LONDON – The advertising community has come out strongly in favour of the Channel 6 LondonTV bid to win the licence to run the new London television franchise when the result of the bidding process is announced in November. Because of London’s size – bigger than most countries – this will be the biggest and most important publicly-awarded media franchise since Channel 5 in the 90s.
Fraser Neilson, Director at All Response Media commented:
“For a London TV station to be of interest to advertisers, it has to be realistic about balancing quality local programming with commercially orientated entertainment programming that will bring the audience volumes and associated advertising revenues. We believe that the Channel 6 Consortium bid appears to be the only bid that clearly delivers on these criteria potentially allowing us another way to access the expensive London audience and hopefully giving better advertiser value.”
The licence is part of the UK Government’s drive to promote a new breed of broadcast local TV channels across the country. The Channel 6 Consortium is one of five bidders, and is a joint venture of London’s local newspaper groups: Archant, Tindle, and Trinity Mirror, in partnership with a major supplier of top quality entertainment programming.
Advertisers say that only the Channel 6 LondonTV bid has the right commercial model to attract audiences and advertising revenue as a free-to-air public service broadcaster, as only LondonTV promises to surround its local programming with the world class quality entertainment programmes preferred by viewers and advertisers alike. Viewers value news and current affairs highly: but it’s entertainment that they watch in large enough numbers to entice TV-scale advertisers. Moreover, TV’s continuing success as an advertising medium is as much about the emotional engagement of viewers as it is about mass impacts, and so entertainment programming provides a much more attractive context for advertisers than news, the monetisation of which is in any event restricted by regulations.
David Jowett, Client President at the media agency Aegis agreed:
“Any credible model for a London TV station has to stand on its own two feet commercially. To do that, in addition to delivering compelling news and current affairs programming for London, it’s also going to have to carry high quality commercial entertainment programming to attract and retain the right sort of numbers and get the attention of media buyers. In our opinion, the Channel 6 LondonTV model does that.
As PSBs, the local TV franchises are guaranteed prominent slots on the electronic programme guides, such as front page on Freeview. This is a double-edged sword, as being right next to the most popular entertainment channels will cast an unforgiving spotlight on the local TV channel. So the new channel needs to be of comparable quality to the other channels around it not to pale by comparison, and look like it belongs in its prominent listing from day one.
Under the LondonTV plan, a strong backbone of high quality entertainment will not only generate greater advertising revenues to pay for high quality local programmes than wall-to-wall local programming could, but will also attract viewers to its ambitious 2,000 hours a year of local programming, including one of the biggest commitments to news and current affairs of any of the bidders. (To put this in context, BBC London only delivers about 400 hours of local programmes a year.) This model is the one used in other parts of the world where local TV has been successful. In fact this tried and tested model is the only one that has ever worked commercially anywhere.
Channel 6’s commercial programming strategy will also create unique opportunities for brands to talk to the London market in an innovative way that is not currently available.
Matt Cowley, CEO of The Bank, said:
“I think the Channel 6 Commercial Programming model will inevitably create a new way of talking to Londoners, fresh and compelling! The potential for brands to naturally interact with those consumers really for the first time is definitely something clients would be interested in.”
Rabin Mukerjea, Partner at Grand Central Entertainment said:
“Channel 6’s LondonTV proposition represents a unique opportunity for brands looking to engage with the world’s greatest (and most media savvy) city. We would certainly be keen to explore these exciting branded content possibilities with our clients.”
Simon Wells, Executive Producer at Drum PHD added:
“We look forward to the opportunity of working with Channel 6’s LondonTV Commercial Programming team in developing new London-centric content projects for our range of high profile clients.”
The Chief Executive of the Channel 6 Consortium, Richard Horwood, has welcomed the backing of the advertising community. He said:
“Our model is fundamentally different to all the other bidders. It’s the only one that includes a lot of high quality entertainment to generate serious advertising revenues, and that’s what enables us to afford a lot of high quality local news and current affairs. The alternative is the wall-to-wall low budget, endlessly repeated and unwatchable programmes that have characterised British local TV in the past and condemned it to commercial oblivion. London’s TV station deserves better, and so I’m delighted that advertisers and media buyers have so strongly endorsed our judgement.”
