Media: World conquest on menu for Langbein

Annabel Langbein says the deal will enable her to develop her brand in the manner of Jamie Oliver. Photo / Babiche Martens

New Zealand is getting its own Julia Child. Cooking and food writer Annabel Langbein has signed an international licensing deal with international television distributor Fremantle Media Enterprises.

The deal starts with a 13-part TV series based around Central Otago.

But Langbein - who stresses she is a home cook and not a chef - said Fremantle had indicated it was focused on developing her brand.

"I call it global domination by spatula," she said.

Called Free Range Cooking With Annabel Langbein, the series was filming this week. The show is being made by TVNZ, which will have New Zealand broadcast rights.

But it will be Langbein who owns the show rights and who will benefit if and when sales kick off around the world. Langbein has developed a strong brand for her cookery books and also online.

Fremantle - which distributes some of the most successful TV shows in the world - could not be reached at print time.

But Langbein said Fremantle saw the New Zealand locale - with its reputation for freshness - as a selling point.

The series will be produced by Dana Youngman, a former head of the TVNZ internal production unit.

Langbein pointed to other cooking brands Fremantle had developed, such as Jamie Oliver and Martha Stewart. Her publishing manager is Debra Millar, former publishing boss at ACP Magazines New Zealand.

MIKE O TO GO?

The biggest creative spark behind Saatchi & Saatchi is expected to step down from the company soon. An announcement is expected that Mike O'Sullivan - one of New Zealand's most successful advertising executives - will no longer be executive creative director of the agency. O'Sullivan is the key figure behind Saatchi accounts including the three Ts - Tui, Toyota and Telecom.

His departure would mark a significant shift at Saatchi & Saatchi. It would also signal big changes ahead at the agency. The reasons for a break-up of O'Sullivan's relationship with chief executive Andrew Stone are not clear.

The two characters have sometimes seemed joined at the hip and rumours in the advertising world yesterday suggested the two admen men might be exiting together. That seems unlikely, but yesterday Saatchi & Saatchi did not return calls.

TELECOM

The past couple of years have been patchy for Saatchi, with the loss of the Television New Zealand ad account creating a big hole in the creative firepower and prestige and revenue of the account. This was an account that global boss Kevin Roberts said in the past was the only "iconic" New Zealand brand.

Another signature account - Toyota - maintained the impressive creative credentials. But at Saatchi the most important account is Telecom which is said to account for about 50 per cent of its business.

There has been no secret that relations have sometimes become strained between the long-serving ad agency and the new broom at Telecom. Under chief executive Paul Reynolds Telecom has been going through radical change.

The head of retail, Alan Gourdie, has a detailed view about the success and failings of past Telecom marketing and it was notable that while the new ads were done by Saatchi, the creation of its new squiggly asterisk logo was handed to another design firm.

COUCH GLUE

Advertisers are calling for more detailed television ratings so they know how many people are watching TV during commercials breaks.

Advertisers have long questioned AGB Nielsen people meter television ratings which only provide figures for each quarter-hour on screen and do not differentiate between programmes and ad breaks.

Broadcasters get minute-by-minute ratings under an exclusive arrangement with AGB Nielsen.

Broadcasters insist that viewers stay glued to the set and that viewers do not channel surf. But advertisers - who pay according to how many people they reach - want more transparency.

Derek Lindsay, chairman of the media committee of ad agency body CAANZ, said New Zealand was a rarity in offering just quarter-hour ratings.

He said the issue had come to a head over the past three months with discussions between broadcasters, ad agencies and advertisers.

Talks are occurring as the broadcasters' minute-by-minute contract with AGB Nielsen comes up for renewal in mid-2010.

FAST FORWARD ADS

Television Broadcasters Council chief executive Rick Friesen said there was a limit to how much more research was needed.

Broadcasters were not opposed to more detailed research and there was a need for more transparency.

He said that on the basis of the minute-by-minute information they collected - and overseas experience - viewers did not desert screens during ad breaks.

This week's launch of the interactive personal video recorder TiVo has added to concerns about how many people will be actually watching the ads.

Like MySky and My Freeview before it, TiVo allows people to fast-forward through ad breaks.

Stories circulate of MySky users who record most of their programming and avoid all the ads.

A pilot survey by Sky Television - which has 120,000 MySky subscribers - insists this ad-free viewing is rare, particularly with news shows.

But Friesen and ad agencies both say that it will become an issue as more and more people timeshift their viewing and some of those zap the ads.

BIG BALLS

An out-of-pocket founder of Country Channel says anybody who invests in the current media market needs "big balls".

Presumably the farmer-cum-TV producer Andy Tyler means big balls of baling twine, or confidence. Haystacks of money would be useful. Tyler says he is out of pocket more than $1 million and trying to recover money owed by Country Channel Ltd, the company that ran the premium tier channel on the Sky platform.

Tyler's production company, Digital Masters, has applied for Country Channel Ltd to be placed in liquidation.

The matter will be heard by the High Court on November 18.

Tyler said it had been been difficult to build subscribers from scratch after the launch in October 2008 with Country Channel struggling in a tough market.

He exited the channel when new equity was introduced after August.

Tyler said Digital Masters had held off demanding to assist the channel. He believed that the former operating company still had assets that could be realised to repay what he says he was owed.

Tyler said Digital Masters provided facilities and programme production help early on from studios in Parnell.

Nowadays the channel is known as Country 99 TV, produced out of Prime Television's studios in Albany.

That company's sole director and shareholder, Colin Harvey, could not be reached for his reflections on the state of the former operating company.

BALLS OF FIRE

These are tough times in the media business. Sky TV bought out the Arts channel because it was not making a buck, and Alt TV, another independent channel on the Sky platform, crashed owing creditors millions of dollars. Production company Ninox went bust amid a falling-out between directors that left TVNZ and taxpayers out of pocket. This week it was revealed that Truth Publications was in liquidation.