Media&Marketing: The new television station, Channel 6, hits the screens on March 30th and its promoters this week said its main challenge will be to take viewers from youth-oriented channels TV3, RTÉ 2 and Sky 1.
However, figures released this week by AGB Nielsen suggest Channel 6 should be fixing another channel in its sights.
According to the figures, RTÉ 1 had the highest market share among 15 to 34 year olds in February.
This is the audience that Channel 6 is hoping to build its commercial prospects upon.
RTÉ 1 garnered 20.4 per cent of this advertiser-friendly audience during February, whereas Sky 1 only had 3.6 per cent, TV3 had 14.2 per cent and RTÉ 2 had 13.7 per cent. The other factor the new entrant needs to bear in mind is the strong presence in the Irish television market of BBC 1, which took 5 per cent of the younger audience. Fortunately for Channel 6, BBC 1 does not collect advertising from the Irish market.
The other potential problem is the falling number of younger viewers tuning into television. Despite the oft repeated myth of young couch potatoes, younger people are turning away from television in droves, so the new channel will have to come up with something unique to retain this elusive and easily distracted group.
Oscar figures fall
It may may have glamourous participants, designer gowns and teary speeches, but the Oscars ceremony proved something of a disappointment for television schedulers this year.The US television audience for the 78th Academy Awards was down by 8 per cent compared with last year.
The ceremony, which saw the movie Crash squeezing out Brokeback Mountain for best picture, was watched by 38.8 million Americans, the third lowest audience in 20 years. Last year's ceremony drew 42.1 million viewers.
Observers believe this year's high-brow fare did not appeal to many viewers and several actors who won awards are not household names in the US. In Ireland, the ceremony was aired on RTE 2 on March 6th, and attracted an average of 216,000 adults, which represented a 17 per cent share of viewing at that time, Saor Communications said this week.
'Advertiser'expands
As Metro and Herald AM continue their battle for supremacy in Dublin, another longer established freesheet is moving beyond its traditional bailiwick.
The Galway Advertiser has announced plans to expand into Kilkenny and Athlone with full local editions.
Local editions of the paper will be available from next week in Kilkenny and next month in Athlone. The Kilkenny Advertiser will be printed by The Irish Times printing plant at CityWest in Dublin.
The first edition will be distributed to more than 20,000 homes and businesses around the city and county.
The Galway Advertiser started life as an eight-page freesheet, but now has an average pagination of 140 full-colour pages. It employs 50 people at its headquarters in Eyre Square.
Galway Advertiser editor Declan Varley said he was confident the people of Kilkenny and Athlone would embrace the new papers.
"The Galway Advertiser has thrived in Galway by providing everyone who lives in our catchment area with a decent free read each week while giving businesses a level of penetration that is denied them by the demographics of other publications," he said.
Bad news for IN&M
This week's readership figures were not great for a range of titles owned by Independent News and Media (IN&M) The following titles suffered sharp falls in readership: Irish Independent, Evening Herald, Sunday World and the Irish Daily Star, which is 50 per cent owned by IN&M.
The biggest loser among this group was the Sunday World, dropping 71,000 readers.
In total, papers owned or partly owned by IN&M lost 191,000 readers in 2005. This was described yesterday by Goodbody Stockbrokers as "less than satisfactory".
The Dublin advertising agency Initiative said yesterday that the most alarming part of the latest statistics was the decline in Sunday readership overall. "More worryingly, Sunday titles seem to be haemorrhaging readers for crucial young advertising audiences."
The other notable trend among several papers was the loss of male readers, the agency noted.
While the Irish Daily Mail maintains that female readers are not properly served, the latest figures show several newspapers losing male readers in large numbers, among them IN&M's Irish Independent and the Irish Daily Star.
In terms of middle-class ABC1 readers, the major tabloids lost out, with the Star and Mirror falling back in this area. Ironically the Star on Sunday managed to increase its ABC1 readership by almost 26 per cent.
Considering its mix of stories and features most weeks, it will surprise many to learn that the Sunday Independent has the oldest age profile of any national title.
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