Michael Cullen reports from an RTE advertisers’ seminar on TV
With TAM reporting that advertisers spent over €217 million on television last year, it means TV accounts for nearly a third of the Republic’s €750m ad spend. The KPMG figures for TAM cover spot, sponsorship, product placement and advertiser funded programming (AFP) revenue. Most Irish adults were glued to TV for an average of three hours 28 minutes a day.
Some 91 per cent watch live broadcasts and nine per cent time-shifted shows. Irish adults see an average of 37 TV ads a day. As UTV Ireland finds the going gloomy in their bid to lure viewers, TV3 fortunes shine ahead of a planned sale by British owner private equity fund manager Doughty Hanson. Meanwhile, RTE continues to sit comfy on the TV couch.
But as an RTE advertisers’ conference on the future of Ireland’s TV market showed, there’s no room for complacency. RTE’s news and current affairs business editor David Murphy shared some economic ‘known unknowns’ – not least what problems a ‘Brexit’ vote to quit the EU might pose for Irish exporters. RTE’s head of innovation Glen Mulcahy explained how unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – drones to mere mortals – are transforming the broadcasting landscape by allowing viewers watch from the air as events occur.
But it wasn’t until groups of advertisers and agency executives took to the stage that the real TV Now TV Next conference got going. Havas Media boss Graham Taylor cut to the chase by suggesting TV is increasingly for old people as younger folk migrate to devices. Young consumers are no longer mobile-first, they’re now mobile-only, Taylor added.
Taylor says television is set to change beyond recognition, marked by a switch from household subscriptions/licences to personal sign-ups. One-to-one communications will be the norm. Mindshare’s Ken Nolan said consumers control what they want to watch and set the TV agenda. It’s not about appointment to view, it’s about appointment to interact.
Tesco’s Norah Torpey says TV’s “sea of sameness” must go and supermarket chains are as guilty here as anyone. Marketers should embrace content which engages consumers, like AIB’s Toughest Trade sponsorship with the GAA. MediaVest’s Helen O’Rourke said clients are looking for concrete audience figures and agencies can’t provide them.
But Core Media’s Andy Pierce (above) criticised the obsession with viewer numbers. Pierce said such preoccupations must be replaced by high ratings for getting to grips with how viewers engage with shows. TV is mass audience and the future is about working from the ground up. Broadcasters should stop thinking ad breaks and just see the market as video.
Quoting British adman Dave Trott, who says“creativity is the last legal unfair advantage over the competition”, Leo Moore of Irish International claimed there’s empirical evidence to show the enduring power of TV in providing insight and feelings that make people feel good. There should be an onus on celebrating imaginative TV ads with proven cut-through.
Moore regrets the fact there’s little contact between media owners and creative teams in agencies. Fair City executive producer Brigie De Courcy had no trouble in explaining why the soap, set in the fictional northside Carrigstown suburb, regularly attracts high ratings.
As many as 40 freelance writers are hired, with 250 cast members, crew and a production team working year round. As De Courcy says, it’s relentless story telling. The team work 18 months ahead of an episode going to air, so plans are in place for Christmas 2016. Detailed story planning is six months before transmission – or, as they say on set, TX.
They wanted to kill off Vivienne Bishop’s evil husband Paddy with him driving his car into the sea. The storyline was planned six months in advance but just three weeks before TX, Coronation Street had a similar stunt with Richard Hillman crashing his car into a canal. De Courcy said it was a hassle to do a rewrite, but they couldn’t run with a copycat storyline.
Domestic violence needs to be handled with care. They must take into account where the abuse starts and ends. 80 scenes are shot each week. Every episode has four stories of varying lengths, so it’s 800 stories a year. “We can’t have the next Tarantino,” De Courcy said, “we want a soap writer.” Scripts have emotion and energy, taking people through life’s trials.
With over 467,000 viewers, the Fair City audience equates to six Croke Parks. Viewers would fill the Abbey Theatre every night for three years – or seat 6,300 passengers in double decker buses. Soap fans are loyal and incredibly clued-in to storylines. If they see an actor coughing on a Monday, they reckon he may well be dead by the end of the week.
