Montreal: Leading the French specialties are the all-animation service Teletoon (Family Channel) with a 3.3 share and Reseau des Sports (Bell Globemedia/NetStar) with a 2.8 share, according to Nielsen Media Research fall 2000 numbers for the Province of Quebec (2+).

Following are 24-hour news service Reseau de l’Information (Radio-Canada), doc-entertainment channel Canal d (Astral Media) and Series + (Astral/Alliance Atlantis Broadcasting), all with a 1.8 share.

Canal Vie, which according to Nielsen recorded a 15% year-over-year increase, came in at 1.5.

Rounding out the list of the existing 16 French-language pay and specialty channels, vrak (Astral) saw its market share dip considerably, to 1.4 from 2.0 a year earlier; followed by pay movie channel Super Ecran (Astral), up more than 40% to a 1.3 share; and headline news service Le Canal Nouvelles (Groupe tva) with a 1.1 share, a modest increase, apparently made at the expensive of rdi.

Other fall 2000 Nielsen scores are: z (Astral), with a 0.9 share; Historia (Astral), a 0.6 share; music specialties MusiquePlus and Musimax, 0.7 and 0.5, respectively, both purchased last year by Astral Media along with Vie from Radiomutuel; and all-weather specialty Metromedia (Pelmorex Communications), with a 0.5 share.

With its future seemingly up in the air, TV5 lost ground (and a number of senior managers) in the past year and had a 0.9 market share last fall.

Travel channel Evasion (Bell Globemedia in partnership with Groupe tva), with a significant program catalogue from equity partner Canal Voyages of France, had a 0.3 share among all franco viewers. Jacques Camerlain recently left TV5 Quebec-Canada to take over as president of Evasion. He replaces Michel Chamberland, who returns to exec producer duties at Serdy Video.

English-track specialty and pay channels, both Canadian and u.s., captured a 3.9 market share among franco tv viewers 2+ (Nielsen – Province of Quebec), led by tsn, which despite a sharp drop had a 0.5 share, followed by Discovery, ytv and Learning Channel, each with a 0.3 share.

Saturation thresholds

The newest tier of French specialties – z, Evasion, Series + and Historia – were launched just over a year ago.

The latest Nielsen data for Series +, Historia and z (the first two weeks in January) indicates the three services have a 3.8 share of the overall Quebec franco market, reaching an average of more than 1.9 milllion viewers (2+) every week.

Judith Brosseau, senior vp, programming, Les Chaines Tele-Astral describes the launches as ‘an overall success, although there is work to be done on penetration.’ She says the 11 existing specialty services were not adversely affected by the new channels, either remaining stable or increasing market share.

After hovering around the 20% penetration level (and uncharged to households without an installed cable trap) the new services have now been picked up in about 25% of Videotron cabled households and by about 50% of satellite and microwave subscribers. Overall, Quebec has 2.1 million cabled households.

With digital set-top box levels still low and the sensitive financial situation at Groupe tva, industry commentators have expressed strong reservations as to how many of the newly licensed Category 1 French-track digital channels will actually launch this fall. •

Leo Rice-Barker