Delighted to announce that Vizeum picked up a Gold at the Kinsale Shark Awards. This was the first year the awards had a media excellence category. We won for Powers Whiskey, Pernod Ricard in the category “Best use of a single medium”. The initiative was a short stories competition which we undertook with the Irish Times. We asked readers to write a piece on “celebrating what truly matters”. This was very relevant considering the current Irish economy and consumers re-evaluation of their lives. It got a huge amount of traction and we were inundated with entries. What made the activity special was the partnership we formed with the Irish Times. They understood the virtue of the piece for their readers and supported it appropriately with both editorial and short story contributions from their journalists. I think it shows that we can achieve great things with nice simple relevant ideas and by leveraging those ideas appropriately.
Archive for the 'TV News' Category
Autumn has officially arrived, and with it, the rain and cold air. Some consolation for the viewer however are the strong autumn/winter schedules announced by each of the three indigenous station groups, RTÉ, TV3e & TG4. Some key highlights are outlined below.
RTÉ promises to deliver great entertainment across a wide range of genres including factual, drama, lifestyle, news & current affairs and live sport. Geraldine O’Leary, Commercial Director of RTÉ Television, believes that such diversity is “good news for the advertiser as we can continue to provide a quality trusted environment to big audiences. This season, we have a variety of new programmes and returning favourites.”
Indigenous high quality drama is core to the schedule and the acclaimed Love/Hate, Raw and Hardy Bucks will be making a return. Also returning is BAFTA-nominated Mrs. Brown’s Boys. New programmes will include the factual documentary Behind the Walls. The lifestyle segment will be boosted by the highly anticipated arrival of Masterchef Ireland and Craig Doyle’s new midweek show which will be concentrating on current affairs and gossip. RTÉ sport will be covering the Rugby World Cup. Officially launched in May of this year, Saorview’s digital channel RTÉ jr will be a source of Young Peoples programmes.
TV3 announced its Autumn Line-up last month in the Royal College of Physicians on Kildare Street. Dominated by entertainment, the schedule is due to bring back many favourites including Take Me Out, Come Dine with Me Ireland and The Apprentice. The X Factor UK has already begun, and is soon to be joined by the X Factor US which will feature Simon Cowell.
New programmes include Red or Black, a four-part series Titanic, documentaries such as The Irish of 9/11 and the much anticipated home production Tallafornia, a Dublin version of Jersey Shore. TV3 is the only channel in Ireland to experience audience share growth for the past 3 years in a row and advertisers realise that it is no longer such an underdog.
TG4 were proud to present their TV Autumn Schedule to a gathering of media and advertising professionals in the Convention Centre on August 31st. Brendan Gleeson, well known for his pride in the Irish language and culture, spoke at the launch and highlighted the integrity of TG4’s programming. The two stand out genres that will air on the station over the next few months are an original Irish documentary series and sports coverage. Upcoming sports events on the station are the Rugby World Cup highlights, RaboDirect PRO12, Heineken Cup and GAA coverage. TG4 also import popular English speaking shows such as Gossip Girl and Curb Your Enthusiasm. From an advertising point of view TG4 attracts unique and light viewers due to the diversity and range of its offering.
All of the indigenous Irish stations are trying to make programming budgets stretch at a time of declining yield from advertising revenue. Home produced content is key to RTÉ and TV3 in 2011 whilst sporting acquisitions have become the centre piece for TG4.
Broadcaster UTV has reported a pre-tax profit of £10.9m for the first six months of the year, a 15% increase on the profit achieved during the first half of 2010. Revenues for the period amounted to £59.1m.
While the operating profits of its British and Irish radio stations lowered slightly, the group’s TV division performed better than expected with operating profits more than doubling to £3.1m during the period.
The company, which is understood to be considering a proposal to buy Absolute Radio in the UK, said that it had also managed to reduce net debt by £14.2m to just £63.1m.”
While people globally are spending an increasing amount of time watching streamed on-demand TV, broadcast viewing is still the most common way for people to watch television programmes, according to a new study from Ericsson ConsumerLab.
The annual TV & Video Consumer Trend Report 2011 reveals that 44pc of respondents reported watching internet-based on-demand TV more than once per week, while about 80pc watch broadcast TV more than once per week.
Data was collected in Australia, Austria, Brazil, China, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, the UK, the US and South Korea. In all, 22 qualitative and 13,000 quantitative interviews were conducted representing almost 400 million consumers.
“People want both broadcast and on-demand viewing to be available,” said Anders Erlandsson, senior advisor at Ericsson ConsumerLab. “TV and video have not been negatively affected by the internet in the same way that print has; we just watch TV in many more ways than we did before.”
The study also shows that social media usage has impacted the way people watch TV. More than 40pc of respondents reported using social media on various devices such as smartphones and tablets while watching TV.
“The majority of families combined TV viewing with the use of Twitter, Facebook, texting, voice calls and forum discussions about what they watched. This is particularly the case when watching reality shows and sports. This communication adds another dimension to the TV experience, as consumers found an annoying reality show funnier when they were able to comment on social media about ‘terrible’ singers, ‘ugly’ clothing or when your favourite team scores a goal.”
The study finds that quality remains the top factor in terms of what consumers want from TV, ahead of, for example, availability of 3D TV and access to applications. Consumers would be most willing to pay for access to fresh box office movies that are still running in cinemas, directly to the TV.
The survey also shows how many hours per week on average people are spending watching TV and the total viewing that is on demand content. People in Germany spend 25 hours a week watching TV and video, but only 28pc of this content is on-demand. In Spain, as much as 44pc of all TV viewing is on-demand.
Miriam O’Callaghan and Ryan Tubridy have tied for first place in a new list of Ireland’s most admired TV celebrities.
Onside Sponsorship noted that RTÉ’s flagship Late Late Show, whose 50th season starts this Friday, remains a powerful tool for creating personal brands. Three of Ireland’s five most admired TV personalities were, or had been, Late Late Show hosts.
Today FM’s Ray D’Arcy was named the most admired personality on radio. It’s the first time Onside has produced research into media celebrities. It contacted 1,000 adults across Ireland by phone for the survey.
John Trainor, the founder and managing director of the firm, said the insights should be valuable for marketing executives. ‘‘As the celebrity endorsement aspect of the wider sponsor ship and marketing industry comes under continued review, it is key to continue to build such fresh insights into who is resonating best with consumers.”
Current affairs presenter Miriam O’Callaghan tied with Ryan Tubridy as Ireland’s most admired TV personality, with each receiving 18 per cent of the vote. Next came Gay Byrne, and then Pat Kenny, while Vincent Browne – who has a late night current affairs show on TV3 – completed the Top 5.
Women most frequently singled out Miriam O’Callaghan (23 per cent) as their most admired TV broadcast personality followed by Ryan Tubridy (19 per cent), while males ranked Tubridy (17 per cent) top of the list, with O’Callaghan in a tie for second place with Pat Kenny and Gay Byrne.
Demographics affected the voting pattern. Younger voters – aged 18-24 year-olds – ranked Tubridy as their Number One (20 per cent), with Miriam O’Callaghan receiving just 3 per cent of the vote among this age group.
Glenda Gilson and Brian Dowling also per formed strongly among younger adults, while Gay Byrne proved to be Tubridy’s nearest challenger for the top among this age group.
In radio, Ray D’Arcy topped the rankings, followed by Pat Kenny, Ryan Tubridy, Joe Duffy and the late Gerry Ryan.
A new campaign for the RTÉ Guide, which aims to build brand affinity among current occasional readers, launches this evening with a 30-second television ad. The ad will be broadcast on RTÉ One, RTÉ Two, TV3, 3e and Sky Group between now and 4 September and there will be a second burst of TV activity is planned for October.
In addition, the ‘Grab Life by the Pages’ campaign will include a 30-second radio campaign to run during Q4, online ads on RTÉ.ie, print ads in the title itself, and trade and consumer PR. There will also be competitions on the RTÉ Guide Facebook page, which has 17,000 fans.
Point-of-sale stands in Dunnes Stores, Supervalu and large independents will be refreshed with ‘Grab Life by the Pages’ creative. The campaign was developed by Leo Burnett Ireland. “The RTÉ Guide had done some great research and really understood the issues, so it made Leo Burnett’s task much more defined,” said the firm’s managing director, Shane McGonigle. “We knew that if a person was familiar with the magazine for all of its content then they would consider buying it. “Therefore it was Leo Burnett’s mission to dramatise the editorial reality of the magazine and the wide range of interesting topics it covered, from fashion to food, entertainment, programming and lifestyle. The creative concept is wrapped up in the expression ‘The RTÉ Guide. Grab life by the pages’. It is an immediate call to action to buy the magazine, get involved and up-to-speed with life in Ireland today
TV3 is to build a new 500 square metre studio for live shows with high definition capabilities. The initiative will see the station double the size of its facility in Ballymount and allow TV3 reach its goal of producing half of its own content, which is currently at 40 per cent. The €4.5m studio is due to open by the middle of next year.
TV3 has also recently agreed Ireland’s first official product placement deal. The station has pioneered product placement and hosted a major seminar in the Aviva Stadium with Marketing.ie.
TV3 chief executive David McRedmond has denied reports that more job cuts were planned at the station. He said that following a €14m refinancing package by owner Doughty Hanson last year, there were no plans for compulsory lay-offs. Staff had been offered a choice of year-long breaks or redundancy packages. TV3 will launch its autumn schedule in Dublin’s Royal College of Physicians at lunchtime today.
Consumer Affairs Correspondent Irish Television will officially enter the world of paid-for product placement next month when TV3’s morning chat show presenters start drinking a particular brand of coffee on air as part of a “six-figure” deal. From next month the coffee brand will feature prominently on the Morning Show and Midday and will become the first paid-for product placement on Irish television since the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland revised its advertising code of practice earlier this summer. Under the 12-month deal, worth in excess of €250,000, the brand will sponsor the two programmes and presenters Sybil Mulcahy, Martin King, Colette Fitzpatrick and Elaine Crowley, as well as their panel of guests, will be expected to drink the coffee – or at least pretend to – from heavily branded mugs.
To date all the examples of produce placement which have appeared on Irish television have been imported, mostly from the US, where particular brands of computers, phones, drinks, clothes and footwear are frequently shoe-horned into programmes such as Sex and the City and Glee. Until very recently it was prohibited in domestically produced programming, but the authority was forced to change the rules governing product placement after recognition at European Union level in 2007 that the television advertising goalposts had shifted dramatically.
One of the biggest changes has been the proliferation of digital video recorders which allow viewers to record programmes and then fast-forward through the ads, a technological advance which had significantly threatened many broadcasters’ income from advertising revenue.
Product placement on Irish screens will not be a free-for-all, however. Such placement remains prohibited in children’s programmes and talk and chat shows with more than 20 per cent of news and current affairs content. Broadcasters must include a written announcement before programmes containing product placements and display a logo containing the letters PP before and during programmes. They must also list in the end credits the names of companies that have provided products and services included in a programme.
Discovery Channel is planning to screen its first 3D content in the UK after signing deals with BSkyB and Virgin Media.
The two platforms have agreed to run commissions including 3D Safari, a ten-part series produced by Renegade Pictures, and filmed at Woburn Safari Park. A second series, Beautiful Freaks, will be filmed in Namibia by Tigress Productions.
Susanna Dinnage, general manager of Discovery UK and Ireland, said: “These are substantial and ambitious deals that will enrich the 3D experience of anyone who has Sky and Virgin Media’s 3D services.”
Discovery programmes from 3NET, its US joint venture with Sony and IMAX, will also be shown on the channel.
Last August Discovery Channel received a Digital Television Programme Service (DTPS) from Ofcom to run a dedicated 3D channel in the UK, but no subsequent announcements have been made.
Earlier this month a 3D preview channel was launched by Discovery on UPC in the Netherlands.
SAORVIEW is now available to 97% of Irish households and carries, amongst others, RTÉ One, RTÉ Two HD, RTÉNews Now, RTÉjr and RTÉ One + 1. SAORVIEW will also carry a new enhanced digital RTÉ Aertel information service and all of RTÉ’s radio services.
The new service will replace the old analogue television service – the signal received through an aerial – which will be switched off throughout Europe by the end of 2012. Of the 1.6 million TV households in Ireland almost 600,000 (37%) receive some television services through an aerial (either for their primary television or other televisions). Just over 335,000 (21%) Irish TV households currently depend entirely on the analogue service. These homes will lose their Irish television services at the end of 2012 unless they switch to another form of TV reception.
SAORVIEW offers a number of new enhanced services. It introduces free High Definition (HD) television broadcasting to Irish television for the first time. RTÉ Two HD have already broadcast the Magners League Final between Munster and Leinster and the Munster Hurling Championship quarter final between Cork and Tipperary in HD.
At the recent launch of Saorview in RTÉ, Commercial Director of Television; Geraldine O’Leary said, speaking on the impact of Saorview,
‘Saorview offers the viewer and the advertiser quantity and quality. RTÉ are now offering more channels (RTÉ One, RTÉ Two HD, RTÉ Jr, RTÉ One +1, and RTÉ News Now) and in better quality as illustrated by RTÉ Two HD. We in RTÉ have sought to be the leaders in innovation in Ireland. Being first with HD broadcasts demonstrates our commitment to this. Watch this space for many more HD programming from RTÉ’
