Posts by Damian Christie
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Hard News: The Advocate, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
I would presume that if your ratings continue to get higher, you sell the same amount of advertising for more money, and can either return more money to your parent company or spend more money on improving the quality.
You would presume right. It's great that CL is paying its way, making money by all accounts, but you can always make *more* money, and if the ratings are low enough for long enough, the opportunity cost to make more money by putting on something a) cheaper and b) potentially higher rating must loom large. Well, one would assume so in a normal commercial operating environment, but JC suggests that's not the case at 3, and based on CL surviving all these years one would have to assume he's right.
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Hard News: The Advocate, in reply to Bevan Shortridge,
I was watching X at the time so I’ll watch Y later online?
It gets measured somewhere yeah, but not part of the ratings I'm quoting no. And you'd have to think it would either balance out in the end (person watches X and tapes Y, other person does the opposite) or if anything, it would favour the current affairs shows because of their immediacy? Maybe not, but all in all I don't think it's causing a massive distortion against any particular show.
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Hard News: The Advocate, in reply to Steve Barnes,
That statement deserved some analysis.
It doesn’t, really. I don’t agree with it, or the gist of it, but only put it forward to illustrate that just this week, while RB is applauding the great work of CL, someone else was saying to me exactly the opposite. And the key to [edit: successful, commercial] TV is often pleasing the greatest number of people most of the time – if those who are ‘comfortable’ are made to feel uncomfortable, they can either start to examine why they feel that and make major changes to their worldview, address the inequality etc etc – or they can flick the channel.
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Hard News: The Advocate, in reply to Bart Janssen,
So how many are watching all the other channnels combined? Another 20%?
No, it's not actually anywhere near that much. The drop-off to the other channels is such that (in the example I used), 0.9% watch Prime, 3.8% watch ALL Sky channels combined, and 1.2% watch something else. So it's another 5.9%, not 20%...
200000. Is that actually enough to make the advertising worthwhile?
Well that all depends how much you're paying for the spot, doesn't it, which is the whole point of ratings in the first place.
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Hard News: The Advocate, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
One explanation I heard suggests as we grow older, the less susceptible we are to the blandishments and deceits of advertising
As I've said above, these are two different discussions - not that I'm not fond of a bit of thread derailment :) But I agree entirely. What I've been told is more that ad agencies don't want to market to the 'oldies' because it's not coooooool. They want to be making hip ads for hipsters, not hip replacement ads for, well you know.
I did a story a few years back on Close Up about just this - there is a movement, a few agencies, a few companies, starting to market more than funeral plans and life insurance to the over 50s. Sony did a great ad about an older guy getting a plane then train across Russia, so he could effectively blow his kids inheritence on some space flight thing.
There's a huge amount of disposable income in that market, 1 in 3 big screen TVs is bought by someone over 50 or 60 or something, I forget exactly. But maybe they're not as susceptible to changing brands or what-have-you. Bullshit I say, they just need to make smarter ads.
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Hard News: The Advocate, in reply to Hilary Stace,
but the Shortland Street watchers are somehow more valuable human beings.
I cite the 25-54 numbers because it’s traditional to use the demographic that channel is aimed at – using the 5+ figures almost always favours TV One (apparently due its older audience who don’t switch around as much). Also, as with dismissing the method by which ratings are gathered, dismissing the target demographic denies the reality of the situation – which in this case is the survival of prime time commercial telly.
BUT even at 5+ (the widest rating band, everyone over the age of 5) while Close Up becomes a lot stronger (10.5 Wed night), Campbell comparatively weaker (5.2), Shortland Street is still the juggernaut with 12.9, and a 35 share. So yes, together there are more people watching 1+3, but 2 still beats both on their own.
(Guide to ratings: Rather than Channel Share, I tend to use the Average Audience figure – Share is the % of people who are watching TV, watching your programme, while Average Audience is the % of all people in NZ who are watching your programme, so it’s lower).
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Hard News: The Advocate, in reply to nzlemming,
I've written about ratings and peoplemeters and all that before. It's not great, not universal, not accurate etc, but everyone jumps up and down with glee when the ratings come back huge, and the big decisions as to what stays and goes are made on them, and they're all we've got - so saying "meh, ratings, how accurate are they", is essentially irrelevant in a conversation about commercial television. I've not once heard anyone inside the industry talking about 'fixing' the system.
Personally - I think ratings are useful for bigger picture, longer term trends. Unless they've got the mix of people (i.e. the 600 homes and all who live in them) completely wrong, then it's got to be of SOME use for doing what it's supposed to do (which is of course not the same as what we might like it to do).
But back to what Graeme says, and what I was sort of getting at - it's great to say "hey CLive, good stories", but you can't ignore -especially not with the demise of Close Up - the fact it's a show continuing to underperform - and almost always losing the battle - in its one objectively measurable KPI, the ratings. I'd personally applaud an environment where a show rating 3-something on a regular basis when the show before it is getting a 10-something, isn't being eyed up for the chop. I've made a career out of making 'niche' shows, for me that'd be a fantastic precedent, but it doesn't sit with everything else I know about how the industry works.
All I can say is that I hope a) Campbell's ratings improve b) it continues to do what it thinks is 'good' and 'right' regardless and c) whatever dirt/polaroids Mark Jennings must have on the TV3 board continues to scare them. That's a joke, that last one. But you know what I'm saying.
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I agree Campbell Live has been doing some great stuff lately. Unfortunately, for a primetime current affairs show, that great stuff doesn't seem to be helping the ratings any. I tend to keep a lazy eye across how the various shows do, and there was one day last week CLive got a 3.2 in its demographic (25-54) - that's what you'd hope for with a good breakfast show, not something at 7pm. I've never seen it that low before but I don't check every day. Last night it got a 3.8 (the only blessing is that The Ridges got a 3.7, after a 10.9 in its first week), There might be nicer/better ways to slice the stats, but that's got to be a worry for what is a commercial show. And despite what I've written before about CL, I genuinely want it to survive and keep doing good stuff.
On the other hand, I spoke to someone yesterday who complained about all the stuff Clive had been doing of late, saying it was trying to blame the rest of us for the problems of the poor, and hyping the problems out of proportion - I don't agree, but it's possible that for every one of me who likes the lunchbox stuff, there are a couple of people out there who don't...
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Cracker: Weapons of Mass Production, in reply to Yamis,
Just a little thing for the author, but if you are going to include the 'greater city area' in the population then you need to do that for every other mega city in the world.
Yeah I appreciate that. I spent a bit of time trying to work out accurately how to explain that and it turns out the term "biggest city" has a dozen different measures/meanings. I was referring to it being the second biggest agglomeration, as defined say, here: http://www.citypopulation.de/world/Agglomerations.html
I don't really want to get into a debate about such things, but that's the reasoning I went with - needless to say it was quite a difficult article to write in lots of ways in the sense of getting current, accurate information in English to confirm what people were telling me - you can imagine the headaches I got trying to research labour law legislation pertaining to Guangzhou!
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@Artig - Yes, there was a documentary of sorts, that would be my show 'Hindsight', and an episode around the history of the concept of Buy Kiwi Made:
http://tvnz.co.nz/hindsight/s3-ep13-video-4942885
@Ben - thanks!