The Festival opens in the Gaiety Theatre with the spellbinding Donka, A letter to Chekhov. Through the vision of Cirque Du Soleil director Daniele Finzi Pasca, the life of the great playwright is interpreted through a dazzling feat of aerial acrobatics, multi-media illusion and circus magic, and arrives in Dublin after captivating audiences around the world with its intoxicating marriage of surrealism and pure escapism. Gaiety Theatre, Sept 29 – Oct 2

To celebrate, as this month’s newsletter prize, we have two tickets to give away for Donka (Saturday, Oct 1st @ 730pm).

Simply let us know …

Who is this year’s lead sponsor of the Dublin Theatre Festival?

Email your answer to carla.madden@vizeum.com before the 22nd of Septemeber for a chance to win. The winner of last month’s prize was Ruth Cosgrove.

Congrats Ruth!!

 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 31^st.  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.

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.”

The campaign runs in a multimedia platform across national and multichannel stations, national and Dublin radio stations, press and digital display.

The campaign idea is that everyone should go to bed happy, so the TV creative has been designed around this, showing a couple in a fun and playful mood in their bedroom before going to bed.

To supplement the idea of how important the bedroom is and to create a sense of inspiration, we are running  a “Happy to Bed” clock (10” TV spot with a clock showing the time and a happy to bed message) on Channel 4 and online sites.

To support the Fringe festival, Absolut have launched a new app, the new Creative Edge app can be downloaded on most smart devices and it allows you to take some photos using the Absolut bottle as the frame.  Photos, new or old, can be used and then entered into a competition to win a trip to the creative home of Absolut in Stockholm.  Log on to  http://www.facebook.com/#!/ABSOLUT.Ireland?sk=app_242570732450193 now to find out more details.  The campaign is also supported by Press and Online.

Currently featured at Supermarket ICA Vanadis in Stockholm, customers are able to individually reduce the price on a selected item by ‘checking in’ at the store on their mobile phones. Real-time status reports with information about the item, its current price, and directions on how to participate are displayed on a monitor as customers enter the store. They can either enter a short url or use the QR tag to ‘check-in’ through Facebook. Each price reduction period runs for a week when all participating customers can help reduce the price and purchase the selected item.

While all the main Irish national newspapers suffered sales declines in the first six months of 2011 – and two are no longer on the shelves – the Mirror group in particular has been growing here, with its daily title up 2.5 per cent and Sunday Mirror up 9.3 per cent.

The figures predate the closure of the News of the World. Meanwhile, the Daily Star and the Sun were both down more than 7 per cent.

The Sunday Business Post fell by 3.6 per cent while the Sunday Independent dropped by the same percentage. Meanwhile, the Sunday World lost 7.6 per cent of its sales.

This has been a difficult six months for the press sector, with both the tabloid Star Sunday title and the Sunday Tribune ceasing to publish. The British version of the Star Sunday has continued to sell here, but has notched up much smaller numbers than the Irish version, averaging 28,458.

Associated Newspapers has been bombarding the market with CD and magazine giveaways this year, particularly on Sunday. Sales of the Irish Mail on Sunday were stable at 113,160.

The Sunday Times was down 0.8 per cent in Ireland, producing a much better result than in Britain, where its overall sales have dropped by 8 per cent.  

The Irish Times had the smallest decline among the daily broadsheets (managing to hold above 100,000 copies after a drop of 4.5 per cent). The Irish Examiner was down by 7.1 per cent and the Irish Independent fell by 7.4 per cent.

However, the two big daily broadsheet papers are relying more on bulk sales to achieve these numbers; the Irish Times’ full price sales were 86,919, 5,000 fewer than in June 2010. The Irish Independent achieved just 108,961 sales at full price, compared with 121,628 in June 2010.

Differing data for web figures Figures from Comscore which indicated that the Irish Independent website was less visited by Irish people than those of British papers were based on mismatching data, it has emerged.

Unpublished figures seen by The Sunday Business Post indicated that 563,000 people visited the Independent.ie site in June on the basis of an updated counting method (compared to 612,000 for the Irish Times and 423,000 for the Daily Mail).

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.

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.