News

34th Annual JUNO Awards cue up

Corner Gas star Brent Butt has been signed to host the 2005 JUNO Awards, to be telecast on CTV from Winnipeg on April 3. Last year, 1.51 million viewers tuned in, with more than five million catching at least some part of the broadcast. Sponsors for the event include General Motors, Pantene Pro-V, Doritos and Nice ‘n Easy. The Awards broadcast will follow CTV At The JUNOS, a one-hour red carpet special hosted by etalk Daily’s Ben Mulroney and Tanya Kim.
This is the fourth year the awards will be broadcast on CTV. Last week, the net and The Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS) agreed to extend their deal through 2007.
http://www.junoawards.ca.
http://www.ctv.ca.

News

BBM appoints Missen

Effective Feb. 1, Randy Missen will take over as BBM’s new VP, PPM and client software. Missen will continue to oversee BBM’s electronic measurement panel in Quebec and will take on the new role of directing company initiatives to ensure BBM’s software capabilities are up to speed with market demand. Missen joined BBM in 1994 as a programmer before shifting his focus to audience measurment and becoming VP, meter services in 2001.

News

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.

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PMB Factoid

Percent of regular tennis players with personal income over $50,000: 18

News

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.

News

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.

News

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.

News

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.

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BBM Top 20

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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.

News

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.

News

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.

News

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.

News

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.

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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.