Multi-channel TV: +1 too many?
When preparing a case study on the subject of new media technologies, digital television offers a wealth of material for your consideration. This article will consider multichannel broadcasting, in particular the rise of the +1 channel and the digital brand extension achieved using extra channels to provide more audience- and genre-specific programming.
+1
In August 2007, Channel 4 launched its +1 service, the first of the main five channels to do so. Those of you with multichannel TV, especially that provided by Sky Digital or Virgin, will know that +1 channels have been a fixture of the line up for some time. The benefits to broadcasters of these +1 channels are partly derived from the comparatively plentiful bandwidth offered by digital television platforms; it’s relatively cheap to add a +1 channel, and requires no extra programming. They offer broadcasters the opportunity to increase the chance of reaching an audience in a competitive environment. Viewers aren’t watching significantly more television (in fact teenagers are watching less), so broadcasters must do all they can to maintain audience share, otherwise advertisers will take their money elsewhere; Google’s UK advertising revenue is now larger than that of Channel 4. To some, however, the +1 channel weakens the main channel in that it dilutes the audience; the counter argument is that audiences are now irreversibly fragmented, and to pretend otherwise is folly. Rather than rely on the standard ’see it once’ channel, +1 channels can help a broadcaster to build up a portfolio of channels with an impressive combined audience reach.
The portfolio approach
This portfolio approach is one of the reasons why broadcasters such as the BBC and ITV have developed extra channels. BBC3 and 4 have become a valuable aspect of the broadcaster’s provision to specific groups. Although only broadcasting for part of the day, and relying heavily on multiple screenings of programmes, the channels allow the BBC’s total audience to be larger than it would be with just two channels. The BBC’s public service role is seemingly strengthened by the resulting increase in arts and minority programming, and maintaining its audience share is vital if its role, and the licence fee, are to be maintained. Channels such as BBC3 have also been used as a testing ground for new programming, especially sitcoms, a format relatively cheap to produce but difficult to get right. Given that BBC3’s official viewing figure is just 1.3% of the audience, it’s a safe place to try out new broadcasts, and offers the potential of ‘promotion’ to one of the main BBC channels if a success.
ITV has struggled to maintain advertising revenue as multichannel TV has become more widespread, so offering more and more channels is one way of attracting the widest possible audience, even if this is achieved across a number of channels instead of just one. Advertisers can be reassured of the total viewing figure, as well as having the option of much more targeted advertising. EMAP have made good use of this approach with their selection of music channels which includes Kerrang!, Smash Hits and QTV.
Time-shifting
The +1 channels and the extra channels offered as an extension to a main brand are both part of a larger pattern of time-shifting in TV viewing. The audience is now in control of the schedule, personalising their viewing experience through a mixture of technologies and platforms. If you think of the new series of your favourite programme, it’s likely that you will know people who have already seen the whole series via the internet (probably illegally), or people who are a week ahead using a channel like E4 offering ‘first-look’ broadcasts, or people who are going to catch up on several episodes at once in a couple of weeks because they’ve set their Sky+ box to automatically record the whole series. ‘Event television’ is virtually a thing of the past, with the audience for big sporting events or series premieres fragmented across channels, platforms and time. In media studies classes the scheduling exercise, in which you colour in blocks of time on a day’s TV listings to identify patterns, is arguably irrelevant in an age when programme start times are now nominal.
One Ofcom statistic which undermines ideas of complete audience fragmentation and the end of scheduling is that of the estimated 60 million TV sets in the UK, 49% receive only analogue signals. That is, they can be used to watch a maximum of five channels. However, 80.5% of households receive a digital signal on their primary TV set. Could this be why the teenage audience of TV is in decline; if the ‘best’ channels are only available in the living room, the internet and games consoles face no significant challenge in bedrooms.
More is less?
Opinions on multichannel broadcasting tend to be divided over one key issue: the quality of programming. +1 channels are, after all, entirely constructed of repeat programming, although they do allow the audience to time-shift, taking some control over the structure of the schedule. Other channels operate on official viewing figures of virtually zero, so money for original programming is not available.
When we consider those channels which are parts of a broadcaster’s digital brand extension clear benefits to the audience can be observed. Arts programming has never been as well served as a result of channels like BBC4 and Sky Arts (formerly Artsworld); music programming is no longer limited to a few points in the week; the news is freed from the restrictions of the half-hour bulletin. Critics might concede these points, but when Reithian values are applied to broadcasting of this type, a problem can be identified: rather than delivering a mixed schedule which will include content slightly better than it [the audience] thinks it will like’, viewers have to make the conscious decision to select programmes and so are less likely to watch ‘accidentally’. Like personalised homepages offered by services like iGoogle, viewers are having their horizons restricted rather than widened, ironic in the context of the potential riches of multichannel broadcasting. Audience choice and freedom, engendered by the time-shifting possibilities of +1 services, niche channels and PVRs, are arguably creating more entrenched viewing patterns.
