The veterans of the English-language specialty channel frontier are showing strong growth behind the launch of the new crop of services just over nine months ago.

Cases in point: Bravo!’s audience share has grown 37% since the launch of the last tier of specialty services, says station manager Paul Gratton, and MuchMusic has seen a 23% rise in viewership.

Showcase reports a 25% increase over the past year, according to Alliance Broadcasting president Phyllis Yaffe. Six weeks ago, Life Network hit a record, achieving its highest audience levels ever with a 1.3 audience share, viewers 18+.

‘Discovery Channel took a big hit in numbers – particularly on weekends – during the first three months after the third tier launched,’ says Discovery president Trina McQueen. ‘But our June ratings are up 15% from the same time period last year.’

According to Nielsen Media Research, Discovery is resting fourth amongst the tier one and tier two Canadian services with a 1.1% audience share (viewers 2+) for the week ending July 12, the most recent statistics available. In first spot is tsn with a whopping 7.4% audience share, followed by ytv and Much at 2.4%, respectively, Showcase at 1.3% and Discovery at 1.1%. Rounding out the list are Bravo! and CBC Newsworld, both at 1%, cmt with 0.9%, wtn at 0.8%, The Weather Network with 0.7%, Life Network at 0.6% and Vision with 0.4%.

Of the newest batch of Canadian specialties, Teletoon is leading the pack. For the same week, it recorded a 2.5% audience share (viewers 2+), followed by chum’s Space: The Imagination Station at 1.3%, Family Channel with 1.2%, History Television at 0.9%, Comedy Network at 0.8%, Prime TV with 0.7%, Outdoor Life at 0.4%, HGTV Canada, CTV News 1 and Headline Sports, all at 0.3%, followed by Treehouse tv at 0.2%.

Taking primetime

According to McQueen, Discovery scores its strongest ratings in primetime, averaging 1.5 million viewers per week in the 7-9 p.m. and 11 p.m. to 12 a.m. slots.

Atlantis Broadcasting’s Life Network, and Home & Garden Television have a collective share ranging from 1.3% to 1.5% for their key demographic, women 18 to 49 (according to Nielsen Media Research, Sept. 1 1997 to April 5, 1998).

‘By cross-promoting Life and hgtv, we have doubled our audiences over the last six months,’ reports Atlantis Broadcasting president Juris Silkans.

Canadian pay/specialty services held a 20% share in 1997, up from 9% in 1992, whereas Canadian broadcasters saw their share of audiences drop from 59% in 1992 to 51% in ’97, according to Nielsen.

The reason behind the success story is ‘new and original programming,’ says Prime tv’s Bill Hunt.

Nielsen reports that 64% of the specialty channel audience in English Canada during 1997 was viewing Canadian programs.

Share of

advertising pool on the rise

While the ad revenue generated by conventional broadcasters increased, specialties are also showing some growth. In 1997, ad revenues increased 8.7% to $569 million.

Specialties have captured roughly a 20% share of the tv advertising market, says Marci Perlman, senior vp, Toronto media director at McKim Media Group, and ad rates remain about half the price of conventional stations.

However, the specialty services are slowly beginning to eat away at the advertising stronghold held by conventional broadcasters, according to Leo Burnett’s Steve Meraska. But he adds that while the merit of target audiences is catching on, many advertisers are still strictly out for eyeballs, which are easily accumulated with multiple channels.

For example, hgtv sales are running one-third ahead of Life at a comparable time in its first year.

Atlantis Multinet Sales, the sales agent for Life, hgtv and Le Canal Vie, saw its sales rise 60% in 1997, and in the first three and a half months of the 1998 broadcast year, sold more airtime that in the 12 months of fiscal ’97.

Specialty services are also exploring opportunities for theme-week sponsorship, an increasingly important programming strategy.

The services are beginning to look into packaging, whereby advertisers get a deal for advertising on a conventional broadcaster and cross-promoting on the specialty channels owned by the station.

‘Packaging offers great opportunities, but as yet there just isn’t enough infrastructure in tv sales to do this on a large-scale level,’ explains Meraska. ‘There is a lot of potential here, but it hasn’t hit full force.’

Perlman adds that in the u.s., more and more ad dollars are going to cable. ‘Canada is a good five years behind the States. But as long as the content remains high-quality, this country’s specialties will follow the same route. Good programming will be key.’

As a group, the specialties spent more than $106 million on independently produced Canadian programs during 1997, with total expenditures, including in-house production, at the $263 million mark.

New crop of channels

sign on strong

Space: The Imagination Station’s top program – The X-Files – is pulling in over 100,000 viewers a night and Deep Space 9 averages between 70,000 and 100,000 viewers, says Isme Bennie, director of programming and acquisitions at Space.

Weekend movies are also scoring a consistent rating of over 100,000 viewers, particularly in the Saturday 9-11 p.m. slot. New series The Crow (Crescent Entertainment) will lead viewers into the Saturday night movie at 8 p.m. and while The Raven (Fireworks/

Gaumont) is slated before the Sunday night movie.

The Comedy Network has reeled in up to 135,000 viewers during the weekday 2 p.m. British improv program Whose Line is it Anyway?, says vp programming Ed Robinson.

Just For Laughs and Kids in the Hall and the Saturday and Sunday night stand-up series are its top draws. The network is skewing towards the 18-49 demographic, slightly more male. Comedy is increasing its weekend Cancon with a new Steve Smith series, Supertown Challenge, a parody of a game show; Improv Heaven and Hell; Kevin Spencer, a series of animated shorts; and Butch Patterson: Private Dick, a 13 half-hour live-action series.

Robinson says he looks for three- to four-year contracts or longer to make the most of acquisitions and amortize costs in the schedule.

Robinson’s strategy is simple – maintain a routine in programming schedule which is doing well in primetime.

MuchMusic’s audience is up 55% since 1996, says vp of music programming Denise Donlon, and anticipation is running high that MuchMoreMusic, launching Sept. 30 and targeting a more mature audience, will succeed. Yet-to-be-disclosed independent distributors will carry the net across the country.

Upcoming skeds

Tweaks to the fall programming schedules will focus on the top draws on the specialties: themed programming and movies, lots of them.

Theme weeks will be a primetime priority at Discovery. With so many channels available, viewers have difficulty keeping track of program schedules so particular subjects, promoted a week in advance, will keep viewers informed of the upcoming programming. Shark Week, Africa Week, Geniuses, Air and Space, and America at Arms are among Discovery’s lineup.

Discovery is commissioning roughly $17 million in Canadian programming this season, up from $15 million last year. Unlike other specialties which do well in fringe periods, two new programs introduced last season, the Tuesday night Exhibit A and Champions of The Wild on Monday nights, consistently broke the 100,000 viewers per night mark.

McQueen says a 70,000 per minute average is considered a success and 100,000 a hit on the channel.

With the launch of hgtv, Life’s programming is broadening into more entertainment-oriented shows. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and Xtra, the top syndicated show in North America last year, are on the fall schedule.

A new series, Mrs. Greenthumbs from Halifax’s Salter Street Films, combines gardening tips with a comedy format. Programming on hgtv is gearing towards practical, how-to shows.

Consistency in programming is the key strategy at Bravo! in the face of the rapidly expanding television market.

‘We always knew we would be slow getting out of the gate but would grow slowly via word of mouth,’ explains Gratton. ‘We are in a major growth period in our fourth year without changing our strategy. This is not the type of channel where you take out full-page ads in tv guides.

‘It’s a specialized audience. If we had panicked and lost patience and played around with our audience we would have lost them,’ he says.

Showcase’s primetime movie lineup is expanding to a double bill at 10 p.m. and midnight. As opposed to large package deals with distributors, Yaffe says they ‘look under rocks’ to find an eclectic mix of movies from around the world. Pulp Fiction pulled in 549,000 viewers, a record for a specialty. ‘That’s the type of film that works for us – it’s a good model,’ says Yaffe.

Movies have been among the highest-rated shows on Prime, so the upcoming season will see a hefty slate of westerns, classic war films and comedies.

The movie lineup on wtn is being beefed up to five times a week (Monday, Friday and Saturday nights and a double bill on Sundays). A three-year deal has been signed with Warner Bros., and with more bulk sales, wtn is picking up movies at better rates, says Millican. After 9 p.m. and weekends are wtn’s biggest draw for its 25 to 54 female audience.