TV Round-Up – December 1998 (Subscribers)
Revenue Estimates from agencies put total terrestrial TV ad revenue at £190.27 million for December 1998. ITV saw a 4.2% increase year on year in its total revenue which rose to £131.62 million in December 1998. Channel 4’s total ad revenue rose by 11.8% to £42.5 million, and Channel 5 enjoyed a rise of 39.4% on December 1997 to £11.15 million. GMTV continues to lose ad revenue, this time down by 12% year on year to £5 million. Estimates put satellite ad revenue at £26 million, an increase of 39.6% year on year.
Share of revenue amongst the ITV franchises remained pretty much the same year on year. Central increased its share the most, by 0.8% points, to take a 16.7% share. Carlton still commands the largest share of ad revenue, at 16.4% – down by 0.2% points on December 1997.
December ITV Franchise Revenue Share Comparison
Impacts ITV’s impacts for all Adults were down by 0.5% year on year in December coming in at 28,249. Small gains were made in most of the other audience categories, with ABC1 Adults up by 0.3% to 10,495. Channel 4 increased its effectiveness across all audience types, notably Men which was up by 12% to 3,970. Impacts against ABC1 Adults on C4 stood at 3,560 in December 1998. Channel 5 continues to increase its delivery of ads to the audience with all categories up substantially year on year.
Costs Per Thousand CPTs for ITV continue to increase across all audience categories with ABC1 Adults up by 3.9% to 1,520p. Women reported the highest increase in costs, up by 6.0% to 952p. Channel 4 CPTs were up year on year for each category except Men which was down slightly by 0.2% to 1,297p. It is continuing to become cheaper to reach all audiences on Channel 5.
Viewing BBC1 won the battle against ITV in December coming in with a 31.2% share in viewing against the Network’s 30.9%. As usual Christmas Day went to BBC1 (see BBC1 Cleans Up On Christmas Day), accounting for the nudge into the lead. Channel 4 managed to show a little growth in its overall viewing share in December up by 0.2% points to take a 9.8% share of overall viewing. C5 averaged 4.5% in this month and cable/satellite channels continue to eat into the terrestrials’ share, taking 12.7% of viewing.
Industry News At the beginning of the month the IPA called for a single economic regulator for television, responsible both for commercial services and the BBC, and an update of the current ownership and licensing regimes for radio. This was the IPA’s response to the Government’s Green Paper on Regulating Communications (see Government ‘Green Paper’ Sets The Scene For The Fundamental Restructuring Of The Information Superhighway).
The launch of digital terrestrial television (DDT), through ONdigital, cost Carlton Communication’s almost £28 million. The company revealed pre-tax profits of £340 million before digital costs were deducted for the year ended 30 September 1998. ONdigital is a 50:50 venture between Carlton and Granada.
The Billett Consultancy released forecasts for ad rate growth for 1999, predicting that TV revenue growth will slow to a rate of 5%. Billetts also forecast that satellite revenue and audience growth would slow.
ITV launched its digital TV offering, ITV2, on 7 December, but mainly showed previews of upcoming programmes.
Channel 5 also confirmed that its digital terrestrial plans were on schedule, narrowly avoiding the loss of its spare digital multiplex capacity. The ITC granted C5 the spare digital capacity, to extend its services beyond the current channel, but could withdraw it if C5 failed to launch its DTT broadcasts by the set deadline. Channel 5, however, managed to get its service up and running before this deadline.
Meanwhile, BSkyB was insidiously trying to secure its future by striking a deal with Wilcon Homes which would see Sky Digital’s minidishes built into the homes at the construction stage. Sky said that it is hoping to strike similar deal with other housing construction companies. BSkyB managing director, Ian West, said: “Wilcon Homes is to be commended for its foresight in seeing that digital satellite systems should become a standard feature in all new homes.”
The Government also announced that the licence fee for owning a colour television will rise to £101 from 1 April 1999. The hike in price was justified to meet the BBC’s costs in setting up and operating digital television services.
ITV claimed to have reached its peak time audience share target of 38% in 1998. However, its calculations were made before Christmas when the BBC took a larger share of the audience.
The ITC fined Carlton Communications £2 million pounds after an investigation that proved one the company’s documentaries, The Connection, to have been fraudulent. The ITC said that Carlton had exercised ‘grave breaches of the Programme Code’.
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