Vancouver: After a splashy debut last fall, Vancouver Television has quickly settled into local mainstream television patterns and is struggling to grow its audiences. As a result, the Baton Broadcasting-owned station’s eight-month anniversary of its Sept. 22 premiere was marked with layoffs and the diminished enthusiasm that evolves out of fading novelty and glaring reality.

‘There is no benchmark [for rating our startup performance],’ says vtv gm Jon Festinger, mustering a positive outlook. ‘The broadcasting environment is much different than it was when the last station started here. Looking back, we didn’t realize the impact of the specialties.’

He adds: ‘Still it’s a wonderful and challenging time. The most amazing and gratifying point is that we have done everything we can to build a place that emphasizes the creative.’

From its downtown Vancouver studios, vtv has exceeded many of its promises to the crtc, Festinger notes, and has stayed committed to independent production, renewing all four of its locally made national shows: Cold Squad, Double Exposure, Mason Lee On the Edge and Gabereau Live.

‘This shows our commitment to independent production, that it’s not a short-term initiative,’ says Festinger. ‘However, we need to do more to drive audiences to our shows.’

According to a flurry of statistics from Nielsen Media Research in Vancouver, the average audience for vtv hasn’t really improved in the broadest sense since the first week of sampling.

Since the first day the station went live Sept. 22, the average per-minute audience between 6 a.m. and midnight for viewers in the important 25-54 market has ranged between a high of 1% (or 15,000 viewers) in the first week to a low of 0.7% (10,000 viewers).

On average, therefore, vtv ranks fifth among the six local stations with a share of 0.9% or 12,000 since its startup. Market leader bctv, for the same broad demographic and time period, claimed 2.1% (30,000) while Global Vancouver claimed 1.6% (22,000), CBC Vancouver claimed 1% (14,000), chek claimed 0.9% (13,000) and Bellingham border station kvos claimed 0.7% (10,000).

The Vancouver Live@Six newscast – for the same 25-54 market – ranks last in the 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. slot with 0.8% (11,000), not even surpassing kvos’ strip programming that earned 1% (13,000) and well below bctv’s venerable NewsHour with 8% (112,000).

In prime, however, vtv fares much better in the 25-54 market, placing third with 2.6% (36,000). bctv claimed for the period 5.2% (73,000) and Global claimed 4.5% (64,000).

Since its debut, the best audience grabbers on vtv have been the Grammy Awards, Feb. 25, with an audience share of 8.6% in the 25-54 market, Ally McBeal, with its average per-episode audience share 5.3% (until the show was forfeited to ctv affiliate bctv after the Baton acquisition), Melrose Place (5%), Drew Carey (4.9%), Law & Order (4.6%), Home Improvement (4.2%), Ellen (3.6%) and reruns of Friends (3.3%).

Baton-backed series Cold Squad ranks 23rd in the top-50 shows with an audience share of 1.8% of vtv’s 25-54 market. Double Exposure ranks 36th (1% share) and homegrown variety series Applause ranks 49th (0.6%), tied with Mason Lee On the Edge.

As for the layoffs, announced with the across-the-country cuts for Baton Broadcasting May 13, Festinger chalks the losses up to normal consolidation after a labor-intensive startup. vtv promised a core complement of 105 in its crtc application, but expanded about 50% beyond that threshold for the debut. Twelve full-time and three part-time people were laid off this month, but the staff roster is still about 140.

‘Just because startup is over, doesn’t mean creative growth is over,’ says Festinger, putting a positive spin on the layoffs. ‘That’s a process. We have so much to do. We knew it was going to be tough, but we also had passion fueled by what Vancouver Television can be. There is no way to say enough about how hard and with what commitment the people here took this challenge on.’

On the sales side, general sales manager Dennis Hendricks says revenues are on track to reach the targets for the first fiscal year ending Aug. 31. ‘It was a welcoming market,’ says Hendricks. ‘During the busiest times in the fall and the spring there are still tight inventories.’

Quoting recent bbm surveys, Hendricks adds the audiences have been growing for certain segments. ‘We’re up in most demographic categories,’ he says.

‘And the Canadian specialties are up. But our competitors are down.’

The best growth is in news, which he says has jumped 70% in audience between the fall and spring periods.

Festinger says the addition of local professional sports – Vancouver Grizzlies basketball and Vancouver Canucks hockey – to the vtv lineup next fall will make year two much stronger by drawing more viewers.

‘[Pro sports] will bring more viewers to the station and we hope they’ll stay with us,’ says Festinger.

He adds that the fall launch plans expected at the end of the month will assist in pulling viewers to vtv. Also, the station’s promotions initiatives – which were diluted in September with all the campaigning done by the startup of new specialties at the same time – will create a cleaner, more identifiable brand for vtv. ‘We’ll also be one year more evolved,’ Festinger says.

During primetime hours, the 2+ spectrum since Sept. 22 shows that vtv’s core audience – or 53% of all viewers at any given minute – is aged 25 to 49. Adults aged 50+ make up 26% of viewers, while teens and young adults in the 12 to 24 group comprise 18% of all viewers at any given moment during prime time. Children aged two to 11 are 4% of the prime time audience.

Vancouver TV stations’ market share

Percentage share of market 25-54 in Vancouver-Victoria,
March 16/98 through April 12/98
(Average number of viewers in thousands per average minute)

Source: Nielsen Media Research, Vancouver
*Does not air news