Genesis goes to Town
Town Shoes has named Toronto-based Genesis Media for media planning, media buying, database marketing, geo-marketing and distribution management duties. The remit covers the Toronto-based co’s two retail chains, Town Shoes and The Shoe Company. Former media planner and buyer was Toronto-based Carat.
The two chains spent approximately $3 million in 2004.
BBM GRPs
For charts of the BBM Canada Commercial Television Tracking Service in the Toronto and Vancouver conventional markets, click the links below:
http://www.mediaincanada.com/articles/mic/20041214/Toronto.CMR.pdf
http://www.mediaincanada.com/articles/mic/20041214/Vancouver.CMR.pdf
BBM Top 20
For a list of the top 20 TV shows for the week of Nov. 29 to Dec. 5, according to BBM, click the links below:
http://www.mediaincanada.com/articles/mic/20041214/nat12062004.pdf
http://www.mediaincanada.com/articles/mic/20041214/que12062004.pdf
http://www.mediaincanada.com/articles/mic/20041214/ont12062004.pdf
http://www.mediaincanada.com/articles/mic/20041214/tor12062004.pdf
http://www.mediaincanada.com/articles/mic/20041214/van12062004.pdf
Google prepares to put new advertising initiative into motion
Google has begun testing animated .GIF ads to appear on the Web sites of its AdSense publishers. Adsense, Google’s off-site advertising arm, delivers relevant ads based on the page content of a particular Adsense subscriber’s site. Currently the cost for the animated ads will remain identical to the cost-per-click price of non-motion ones, and will have a 50kb size limitation. Similarly, advertisers will still have to battle to outbid each other for top billing keywords to ensure high exposure on relevant sites. Industry speculation has suggested that Google’s decision to test the animated ads may be a result of the launch of Conducive’s exclusively image-based contextual marketing site, adMarketplace, last Wednesday. Conducive includes eBay on its client list.
CornerGas.com launches online store
Canadian hit TV show Corner Gas has unveiled the Dog River Clothing Company on its Web site for fans who’d like to dress like the small-town Saskatchewan natives on the show. Powered by Brüzer.com, the stored was opened just in time for the holidays with orders placed by Dec. 15 to be shipped in time for Christmas. ‘The Dog River Clothing Company is essentially a response to the overwhelming demand by viewers who want to show their support for this series on their sleeves,’ says exec producer David Storey in a release. Offerings include T’s, caps, toques and hoodies (or ‘bunny hoppers,’ along with other non-clothing items like season one of the series on DVD.
Corner Gas, currently in its second season, is the top-rated Canadian series of any kind on television. Nominated for five Gemini Awards, the series airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on CTV and Saturdays at 8 p.m. on The Comedy Network. The Corner Gas store has received more than 10,000 hits since opening on Dec. 10. But no financial results are available yet. There are no ads on the site, although there is advertising on the CTV parent site.
http://www.cornergas.com/.
CHUM celebrates the New Year with a dozen hot new props
CHUM Television picked up 12 new factual titles to air on SexTV and Space: The Imagination Station. Among the new shows are Outback Strippers and Suburban Strippers, which chronicle the personal and professional lives of male and female peelers; Do You Believe In The Paranormal?, a series that tests whether or not it is possible to communicate with humans post-mortem; and My One Legged Dream Lover, a one-off that profiles the romantic lives of amputees as well as fully-limbed people with amputee fetishes. The various properties are scheduled to begin airing in Spring 2005 and will continue through the year.
SARS crisis gets CTV slot
Plague City: SARS in Toronto is the next title being shot for the CTV Signature Series dramatic movie slate.
Set during the medical emergency that hit Toronto in spring 2003, Plague City takes us from the town in China where a man scratched by a civet cat kicks off a deadly chain of infection that lands, quite randomly, in Toronto, leaving people dead and medical personnel and politicians scrambling.
Nip tucks into W aud
Corus Entertainment’s W is back into Nip/Tuck mode. Canada’s specialty net for women will be re-airing season one (it first appeared on W last spring) beginning Jan. 5 as a lead-in to season two, which will begin in April.
The show will run Wednesday nights at 10.
Idol chatter
You may have had your flu shot, but are you ready for Idol fever?
Both Canadian Idol and American Idol are set to return to the CTV lineup in 2005. American Idol will premier Tuesday, Jan. 18 with a two-hour episode and will be followed the next day with a one-hour episode in keeping with its traditional bi-weekly Tuesday/Wednesday 8:00 pm timeslots. The usual judges will be back for the fourth instalment of the series that promises many William Hung-esque performers to kick off the season.
Meanwhile, CTV and Insight Productions are currently finalizing plans to begin production on Canadian Idol‘s third season which kicks off with the show’s largest audition tour (last season featured nine cities). The auditions begin in February with the season premiere slated for sometime this summer. Last season saw ratings increase 14% over the previous year with an average audience of 2.2 million, and an audience of over four million for the Sept. 16 finale. Audience participation was also extremely high in 2004 for CI – in total, 32 million votes were cast by viewers, though apparently none of them were to complain about Canadian pseudo-celebrity Ben Mulroney who will return as host. There has been no confirmation yet regarding sponsorship and brand integration deals with the show.
Space goes Beyond The X-Files
Forget The X-Files, Beyond, a new Canadian series premiering next month on Space explores real-life mysterious phenomena through eye witness accounts, re-enactments and raw film footage as well as interviews with scientists, medical experts and religious experts.
The series is hosted by William Marshall, and each half-hour show will explore spooky topics such as poltergeists, mind control, and aliens. The launch episode examines luminescent orbs, the sightings of eerie glowing spheres that float through the air and have even entered people’s bodies.
Beyond is slotted for Wednesday nights at 10 p.m., beginning Jan. 12 on Space.
PMB FACTOID
Seniors are 68% more likely to drink brandy.
Astral names Blake
Vicki Blake has been appointed interim VP of sales at Astral Outdoor, based in Toronto. Blake was formerly director of Astral Media Mix.
Ikea produces Space For Living
Known for its innovation in retailing and quirky advertising, Ikea is now moving into content production with Space For Living, a new weekly television series set to debut on HGTV in April.
The show’s attitude is fun, friendly and relaxed. Although Ikea product and its budget-friendly living philosophy play prominent roles, the program goes well beyond simply a way for Ikea to peddle its wares. Space For Living offers insight into a world of creative living by combining travel, home décor, art, design, and lifestyle into a half-hour show. Segments were filmed in Vancouver, Montreal, the greater Toronto area, and around the world in places such as Chicago, Paris, Milan and Stockholm. Viewers are given a feel for each country through a vignette of the city and its people.
NHL lockout: The sky is not falling
With today being day 85 of the lockout, and the season all but abandoned, networks and advertisers have settled on Plan B and are embracing alternatives to reach the traditional hockey viewer demo.
There may not be one clear replacement that produces the level of engagement and audience composition of an NHL broadcast, but the viewers who were once watching hockey are not hiding in fallout shelters until the lockout ends; they are just watching other things, and that has forced media buyers to get creative in their pursuit of hockey’s once coveted audience.
Astral Media hopes to expand its radio media empire into Ottawa with women’s station
At Astral Media’s AGM yesterday CEO Ian Greenberg declared hat the Montreal conglom is on the prowl for acquisitions. Coming off its best ever fiscal, the company has a radio, TV, outdoor props wish list in hand, and is witing for a For Sale sign to go up somewhere. In other growth plans, Alain Bergeron, VP brand management, speaking on the subject of new radio initiatives, said that last week, the company filed an application with the CRTC for a radio station licence in Ottawa. The station, tentatively titled EVEfm, will be Astral’s first foray into the Ottawa market (the conglomerate already owns 24 stations in Quebec and Atlantic Canada).
Though Astral was denied some of its recent radio licence applications when the CRTC announced its approved stations for Atlantic Canada last week (See Media in Canada, Nov. 30), Astral is still awaiting word regarding a application it filed with CHUM for two new digital radio stations.
