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HGTV remodels some more
The Home and Garden Television Network has managed to squeeze two new series into the crowded remodel-a-house genre. Million Pound Property Experiment was a hit for BBC Canada, and now HGTV will add the series to its spring lineup. Million Pound Property Experiment will air Sundays at 7 p.m. and Wednesdays at 10 p.m. beginning Sunday, May 15.
Make Room For Baby, is an HGTV network premiere. The series will be broadcast for five consecutive weeks on Sundays at 12 p.m. beginning June 19. In both series designers must re-model and improve rooms/homes in a short period of time for charity money/surprised family members.
Global airs animation for the nation
Global will premier a new season of Seth MacFarlane’s Family Guy and introduce his new animated show American Dad this May, coinciding with the 350th episode of The Simpsons. Currently The Simpsons is grabbing 1.2 million viewers, with 885,000 in the 18-49 demo. Global aired re-runs of Family Guy in January and February and averaged 608,000 viewers, 457,000 of them in the 18-49 demo. American Dad has a similar vibe as Family Guy and is aiming to hit the same 18-49 demo. Ontario, Quebec and B.C. audiences can watch the animated trio starting Sunday, May 1, at 8 p.m.; Manitoba and Saskatchewan get them Sunday, May 1 at 7 p.m. and the Maritimes and Alberta, Sunday, May 1 at 9 p.m.
KINK comes back
Channel surfers, be prepared for more awkward moments flipping stations with friends or family around as KINK, the Showcase program about sexual exploration, will start its fourth season on Friday, May 6 at 9:30 p.m. Season four moves the provocative series to Manitoba to expose the fetish communities in Winnipeg. The specialty network will run 11 half-hour episodes in its usual spot in its Friday’s Without Borders block.
Showcase targets 18-49s, skewing male for KINK. The audience is strongest in the 35+ age group and about 70% male.
Global alum to Toronto1
Toronto1 announced on Tuesday the appointment of Don Gaudet as its new GM of programming. Gaudet will move to Toronto1 from Global Television where his positions included director of programming for ITV, CICT, RDTV and CISA.
Gaudet will join Toronto1 April 25.
PMB Factoid
18- to 24-year-olds are 37% more likely to shop at a convenience store 6+ times per month.
Media spend being cut despite rising marketing budgets: ICA survey
Budgets for all main categories of marketing spend were revised up in Q1 with the exception of main media ad spend, says the ICA Survey of Marketing Budgets, conducted for the Institute of Communications and Advertising by NTC Research. The study is based on quarterly information provided by a panel of 270 senior marketing executives in Canadian companies in Q1.
Main media ad spend was revised down slightly, having been left unchanged in Q4 and also revised down in Q3. Companies reported that weak profits, linked in turn to poor sales and high oil prices, had encouraged a further shift in the allocation of marketing spend away from main media advertising towards direct marketing and the Internet.
Faith station has new Vision
Visiontv has been taking stock and decided it needs a new outlook. While the Toronto-based faith and spirituality specialty is still not-for-profit, it has switched its focus to becoming a competitive broadcaster in the minds of media planners and buyers.
To that end, the net is putting an aggressive push on sales. It outsources its ad sales to Airtime Sales, of Toronto, but has now hired a consultant to work on sales and has more control over the function.
Sprite checks into the Habbo Hotel
Sprite has checked into the Habbo Hotel (www.habbohotel.ca) and set up its animated spokesdude Mr. Thirst to run the virtual hotel’s nightclub – now dubbed Club Thirst – for 26 weeks. The soft drink brand gets promotional billboard ads on the site’s main pages and within the nightclub as well as listings on the hotel’s navigation pages.
Habbo Hotel, a virtual online chat community, is targeted to 13- to 20-year-olds as a fun place to meet and interact with friends. Registered players choose to be represented in the action with a personalized figure called a Habbo. The hotel was launched last June by MuchMusic and CHUM Television Interactive in partnership with Sulake Canada, a subsidiary of Sulake Labs of Helsinki, Finland. It’s patrolled 24 hours a day by volunteer hotel guides supervised by Sulake Canada employees, and every conversation is filtered before it appears on the screen.
Within the nightclub – consisting of two lounges, the Lemon Lounge and the Lime Lounge – visitors can ask for a drink and they will get a Sprite-related reply such as: ‘May I offer you a Sprite?’ The next element of the sponsorship will have Mr. Thirst opening his virtual penthouse suite to Habbos and giving them a code word that can be redeemed for Habbo points. Habbo points allow players to do things like buy furniture for their personal suite or dive off the diving board at the hotel’s pool.
Many of MuchMusic’s teen-targeted promotions spill over to Habbo Hotel including those for another major presence on the site, Gillette, which is currently doing a promotion across all of the properties for TAG body spray for men.
Radio goes visual
A new form of media grabbed headlines at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas this week. HP and Infinity Broadcasting announced Monday that the two companies will work together to release Visual Radio, a service adding interactive content to radio via cellphones.
Montreal mag gets revamp
Just – Montreal’s City Magazine has launched its sixth issue with a multi-faceted revamp. Its readership used to be 18-35 with the book distributed free to over 600 points across the city, such as cafés and clothing stores targeting young professionals and trendsetters. The new reader profile is 25-49, even male and female skew, with average household income of over $150,000 and home value of $300,000 and higher.
Just is also launching its invitation-only Just1 program offering advertisers the possibility of sector exclusivity, based on 130 consumer products and services categories within the magazine.
The six-times-yearly pub has a control distrib of 25,000 with 5,000 to newsstand and the rest to affluent Montreal dwellings based on Transcontinental Group geo-demographic data in areas such as Outremont and Westmount. And the format has changed from 8.25′ x 8.25′ to 8 1/4′ x10 1/2′ to better accommodate advertisers.
Mobile Ad Council skeds first AGM & expands board
The Mobile Advertising Council of Canada (MACC) holds its first annual general meeting on May 12. It includes a panel entitled ‘Going Mobile: The View from All Sides.’ MACC has also added two members to its advisory board, Laura Gaggi, president of media shop Gaggi Media Communications, and Shelagh Morrison of 3M Canada. Gaggi’s client roster includes the Globe and Mail and The Discovery Channel, while Morrison is the marketing operations manager for the commercial graphics division of 3M Canada.
MACC is a non-profit organization formed to support and promote mobile advertising as a mainstream media choice in the out-of-home sector, and to develop methodology for audience measurement.
Advertisers look to get into the game
An audience of 250 executives, mostly from advertising agencies, attended the first annual Advertising in Games Forum on April 14, 2005 in New York City. Some of the data provided to attendees by such speakers as Mitch Davis, chief executive of video game ad network Massive and Yankee Group senior analyst Mike Goodman include:
* advertising in games is expected to rise to US$800 million in 2009 from nearly $120 million in 2004.
* US$266 million, or more than one-third of advertising in games in 2009, will come from ‘advergaming.’
* There are currently 100 million game-capable cellphones in the U.S. All mobiles being sold now are game-capable and the replacement rate of cellphones is every 16 months.
* 65% of the U.S. population owns a cellphone.
Goodman says while he has no specific figures on the Canadian market, percentage-wise the numbers should be similar for this country.
Spy Academy offers multiple ad opps
Chalk Media and YTV are preparing for season two of Spy Academy. The 13-part reality game show for tweens finished in the top 10 for Canadian programs on YTV last season. In one month, over 100,000 viewers tuned in, and became interested in the new concept. The targeted demographic is boys and girls aged 6-14. Producers noticed co-viewing of their series when families began watching on a weekly basis.
During the program, the Spy Academy Web site features live interactive games and contests. Advertisers can promote products on the show as prizes. Advertising costs range from $20, 000 up to $200,000 for exclusive video interactive components on TV and the Web site www.spyacademy.ca. (See MIC Aug. 24, 2004)
BBM Media Snapshot: Canadians and mortgage insurance
* 6 million Canadians (23%) have mortgage insurance.
* Of Canadians with mortgage insurance there is an equal split between women (51%) and men (49%).
* The top three age groups of people with mortgage insurance are 35 to 44 (33%), 25 to 34 (25%) and 45 to 54 at (24%).
* 26% of Quebecois have mortgage insurance. This is the highest compared to the national average of 23%. B.C. is the province with the lowest incidence of mortgage insurance with only 18%. All other regions are close to the national average.
* Mortgage insurance holders have an average household income of $60,000 compared to the national average of $53,000.
* People who have mortgage insurance are over twice as likely to have loss of employment insurance.
* 46% of people who have mortgage insurance watch home improvement shows on TV and 52% read home and gardening magazines.
* 72% of people who have mortgage insurance spent $1000 or more on home improvements in the past two years.
* The top three media for yesterday’s exposure for people who have mortgage insurance are television (90%), radio (89%) and the Internet (57%).
Source: BBM RTS Canada Fall ’03 / Spring ’04
The preceding information is from BBM RTS, a syndicated consumer-media survey of over 55,000 Canadians, conducted twice a year by BBM Canada. For more information contact Craig Dorning of BBM Canada: cdorning@bbm.ca.
