Multichannel destroys TV?

watty

http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0121/ulstertelevision.html

Hundreds of channels and dozens of Operators means many more people each getting a smaller slice of the relatively fixed advertising pie. A recession makes that smaller still.

Multichannel may not really mean choice but destruction of decent content?

Sparky2201

watty wrote: »

http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/0121/ulstertelevision.html

Hundreds of channels and dozens of Operators means many more people each getting a smaller slice of the relatively fixed advertising pie. A recession makes that smaller still.

Multichannel may not really mean choice but destruction of decent content?

Specifically talking about TV as opposed to radio - the relationship between advertising and TV is changing. I'm not sure about the argument that hundreds of channels and dozens of operators mean more people getting a smaller slice of the pie and that this may impact on content prodction. The "big" channels still draw the highest number of viewers and a large portion of the pie is consumed by them ("the long tail" etc.). Your argument holds true for the more niche channels. So, it depends on whether you believe that the "big" channels do provide decent content or not.

Technology, which we love, is having an interesting impact - how will the PVR influence the content that is produced? Will the networks buy the likes of "24" if they can't sell the ad space as more people move to PVRs with ad skipping/ ad fast forwarding features? I think this has the potential to have a bigger impact on content production than mulitiple channels/operators.

Elmo

UTV have suffered in the south more then in the North. It was earning a lot of money in the 1990s from ROI viewers (Thanks in part to Ray Burke). The other non ROI stations have suffered as most people seem to take them as extra now rather then standard channels.

TV3 is has also caused this problem for UTV. UTV was at one stage the second most watch channel in ROI. now it getting closer and closer to number 8 as the number of extra channels increase. UTV is now below BBC 1 in terms of ROI viewers bring it into 5th position with about 6% of the audience.

Of course it is their own fault for not going with TV3 in the early 1990s as they felt it would compeat with heavily with their ROI viewers.

Also UTV needs a shake up, the production values have remained in the 1980s UTV Live has gone to the dogs. The quality of BBC NI v UTV for ROI viewers and even TV3 reaches above the quality of UTV.

UTV have only themselves to blame and the fact that they are tided to ITV doesn't help. Surely UTV should combine their news output with the ROI radio stations it owns, I think they still used INN for their news output.

Elmo

TV Audiences 2000 - 2008

watty

Well for whatever reason TV is less compelling now than years ago when I only had 4 UK channels to watch.

Too much Lowest Common Denominator reality rubbish, not enough quality production. It's true that about 14 channels do have over 90% of viewing. But it used to be in N.I. that 4 channels had 100% of viewing.

TV needs better quality content. More locally relevent content too for channels such as UTV, RTE1, BBC1NI, TV3 or we might as well have 8 generic Anglo-Irish channels.

IMO CBeebies, CBBC, BBC3 & BBC4 has not improved BBC content from the days of only BBC1, BBC2, UTV and C4 in N.I.

UTV production values are way below the 1980s and 1970s. As are ITV generally.

Once we have bought all the good DVD box sets and recorded all the Decent programs on out 4teraByte PVRs they better forget about doing repeats and concentrate on decent Drama, Documentary, Comedy, Journalism, Real Sport* and Live TV. Rather than "Edgey stuff", "reality", badly written soaps and so called Comics that are just rude guys.

*Premiership IMO has been destroyed by big money and has much relationship to Real Sport as A Cheap 50's Hollywood B movie has to a Shakespearian play