[mythtvnz] TVNZ imaginatively names new channels

[Nick Rout]

On Wed, June 13, 2007 2:50 pm, David Zanetti wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-06-13 at 12:20 +1200, Nick Rout wrote:
>> http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=3D339&objectid=3D104=
45011
>>
>> TVNZ6 & TVNZ7
>>
>> Wow we are an imaginative bunch in NZ aren't we?
>
> I think it reflect that the market here hasn't matured enough to get
> away from a single numbersapce (eg, like the UK with BBC1-4 and ITV1-3
> etc), so they can't be seen to stomp on TV3 which all the Freeview
> lovin' by calling them TVNZ3 and TVNZ4.
>
> Even tho it makes more sense.
>
> And didn't stop Sky for Sky1.
>
> But anyway :)

For completeness I should add that a guy from TVNZ spotted my post and
sent me an explanatory note, which I reproduce below:

[quote]
Dear Rick,

I noticed your comment about the new channel names on line, and I hope yo=
u
won=92t mind if I send you a more detailed explanation.

Broadly speaking there are a number of ways to name new channels.

There are two main routes:

1: Descriptive names.

These can be further broken down in to sub-categories, but basically they
either describe the content within the channel (such as MTV, The History
Channel), emotions attached to channel (like Discovery) or the target
audience of the channel (such as BabyTV).

2.=94Non-descriptive names=94.

The are names that have no relationship to the content or any specific
target audience. These are channels like BBC 1,2,3 and 4, as so called
sequential numerical suite of channels. Or Acronym channels such as CNN
(which can be an acronym of a descriptive name). Or other sequences of
letters and numbers.

So, if these are the options, what makes sense for the channels in
question?  Well, descriptive names fit channels that are relatively
targeted and narrow in their content choice and/or audience profile- and
have a relatively inflexible content proposition. When such channels do
change they can get in to trouble. For instance if you have =93news=94 in=
 your
channel names and your format drifts towards a broader magazine format (a=
s
often happens) there will be a gap between your content proposition and
your name- people don=92t tend to like that very much.

Looking at your new channels we spent a lot of time working on descriptiv=
e
names and even researching them with focus groups. But after a long
process we realised that actually, our channels are just to rich in their
content genre offerings to find fitting descriptive names which do not
become so broad that they are completely meaningless.

So, we went back to numerical names. We considered several numbers, as
well, with all of them displaying some logic. But in the end, the ones
that make the most sense for the Freeview user are 6 and 7, because that
is were the channels can be found !

Hence TVNZ 6 and TVNZ 7 were born=85

Just FYI , though, the three services that make up TVNZ 6, TVNZ Kidzone,
TVNZ Family and TVNZ Showcase, actually all do have descriptive names, as
their content is more targeted than the channel as a whole.

Hope this makes sense !

Regards,

Eric Kearley
General Manager
Digital Services
Television New Zealand
[/quote]

>
> --
> David Zanetti <dave2@wetstring.net>
> http://hairy.geek.nz/
>


--=20
Nick Rout