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GMTV's overall strategy and major themes of the year
OVERALL STRATEGY/ MAJOR THEMES FOR THE YEAR
Weekdays
Our strategy for the year will be to retain our position as the UK's biggest breakfast news service - first choice for national and international news, regional news, features, information and entertainment.
Uniquely among terrestrial news broadcasters, GMTV's regional, national and international news service is designed to appeal primarily to a female audience. Housewives with Children are our key weekday commercial target and children at weekends.
We have our own team of correspondents and reporters and hire news crews and facilities from ITN and we aim to be first in the morning with all of the big stories as well as providing top coverage of showbiz and entertainment including regular reports from our correspondents in New York and Los Angeles.
In 2005 GMTV provided coverage of all of the significant news stories from the Asian Tsunami to the London bombings and the general election. We achieved a 29.1% share of all individuals viewing between 06.00 and 09.25 compared to BBC Breakfast's 27%. Our target for individuals for 2006 is to maintain this lead over the BBC.
In 2005 we held a big lead over BBC Breakfast in the commercially vital Housewives with Children demographic (GMTV 32.7% share: BBC Breakfast 12.6%) Our target share for Housewives with Children in 2006 is a challenging 32.5%.
Weekends
Our strategy for children's programmes is to provide an entertaining animation based schedule on Saturday and Sunday mornings, beginning with pre-school programmes and moving into 4-9 appeal programmes later in the morning.
Our target for 2006 is to achieve a weekend share of children's viewing of 14.5% compared to our share of 15.7% in 2005
In 2005 our children's schedule faced intense competition from the BBC and from cable and satellite subscription channels and our children's share dropped lower than expected.
This competition is expected to intensify in 2006 with the further spread of Freeview, satellite and cable.
In 2005, after extensive research, we took the decision to replace our two main children's programmes Diggin' It and Up On The Roof with a brand new format to cover the whole weekend. The new show, Toonattik which launched in February 2005 and is produced in-house at GMTV will continue into 2006. We will also continue to broadcast our new pre-school show called Wakey Wakey.
In autumn 2005 we invested £300,000 in a marketing campaign and this together with changes we made to the programmes, stabilised performance and stemmed the ratings decline. We intend to spend a similar amount in 2006 providing support for our children's schedule.
A major new development in 2006 will be the launch of the new CITV Channel. GMTV has joined together with CITV to launch the new channel in 2006. GMTV will be selling the advertising for the new channel and also assisting in cross promotion.
However, the significance of this launch for GMTV's channel 3 children's programmes is that for the first time it will give Toonattik and Wakey Wakey a position on the Sky children's EPG as they will be simulcast on the new channel.
The importance of this can be seen from the fact that in 2005 GMTV's children's schedule was achieving more than 30% share of viewing in terrestrial homes but less than 5% share in Sky homes where children's viewing revolves around the EPG.
GMTV has output deals with Disney, Jetix and Nickelodeon for 2006 which will secure free to air first showings of a number of new series. We will also acquire programming from leading independent suppliers.
SIGNIFICANT CHANGES
There will be no significant changes in GMTV's service provision in 2006.
INNOVATION, EXPERIMENT AND CREATIVITY
GMTV has been a leader in the field of new media development. As a public service broadcaster we provide regular back-up material to a large number of strands and news items. Most of this is provided through our website www.gm.tv.
In 2006 we intend to continue to develop the use of picture messaging to increase interactivity with our audience. Many viewers now own picture phones and we will select suitable occasions to encourage them to send in pictures, via mms, that have relevance to our output (weather conditions, Christmas and Valentine's Day greetings for example).
We have also begun discussions with mobile phone operators about the possibilities of streaming our weekday output via mobile phones. As a breakfast broadcaster we feel this would be very popular with viewers who could continue watching GMTV after they had left home for work.
One Minute television will continue to be a feature of our schedule in 2006. This is an innovative format we developed three years ago for informational one minute pieces stripped across the week. The one minute format lends itself to many subjects not least computer and media literacy, DIY, cookery and other subjects.
