Holmes made sure advertisers noticed

Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor, the fresh-faced boss of Prime Television in New Zealand, swears every ratings point is golden.

Golden to the tune of $6.5 million for each point of audience share gained.

It is a fact he uses to transform the failure of Paul Holmes - signed up in an audacious Taylor coup and now anchoring the station's flagship local show - to attract significant audiences at 7pm and in a new 6pm timeslot.

Yes, Taylor has been disappointed with the ratings in the short term. But Holmes was what made advertisers sit up and take notice of the network.

"What has been the most pleasing development in this network is what our market share of revenue has done over the last 18 months. In particular in the first quarter of this year, where it shot up from 3.5 per cent to around 4.72 per cent. That jump is worth somewhere in the vicinity of $8 million to $9 million - and it can only be attributed to the noise that we made relative to Paul Holmes."

Others agree. "The choice of Holmes, and the signalling that Prime was a player and that Nine was prepared to invest to make a difference, has meant Prime has been noticed more by big advertisers," said Mediacom's media strategist Michael Carney.

"Unfortunately, their poster boy hasn't delivered to inflated expectations - but, rationally and realistically, he was never going to."

Prime has a joint venture with Nine Network in Australia, through which Prime gets programming, marketing and managerial support in return for Nine's option to buy 50 per cent of Prime.

Holmes was not the first step towards Taylor's long-term goal: for Prime to be a mainstream free-to-air television network. The show followed the launch of a local news bulletin at 5.30pm and the move to bring local identity Charlotte Dawson into travel programme Getaway. All were part of a strategy aimed at endowing Prime, part of Australian-listed broadcaster Prime Television, with the local identity it needed to hit that long-term goal.

Enticing Holmes to the fledgling channel was the most significant step in forming that identity.

With rugby union rights tied up and major network deals with the likes of Warner and Granada difficult, poaching Holmes from TVNZ was Taylor's most feasible option

"It has had the effect of saying we're serious. We're here to play ball. It did a lot for the image of the network."

But where does that leave Prime, with Holmes averaging an audience of 38,200 in his first week at 6pm, compared with 41,200 in his last week at 7pm and 60,300 the week before that? Media buyers say that the best night for the show overall was a 4.4 per cent share of all people aged five-plus - on February 7, the night Paul Holmes made his Prime debut. The worst was below 0.5 per cent, last Tuesday, at 6pm. But that could be improving: Holmes' best performance in the new slot was 1.5 per cent, on Tuesday.

Taylor won't condemn the early figures - or rule out more changes to Holmes.

Could the show move again? "TV is an evolution. We have the prerogative to move things around," said Taylor.

He has a long-term view on the show: like any business, losses might have to be sustained to yield the benefit of a project down the track. "We are still in the early stages. Seeing how it [Holmes] develops is most important. The thing is getting growth at 6pm year on year, and as it stands that is happening," said Taylor. It would be eight weeks to three months before he considered the ratings bedded down.

Carney said the next move in pushing Prime forward would be driven from Australia. It is likely to take the form of a Nine Network push to grab the Australasian rights for some of the international content that goes to TVNZ and to CanWest MediaWorks, TV3's owner.