Brenda Atkinson
The programme preview of South Africa’s first free-to-air commercial television station was a Bondian event, slick with dress suits, French champagne, impeccably understated yet omnipresent waiters, oysters, and a subtle conspiratorial air.
e.tv, the Warner Brothers-partnered broadcast competitor that has SABC and M-Net by the balls, last week invited media buyers to a series of programme previews in anticipation of its prime- time inception on October 1 this year.
The channel has kept close guard on its programming plans since swooping the commercial licence from competitors in April. Last week’s previews, while providing some information, were more about giving buyers a taste of things to come – and showcasing the e-team’s irreproachable credentials – than declaring the minute details of content.
What we saw on big screen was a promotional video made and produced by Warner in Los Angeles: smooth as hot butter and bubbly as champagne, it left the impression of bland American hype and confirmed loads of financial backing. It told us that e.tv’s full- spectrum entertainment hooks include proven South African favourites in the sit-com, drama and talkshow genres, as well as sure-thing new seducers from America’s top-10 TV ratings. The station also has the best of Warner Brothers’s children’s programmes and news powered by CNN and focused on local context.
There was little indication though of what will constitute the 27% local broadcasting content the channel has promised to the IBA: having received over 600 pitches from local producers, the team is currently doing a roadshow in all nine provinces that will assess close to 3 000 proposals.
Nonetheless, e.tv offers media buyers a sound bottom line in strategy and structure. Its three “Cornerstone Packages”, based on all-adult ratings at 15% of the available audience share, range from 50 prime-time spots at R250E000, to 200 prime-time spots at R1- million.
The spots are not cheap, but the market research is thorough and the incentives to advertise considerable. Each package offers added value incentives in the form of extra spots. Packages are flexible according to campaign requirements, and work on a payment schedule of 60 days – which should make corporate accountants ecstatic.
Commercial Time sales director Clare O’ Neill confidently offers buyers a consistent and predictable audience, whose viewership is structured through a short format programming schedule and strip programming. The former arrangement ensures that attention spans are maintained, and the latter that viewers will tune in at the same time, five days a week, for their favourite programme.
e.tv has smartly declined to produce a monthly rate card, thus deflecting media inflation, and promises advertisers that their presence will be optimised across and through schedules.
The channel, which has enough financial backing to sustain itself for two years, will rely on advertising as its sole form of revenue, and the team knows that its product must service the industry that will be its bread and butter.
Compared to M-Net, which only reaches 17% of consumer households, e.tv boasts a 66% footprint at launch, which will increase to more than 75% at the end of its second year. Its stated aim of “bringing entertainment to the whole country” will not be launched with the usual bells and whistles, but will rely on the product to speak for itself and to advertisers who are indeed being offered an unprecedented opportunity in terms of market predictability and reach.
So pass the Martini, 007 – October is just around the corner.