordinary people in the street.

Will you watch the programmes on these new channels, and buy the products advertised on them or will you just stick with the channels and programmes you know and love?

Now, for the first time since September 1955, the future of television is back in the hands of the viewers and advertisers.

The Avengers

The Avengers was produced from January 1961 to September 1969 and during its run it had two theme tunes, 5 main characters, countless strange villains and some very weird situations. But above everything else, it had some great chemistry. It was that chemistry between the main characters that made it the success it still is today.

The first season started out with two main characters, Patrick MacNee as John Steed and Ian Hendry as Dr David Keel. Johnny Dankworth, who would later write the music for Tomorrow’s World as well as much else, was commissioned to write the theme, and the music he wrote symbolized the more serious nature of the plots of the original few series.

The opening titles were striking - a series of clear black and white cards, sometimes mixed over the stage where the opening scene would take place. Ian Hendry was given top billing in the first season and the series firmly revolved around him ‘avenging’ the murder of his practice nurse girlfriend. Hendry had previously starred in a short series called “Police Surgeon” for ABC in 1959 and was playing a very similar character in the new series. The first two episodes, which served as a pilot, were filmed on videotape, while the next seven were transmitted live. The rest of the season was recorded on videotape.

After 26 episodes had been produced, a strike by British Actors Equity halted production temporarily. Still at the start of his career, Ian Hendry took the opportunity to leave the series to pursue film work. When production restarted, producers hired Honor Blackman to partner Steed in the role of Cathy Gale. This was reflected in the still-serious and stark title sequence.

Cathy Gale didn’t appear in every season 2 episode, with either Venus Smith (Julie Stevens) or Dr. Martin King (Jon Rollason) partnering John Steed to fill the gaps. The opening titles in these circumstances would just credit Macnee. The Dankworth theme music remained in place but the plots slowly started to develop towards the quirkiness that was to set the series apart.

By season three, the bit players had been removed and Cathy was the full-time partner. Importantly for ABC, the show was now being exported worldwide – except to the United States, where 405-line monochrome standard videotape had become unpopular with the networks as they moved to 525-line colour. ABC did export season three, but the US ABC network as buyers demanded in return that the next season was recorded on film, and that the show would become colour. But season four was to see the loss of the second lead actor: Honor Blackman had secured the role of Pussy Galore in the next James Bond film, Goldfinger and departed to begin filming at Pinewood.

ABC began searching for someone to take her place. The character was re-written in anticipation of a new actress, and even Howard Thomas, MD at ABC, was engaged in the casting process. A name was chosen on the basis of what they were looking for in the new character and the new actress: she must have Man Appeal – ‘M’ Appeal – Emma Peel. The ‘M’ appeal was found in actress Diana Rigg, and the show was on its way from being a success to being a classic.

Season four marked a relaunch for the series. The Dankworth theme no longer suited the mood of the stories, which were quirkier than ever before, and Laurie Johnson was commissioned to compose a new theme. The opening titles also changed to a series of still pictures of the two stars, Macnee & Rigg, in typical Avengers-like poses. Whilst season four was in black and white, the next season would see the programme being filmed in colour, despite ABC Weekend and the rest of ITV still being in monochrome themselves.
Season five also saw another change in the opening titles, with a filmed sequence involving the two stars.

During the season, the ABC endcap was significantly different. It would start “ABC Production” minus the famous triangle logo and end showing that ABC stood for Associated British Corporation – a name invented by ABPC to fill the letters and avoid confusion with US ABC.

Diana Rigg decided to leave the show at the end of the penultimate season and producers brought in Linda Thorson to play the role of trainee Tara King, a character she created and named herself. But NBC scheduled the popular ‘Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In’ against the new series on ABC-US and the ratings went into freefall.

The production team was replaced and the character of Tara King was toughened up but that didn’t help ABC-US’s ratings and the show was cancelled in 1969.

ABC Weekend had also moved on to become Thames Television, and the show was no longer networked in the UK, ABC’s parent company having chosen to hold on to the rights rather than deed them to the part-owned Thames.

Since coming to an end, the show has received many plays in syndication worldwide including showings in the UK on Channel 4 and Granada Plus. The show can be found playing in its Blackman, Rigg and Thorson variants in all Francophone countries where it has become a popular cult hit. The series has been released several times on sell-through video and is known for being the height of British style and eccentricity throughout the world and in its home country. The Avengers has become a continuing legacy of ABC and all it stood for.