Media Marketing:This week Channel 6 celebrates its first birthday and the station is making waves, though perhaps not quite in the way that station founders Pat Donnelly and Michael Murphy imagined a year ago.
Agency land has been buzzing recently about an open letter of complaint Donnelly sent to AGB Nielsen Research Ireland - the company that measures television viewer ratings - and to the advertising industry.
Donnelly claims that Channel 6 has spent €2 million promoting the channel in its first year - equal to the combined promotion spend of RTÉ, TV3 and Sky. Despite this, according to Nielsen, the station's ratings have been declining. In Channel 6's target market of 15-34 year olds, its market share has not reached double figures, according to Nielsen.
One exception was Heroes, the US drama that has been rating above programmes like Desperate Housewives and 24 in the US and which made a strong debut on Channel 6 in March, with an audience figure of 28,000 adults.
However, that opening night figure was on the back of a very heavy advertising and PR spend by Channel 6 and viewing figures for subsequent episodes have dropped back.
According to Shane Lynch, director at advertising agency AFA O'Meara: "It is extraordinary that Channel 6 has not got a larger viewing figure because there is good programming on the channel now and they have spent lots of money promoting those programmes. But it does take time to build an audience."
Channel 6 has reached the view that the Nielsen measurement system is, in Donnelly's words, "wholly inappropriate to this market and, as a relevant planning tool for advertisers, is effectively junk". He adds: "There has been an extraordinary conspiracy of silence in the broadcast sector and among agencies and auditors alike with regard to the dependability of the Nielsen research. Has Nielsen, the media agencies or auditors, for example, made their clients aware that the decisions taken on their advice and the advice given to them is based on a piece of research that has a statistical margin of error specifically in relation to channels such as Channel 6 as high as 290 per cent?"
Donnelly's views on Nielsen are echoed elsewhere. Ruth Payne, media director, Javelin/Young & Rubicam, said: "Pat Donnelly is absolutely right. The panel size used by Nielsen needs to be much bigger. Channel 6 is not getting any benefit from the current measurement system."
Nielsen currently compiles its data from a panel of 600 homes. There are plans to expand this base to 1,000 homes. However, Fred O'Connell, general manager of AGB Nielsen Research Ireland, says the firm's measurement system is accurate and is subject to an outside audit.
Nielsen research is funded by television stations and advertising agencies. Each TV broadcaster pays €130,000 per channel, while the agencies' fee is based on their annual television spend. So Channel 6 is paying for a service that it says does not reflect its true viewing figures.
A veteran of the Irish advertising industry before starting Channel 6, Donnelly was the chief executive of Carat, one of Ireland's biggest media buying companies. In that role, he was more used to spending money. Now he's looking for it from his former colleagues and he's no doubt hearing back a lot of the very same phrases he probably doled out to other start-up media outlets asking him for advertising spend over the years.
As it faces into its second year, the problem for Channel 6 is that it has to deliver all the television viewer ratings (TVRs) it promised to advertisers over the last 12 months. If the station hasn't delivered all the TVRs it was supposed to in year one, it may well end up in a situation where it now owes TVRs back to the advertisers - and that's not good for cashflow.
Channel 6 is also unhappy about the rates its rivals are charging for television airtime. Donnelly and his colleagues feel that Sky is selling airtime too cheaply and wants the Competition Authority to investigate. However, it's unlikely the authority would deem Sky to be in a dominant position, or anything near it.
On the upside for Donnelly, Channel 6 recently joined BSkyB's satellite platform. This deal means Channel 6 can now be watched in an additional 465,000 homes - if viewers can ever find the station on Sky's electronic programming guide (EPG).
Fás tenders account
Fás, the State training and employment authority, has put its media planning and buying services account out to tender.
The account, valued at approximately €4 million, is currently held by AFA O'Meara.
The tender is currently advertised on www.etenders.gov.ie and the closing date for submissions is April 20th.
Fás has a staff complement of 2,400 people and a network of offices and training centres throughout the country.
Fás was one of the Top 10 most popular searched words for the month of January in search engine Google's chart listing.
