What TV3 need to do

Hereis a recent article from the Sunday Business post dteailing how much trouble TV3 facing at the moment.

New TV3 boss faces RTE2 battle
Sunday, October 29, 2006 - By Catherine O’Mahony
David McRedmond, the former eircom executive who is the incoming managing director of TV3, is taking over at a delicate time for the commercial television station.

A ratings battle is underway between TV3 and RTE2 as the channels vie to be Ireland’s second-most-watched TV station, against a backdrop of the potential loss of TV3’s crucial ITV programming.

Recent figures showed that RTE2 - the ratings of which were boosted this summer by a better-than-expected World Cup - has increased its national viewing share to 13.5 per cent in the year to September 2006, compared with 12.3 per cent last year. TV3’s share dropped to 12.1 per cent from 12.7 per cent. The position has, however, already changed. Nielsen ratings through to October 22 show TV3 at 12.7 per cent (for adults) with RTE2 close behind at 12.5 per cent.

Looking only at September and October adult viewing, TV3 is well ahead at 13.6 per cent, while RTE2 is back at 9.7 per cent.

TV3 points also to Nielsen statistics that strip out the impact of the World Cup audiences, which swelled RTE2’s share during the summer.

Using that measure, the commercial station posted a 12.9 per cent adult share in the entire January to September period, against 11.7 per cent for RTE2.

In the category of women aged 15 to 34, TV3 points out it had a large lead with 16.3 per cent against 12.8 per cent for RTE.

Still, with a strong autumn schedule, plenty of home-produced shows, and the prospect of big audience draws such as the US desert island series Lost, RTE2 also has grounds for optimism.

On the basis of all individuals watching television, rather than just adults, RTE2 has gained 1.5 percentage points in share to reach a 13.1 per cent share in the year to date, with imports such as Desperate Housewives, sports coverage and homegrown shows such as Podge and Rodge and Legend all pulling in extra audiences.

And there is more to come. RTE had, for instance, originally planned to show Lost in early 2007, but is now starting this week, after Sky acquired the rights to the show in Britain.

The US show’s audience rose to an average of 350,000 viewers per episode for RTE2 in the second series.

Noel Curran, RTE’s managing director of television, downplayed the importance of the latest ratings changes. ‘‘These things will fluctuate.

“What’s really satisfying for us is more to see that RTE2 is working really well with RTE1, how it’s fitting in with the overall offering.

“That’s what we’ve been working on.”

Curran said he believed mistakes were made when RTE first rebranded Network 2 as RTE2 in 2004. The Dinner Party, for instance, a home produced show on RTE2, did not work, he said.

‘‘I think the mix of things we’re doing now works well for audiences.

“For example, last Monday night, we had a 50 per cent audience share between RTE1 and RTE2. It’s a complementary thing.”

Matthew Salway, TV3’s director of programming, said he wasn’t worried about ratings trends. ‘‘The usual pattern is that we pick up share against RTE2 at the end of the year and we’ve had an excellent October,” he said.

‘‘Movies are doing well for us, we had a great international game and The Box is not doing us any harm.”

TV3’s future audience prospects are less secure.TV3’s recent sale to private-equity firm Doughty Hanson means that it is only guaranteed access to top-rated ITV programming such as Coronation Street, X Factor and Emmerdale until January 2008.

Should those shows end up on the open market, and be picked up by RTE, the impact would be considerable for TV3.

Noel Curran said RTE ‘‘would be crazy’’ not to look at acquiring shows like Coronation Street and Emmerdale if they were offered for sale.

‘‘There are shows that certainly would not fit in with RTE, things like Ant and Dec or Celebrity Love Island that are very much British and have a very ITV identity. But Coronation Street and Emmerdale aren’t in that category.”

Salways aid talks were ongoing with ITV about retaining key programming and that he remained confident that most of it would continue to appear on TV3.

But advertisers may be sceptical.

Martina Stenson, managing director of media buying agency Universal McCann predicted that advertisers would start to become progressively wary of TV3 during 2007.

‘‘What we’re seeing is a concerted effort now to boost RTE2,” she said.

‘‘I think RTE will continue to consolidate its position. It will be all to play for at the end of 2007.

“RTE has a really excellent quality of programming at the moment, with really strong imports and home-produced material, and it’s going to be the backbone of our TV schedules.”

TV3’s failure to come up with quality home-produced programmes is a constant source of criticism and the channel has not managed to help matters significantly with The Box, its reality TV offering fronted by Keith Duffy and filmed in Dublin’s city centre.

Forecast to attract an average audience of 150,000 to 250,000, it averaged 134,000 viewers a night across the first 14 episodes, although it did achieve a peak of 214,000. The show ends this weekend.

‘‘Duffy is very good but I don’t think this show has been ticking many boxes with viewers,” said Stenson. Steve Baker, broadcast director of Initiative Media agreed.

‘‘Personally I definitely don’t think it’s the best thing they’ve ever done,” he said. ‘‘It’s a glorified quiz show.”

But Salway defended the show.

‘‘I’m happy with it,” he said. ‘‘It was never meant to be rocket science.”

Baker defended TV3’s point about the need to strip out the World Cup effect from its ratings calculations for 2006. ‘‘World Cup did far better than anyone expected for RTE and everyone else suffered but it is only once every four years,” he said.

RTE, meanwhile, points out that the World Cup was not the only sports programming to do well for it this year. In fact GAA finals and Six Nations Rugby events both ranked ahead of any of the individual World Cup matches.

Noel Curran conceded that ‘‘it would be satisfying to see RTE2 as the second biggest channel, as it would show how people are responding to what we do. But if RTE2 was way ahead of TV3 on audiences, and we felt it wasn’t working well with RTE1, we’d still change it.”

i still believe the lack of live sport is hurting tv3 they lost champions league and there only sport seems to be is the Sports Tonight program(which doesn't exactly show much sports), you need decent live sport to get us blokes watching, not half hearted attempts to cover the CL.

loyatemu wrote:

I can't believe that there is 12% of the population that watches TV3

It doesn't suprise me at least 10% of the country are idiots and soap heads. The other 2% are probably just flicking through the channels

I mean, a quizshow. The cheapest easist format there is. How hard coud that be?

They already tried with The Weakest Link, and got rid of it again.

A proper chatshow, on Friday nights, easy.

Dunphy. Courtney. *shudder*

I see they have what looks like some semi-"My Sweet Sixteenth" thing about Debs girls on sometime this week. First homegrown show I have seen by them outside of the news in a while.

I think what they really need before ITV sod off is someone from there to sit down and show them how to put a show together. Yes, many of ITVs own efforts are bunk IMO, but they do seem to be able to hold an audience, something TV3 haven't quite mastered. Of course, TV3 could also do with people that they can put in front of the cameras without annoying half the viewing public as well.

I still maintain that the best thing TV3 ever had was The Offside Show, which improved week on week, and ended up with a better audience share at a quarter of the price.... bet they regret that move... Popcorn is also a good show, done well and cheap!

The Box really didnt need a qurater of the cost, seeing as we didnt actually get to see any reality of the show... could just have been a regular quiz set up... them being in a box added nothing but expense...

sioda wrote:

We need TV3 for two reasons The Shield which RTE i dont think would show although never know about TG4 and Law and order SVU.

true and they show them at a set time every week. but its only 2 shows though out of a load of crap