Astral hires new VP
Val Meyer has joined Montreal-based Astral Media Outdoor and Radio as VP of Astral Media Outdoor in Toronto. Her new assignment begins Feb. 14. Meyer was formerly VP sales at Craig Media.
PMB Factoid
Percent of regular tennis players with personal income over $50,000: 18
IPod presents new ad opp
U2 iPod. Playboy iBod. Heineken Podcast. Once upon a time, the iPod nation was just a bunch of people connected by white earphones. Now, thanks to the huge sales numbers from the 2004 holiday season, iPod owners are in excess of 10 million, and that has advertisers salivating over the marketing potential of Apple’s little music box.
McDonald’s, Gillette, Epson, Schneiders, Fuji, Microsoft and Best Buy have been some of the first companies to get involved in promotions and joint partnerships with the industry’s leading online music vendors, setting the table for what appears to be the next big trend in non-traditional advertising.
Since podvertising is a new and relatively unproven medium, some advertisers are wondering not only about how to effectively reach a traditionally advertiser-weary audience, but whether it is even worth trying to reach them in the first place.
Xclamation thinks health
Montreal agency Xclamation has been chosen to edit and publish the custom mag Pensez santé. The magazine is a product of Le Comptoir Wal-Mart, the pharmacy division of Wal-Mart in Quebec. The free quarterly is distributed in Le Comptoir’s 43 branches.
Le Comptoir Wal-Mart is an existing client of Xclamation and the agency has put its in-depth knowledge of the pharmacy and its customers to work in coming up with a new look for Pensez santé for 2005-06.
M2 wins Yorkdale account
Yorkdale Shopping Centre in Toronto has appointed Toronto-based M2 Universal its agency of record. The media division of MacLaren McCann, M2 will be responsible for all media planning and buying on behalf of the Centre. Yorkdale has over 200 stores and services and plans significant growth in this spring with the addition of 40 high-profile retailers.
Nancy Surphlis, VP group account director, is leading the team, which is already planning what’s up next for Yorkdale.
Media Calgary acquired by Rare Method
RareMethod Capital finalized its acquisition of media planning firm Media Calgary yesterday. RareMethod which, among its many services, provides interactive marketing consultancy, search engine and e-mail marketing, and online application development, will employ Media Calgary principal Nigel McEathron and his two employees. Media Calgary’s clients include Capital Alternatives, Canadian Pharmacies Direct, Green Garden Centre and Liquidation World.
BBM Top 20
For a list of the top 20 TV shows for the week of Jan. 10 to Jan. 16, according to BBM, click the links below:
http://www.mediaincanada.com/articles/mic/20050120/nat01102005.pdf
http://www.mediaincanada.com/articles/mic/20050120/ont01102005.pdf
http://www.mediaincanada.com/articles/mic/20050120/que01102005.pdf
http://www.mediaincanada.com/articles/mic/20050120/tor01102005.pdf
http://www.mediaincanada.com/articles/mic/20050120/van01102005.pdf
Hockey icon’s dad gets TV movie
Production began yesterday on Waking Up Wally: The Walter Gretzky Story. The CBC TV movie is based on the best-selling book by the father of hockey legend Wayne Gretzky and chronicles Gretzky senior’s fight to regain his memory and his life after suffering a brain aneurysm in 1991.
Tom McCamus (The Sweet Hereafter) stars in the two-hour film. CBC publicist Christian Hasse says it’s too early to determine an airdate but that if there’s hockey next year, the movie will probably be programmed around that.
Mitsou to helm Newsworld magazine show
Quebec celebrity Mitsou Gélinas has been signed to host Au Courant, a new English-language program on CBC Newsworld which will look at what’s making news in French Canada. Gélinas, best known in English Canada as a sex kitten singer for her hit single and video Bye Bye Mon Cowboy, has since been an actor, magazine editor, TV host and radio personality.
Au Courant plans to present viewers with people, stories and perspectives they won’t find elsewhere on English television. The show will air Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. beginning Feb. 5, repeating Sundays at noon.
Ed The Sock reviews epic movie classics
Ok, so maybe Dude, Where’s My Car and Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo aren’t exactly cinematic masterpieces, but that may work in Citytv’s favour when the network premiers Ed’s Nite In, Ed The Sock’s new interstitial programming accompanying Tuesday night movies. Beginning this Tuesday, the acerbic sock puppet and his cronies will provide viewers with their point of view regarding the contributions these films have made to the art of cinema, from the comfort of Ed’s apartment. As of now, Citytv has plans to run Ed’s Nite In for at least the next four weeks while Ed gets his proverbial feet wet. In the meantime, City will be developing advertising opportunities including lead sponsorship and product placement within Ed’s apartment.
Acclaimed Finkleman series returns
The Newsroom is back for a third season. The critically acclaimed Ken Finkleman comedy will air six new episodes, with the sixth an unexpected foray into animation. Season three will also see a return to a greater focus on comedy, after quite a dark season last year.
The show will air on CBC beginning Monday, Feb. 14 at 8:30 p.m. It was recently nominated for an International Emmy Award for Best Comedy.
Teletoon draws up four new series
Teletoon is unveiling four new animated series this March. Two of the shows, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends (six-to-nine demo) and Harry and His Bucketful of Dinosaurs (three-to-six demo) will join the network’s children’s programming schedule.
Harry and His Bucketful of Dinosaurs will air Monday to Friday at 9:30 a.m. (premiering March 28) while Foster’s will air at various times on Fridays and Saturdays (premiering March 11).
Teletoon will also air special March Break programming including G.I. Joe’s triumphant return to television on Saturday, March 19 at 10 a.m. with a CGI-animated movie, entitled G.I. Joe: Valor vs. Venom.
The other two new series, Bromwell High and The Venture Brothers, will join Teletoon’s popular evening block, The Detour. The block sees its largest audience with males 18-34 though, thanks to a cast of strong female characters in Bromwell, the network is expecting to see higher numbers with women. Bromwell will air at both 10:30 p.m. and 1 a.m. Monday to Friday after its March 7 premiere while Venture Brothers will air Sundays at 10:30 p.m. beginning March 13.
BBM Media Snapshot
Canadians with $500,000 or more in investments
Canada’s biggest investors are males 45+, heavy media consumers
-610,000 Canadians (2%) have investments worth $500,000 or more
-83% are age 45 or older and almost one-third (32%) are aged 65 or older
-They are more likely to be male (60%) than female (41%)
-They are 18 times more likely than average to have a personal yearly income of $150,000 or more
-33% are retired and another 23% have upper management or professional occupations
-19% never use an ATM machine and 37% never use a debit card for retail purchases
-Just under half (45%) have an Internet banking plan and 17% use Internet stock trading (2.6 times higher than the national average)
-The top four banks among this group are: TD Canada Trust (21% stating this is their principal bank), RBC (18%), Bank of Montreal (11%) and CIBC (11%)
-56% use a full-service broker (three times the national average) and 17% have changed the institution they use for investments in the past two years
-Almost all (95%) own their own home; 17% expect to move in the next two years
-They are over-represented in Ontario and B.C. (3% vs. 2% average) and under-represented in Quebec (1%) and Atlantic Canada (1%). The Prairie provinces have an average number of Canadians with $500,000 or more in investments.
-To reach Canadians with $500,000 or more in investments, the top four media by yesterday exposure are: radio (91%), TV (89%), daily paper (77%) and Internet (61%).
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.
ComBase Market Focus: Ontario
Ontario adults are strong community newspaper readers:
– 77% – or 707,400 readers – report reading any community newspaper (weekday or weekend).
– 58% (535,000 readers) report reading any daily newspaper (weekday or weekend).
– 29% are exclusive community newspaper readers. This represents almost 266,000 Ontario adults who only read the community paper and not a daily.
– Exclusive Ontario community newspaper readers tend to be women between 25 and 49 years old.
When it comes to other media in Ontario:
– 25% of adults admit they didn’t listen to any radio yesterday;
– 11% report listening to non-commercial CBC stations; and
– 38% of adults report watching less than 9.5 hours of television in the past week. That’s less than an hour and a half a day.
Source: ComBase 2003-2004 Study
ComBase, the Community Newspaper Database, is a syndicated consumer-media survey of more than 400 Canadian markets that provides consistent and accurate, market-by-market information to assist in the buying and selling of community newspaper advertising space.
It is an initiative of the Canadian Community Newspaper Association and its nearly 700 members across the country. For more information, contact Kelly Levson, senior project manager, kellylevson@combase.ca.
http://www.combase.ca
TVA eyes sports, sitcoms for T1
Now that he’s got it, Serge Bellerose still isn’t sure what to do with Toronto 1. But that’s okay, he says, no rush. There won’t be any real changes at the struggling station until fall, which gives him and the other brass at Quebecor a bit of time to figure out what went wrong and how to set it right.
TVA and Sun Media, both arms of the Quebecor empire, bought the station from CHUM late last year and will spend the better part of 2005 running market research in the Ontario capital, he says, examining public perception of the station and its programming, which failed to attract significant viewers or advertisers after an ambitious launch in late 2003.
