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October 18th, 2010 by Helen Beavis

Daybreak or give us a break?

Taking a big slice of column inches over the last month has been the slow demise of Daybreak.  And still it goes on.  So, is it really the end of the line for the unsultry duo, or just a question of implementing some quick & clever reputation-building tactics?

Jon Horsley gives a number of suggestions for how ITV could save the ailing show but none that actually focus on ITV sticking by its guns and putting plan in place to bolster its own PR efforts.  Typically, we’re quick to put the boot in to anything or anyone given a big fanfare.  But knowing how the UK media works, ITV’s PR machine surely has a plan in place for such an issue?

You’d hope so but as yet there doesn’t seem to be much sign?

So, here are a couple of suggestions for trying to change perception with what they’ve got rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water:

  1. Harness the audience: ITV needs to change the conversation by working with the viewing fans it does have.  He who shouts loudest
  2. Amplify the content: It’s an entertainment breakfast show and we know there’s an audience eager to consume.  Better pre-promotion of content (and better content) to the right audience in the right places
  3. Re-build the personalities: TV demands great stories so build great stories around the personalities so people get a chance to get to know them better.  Tell them what they’re like rather than allowing people to perceive who they think they might be.

What do you think?  Is Daybreak a show that can be turned around?

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July 9th, 2010 by Chris McCrudden

From GMTV to WTF

GMTV
Image via Wikipedia

What does the word Daybreak mean to you? No, it isn’t the final chapter in the Twilight series. (Incidentally, does anyone else think they should change the strapline for that film to ‘One girl’s choice necrophilia and bestiality’?). It’s the new name for the new look GMTV. A fresh, vibrant approach to early morning television fronted by Christine Bleakley and Adrian Chiles.

VOM.

Now I have to confess I was never a fan of GMTV. While TV-am gave us the starchy pleasures of Anne Diamond (before she started looking a bit like Ann Widdecombe) and Wincey Willis, GMTV brought us little more than the  Fiona ‘don’t give your child the MMR vaccine’ Philips, and made stars of Eamonn Holmes, Tony Blair and Dr bleeding Hillary. Yes, Lorraine Kelly has been consistently marvellous. But this  is only for the baffling ‘Instant Glam’ makeovers she runs every Christmas where Sue, 38, a systems analyst from Barking is larded with sparkly eyeshadow and shoehorned into a sequinned batswing blouse.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that ITV, now the sole owner of GMTV after it bought Disney’s stake out last year (I’m assuming they no longer thought there was an animated feature in the Penny Smith story), wanted to refresh the format. After all that set’s been around since Anneka Rice was running around with a mobile phone the size of a washing machine strapped to her back, so it’s hardly breakfast telly for the iPhone generation.

But DAYBREAK!? Yes, the name has those vague, optimistic leanings that bad ad executives mistake for engagement, but that sans serif typeface and the purple colour scheme mean you couldn’t pass a Swedish crispbread between this brand identity and a chain of cheap motorway hotels. Mind you, the whiff of a Welcome Break just off the M6 might be just the right thing to reignite the kind of seedy sexual chemistry that kept British viewers grimly glued to breakfast television during the Anne and Nick years.

Oh, GMTV, you have consistently under-delivered and long may you do so. You don’t innovate, you mug the mid-market and year after year you convince the women of Britain that NEXT is worth shopping in. But nobody wants excitement at breakfast-time. And if they did, they wouldn’t be watching you.

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June 24th, 2010 by Simon Matthews

How not to deal with ambush marketing

If you had asked me a fortnight ago if I had heard of Bavaria (the brewery not the region) I wouldn’t have been able to tell you, nor, I imagine, would a great many other people. Ask anyone now though (well, world cup followers at any rate) and they could probably tell you that they are the brewery that performed a very cheeky piece of ambush marketing involving 36 Dutch women in short orange dresses using ITV pundit Robbie Earle’s ticket allocation for the Holland V Denmark game. It is an example of a very successful attempt at ambush marketing. But this might not have been the case if FIFA hadn’t brought in the heavies.

FIFA, and all other organisers of big events, is bound to protect the advertising investments of official sponsors. This is not only for the benefit of the sponsors, but also for FIFA – if they didn’t actively attempt to protect advertisers then nobody in their right mind would want to spend millions to become an official sponsor

The big mistake that FIFA made was to publicise the fact that they had ejected the ambush marketers and launched a civil lawsuit against Bavaria. This is exactly what Bavaria wanted to achieve – free publicity. If FIFA had quietly ejected the women and issued proceedings with little fanfare the ambush marketing attempt would have been far less successful – instead they have generated hundreds of column inches for the brand globally.

(For example, New York Times, The Daily Telegraph, Wall Street Journal, BBC, New Zealand Herald, USA Today, AFP and The Guardian)

The fines faced by Bavaria will probably end up much cheaper than an official sponsorship and the whole affair will have netted a significant amount of attention, a bargain at twice the price perhaps?

(picture source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/osde-info/4671127352/ – user osde8info)

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February 22nd, 2010 by Steve

Daily News 18/02

BBC – Google books deal heads to New York court

Google is preparing to dace opponents in a New York court over long-delayed plans to create the world’s biggest digital library.

The Times – Google forced into Buzz revamp over privacy row

Google has been forced into a hasty revamp of Buzz, its new social networking service, after users claimed that it breached their privacy.

The Register – FriendsReunited sale cleared (Dennis the Menace not a competition concern)

The Competition Commission has cleared ITV’s sale of FriendsReunited to Brightsolid – a subsidiary of DC Thomson the publisher of the Beano.

IT PRO – UK broadcasters unveil SeeSaw online TV platform

Online TV service SeeSaw launched yesterday, offering 3,000 hours of content from Channel 4, Five and older BBC programs in a bid to grab a slice of the internet TV market from broadcasters and Google’s YouTube.

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July 16th, 2009 by Speed Budapest (Matt)

Bamboozle – taken from us too soon

Bamboozle!!!You can imagine the absolute horror at Speed Towers when we learned that Teletext is to close in January. Yes, it’s the news that we’ve all been dreading; Bamboozle may soon be no more.

The Teletext service, which was originally launched by ITV in 1974 under the name Oracle, was due to be switched off in 2012, but due to a severe drop in revenue Teletext will now be retired two years earlier. In 1993 Oracle became Teletext, and Bamboozle was born.

For those of you that have never had the joy of playing Bamboozle, it is a quiz game on page 390 on teletext or page 840 on digital teletext, presented by Bamber Boozle and several of his relatives. The game features 12 questions with multiple choice answers, which become progressively more bamboozling as the games goes on. Get an answer wrong and you will be forced to start again from the very first question, which for many bamboozle fans is a fate worse than death.

What will become of Bamboozle is not certain. Perhaps an online or iPhone-based version is in the works? We can only hope that this is true, but in the time being our thoughts and prayers are with the friends and family of Bamber, Bambette, Buster and Bonnie Boozler.

May 8th, 2009 by Speed Budapest (Matt)

Susan Boyle may cost economy £10m+

In just three weeks the Britain’s Got Talent star may have cost the economy more than £10m in lost productivity, according to my research. Since her performance on the ITV show, more than 100 million users around the world have watched her sing ‘I dreamed a dream’ on YouTube, many of whom opting to do so while at work.

At present the top two Susan Boyle videos viewed by users on YouTube have been watched 73,630,639 times. If just one in 10 of the users that viewed these video were British and watched them in full at work, they will have collectively wasted 831,370 hours – just short of 30 billion seconds!

Based on an average hourly pay of £12.77 that equates to £10,619,378.70.