Susan Krashinsky Toronto — Globe and Mail update Published on Wednesday, Apr. 14, 2010 8:15PM EDT Last updated on Thursday, Apr. 15, 2010 3:18AM EDT
Corus Entertainment Inc. (CJR.B) has got guy troubles.
The Toronto-based media company has built its successful female-friendly specialty channels – W Network, Viva and Cosmo TV – on one premise: Women are watching. But it has always been able to boast that a lot of men had their eyes on the screen, too. Until now.
Suddenly, the epic battle between husbands and wives for the TV remote is taking a toll on Corus's success.
“Quite frankly, men just weren't willing to sit through that and watch it with their wives,” chief executive officer John Cassaday told analysts yesterday, during a conference call to discuss Corus's latest set of earnings.
That may seem obvious to many men who don't want to watch shows such as Style By Jury , Anna & Kristina's Beauty Call , or How to Look Good Naked . But advertisers and broadcasters have never been able to definitively prove that husbands, boyfriends and male roommates grin and bear it through the makeover shows.
That changed last year with a new system for measuring TV ratings in Canada. In the old system, set-top boxes counted when a show was on. The new one uses pagers that viewers keep with them, and counts who is actually watching.
Thanks to the pagers (called personal people meters, or PPMs), Corus can now look at its ratings and see the men getting off the couch. The company declined to provide that ratings data.
The distinction is important because, according to Mr. Cassaday, advertisers have responded strongly – and quickly – to the changes demonstrated by the new data. W Network may be targeted to women, but if men aren't watching with them, most companies are more reluctant to fork over advertising money.
“This is a business where revenue follows ratings,” Mr. Cassaday said.
A few businesses that only sell to women wouldn't be bothered by such metrics, said Sunni Boot, CEO of media buyer ZenithOptimedia. But most advertisers have a larger customer base in mind.
“Not that many men are that interested in their wives' mascara … but there are other categories that appeal to both, food being one,” she said. “Women are the primary target group, but because other family members may have a say … there is some advantage, when you buy adult programming, to have co-viewing.”
Men and women watched together less often during shows “where the protagonist was transformed” (read: dowdy ladies had makeovers), Mr. Cassaday said. However, men were more likely to sit through a show on a women's channel if it focused on home-improvement or other “lifestyle genres.”
Corus has responded with programming changes. Between December and February, it added new lifestyle programs to the lineup on the W Network, including food program Come Dine With Me. It has also increased the number of episodes of real estate program Love It Or List It , and scaled back on beauty and makeover shows.
“It's just about some fine-tuning as opposed to retooling,” Mr. Cassaday said.
Corus has benefited in the past from its women's specialty channels. A year ago, in the midst of the advertising downturn, W Network was among the female-centric channels that saw ad revenue grow five to 10 per cent while overall specialty TV ad revenues fell.
This year, while advertising was strong at Viva and Cosmo, revenues from advertising at W were almost flat, as they were at many other adult-targeted specialty TV operations at Corus (revenues at the kids' channels were up 10 per cent).
“Growth rates of one per cent are not what we got accustomed to on W,” Mr. Cassaday said. With the programming tweaks, Corus expects the channel to perform better, pushing male audiences to stay on the couch and – however reluctantly – continue sharing the remote.
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