Prime

Having regularly worked with Prime over the years, I can completely understand why they’ve given their logo a bit of a refresh.

Previously, the logo was different depending on where it was being placed.  If it was at the top of the page, then the logo would hang down with Prime sitting at the bottom of the logo like this:

If the logo was at the bottom of the page then “Prime” would be a the top like this:

You can imagine how confusing that could get and when branding is so important, it looks like those hassles have been cast aside for something more consistent.

Here is how it looks now: Continue reading »

This A3 sized card arrived from Prime this morning.  If you’re a fan of The Crowd Goes Wild and would like “elved” presenters hanging on your tree this Christmas, let us know in the comments below.

We received this brilliant piece of marketing from Prime recently, inviting us to their 2013 new season launch.

Nice way to tie in Elementary, one of the new shows they’ve picked up from their CBS deal. Continue reading »

Here’s an interesting graphic for you.  The following shows the 5+ channel share from the 16th of July to the 16th of August.

There are a couple of interesting points from this graph.  Firstly, it’s rather obvious how beneficial the Olympics were for Prime’s ratings.  They typically hover around the 5% mark most days and yet drew approximately 4 times that amount during the London Olympics.  TV One were the biggest losers with their lowest day delivering only a 13.6% share. TV2 also dipped while the impact on TV3 and Four wasn’t as big.

However, the most interesting line in this graph is the Sky one.  With exclusive, live coverage of the games, and despite being in about half of all households, there really doesn’t appear to be any impact on their share of viewers at all.

Source: Nielsen Television Audience Measurement, All 5+ Daily Share

There is more good news this morning for TVNZ7 fans as NZ On Air has committed funding, in principle, for Back Benches to run on Prime.

Back Benches looks set to live on after the demise of TVNZ7 with NZ On Air committing funding “in principle” to the programme running on Prime.

NZ On Air spokeswoman Gina Rogers said the agency was having talks with Prime about its financial contribution to the show. Continue reading »

How is it that at just before 9am on a Monday morning, there are a bunch of people complaining about how Prime’s coverage of the Olympic Games Closing Ceremony is getting further behind being live due to the interruption of advertising?

Obviously those who were paying for the privilege of being able to watch it live and uninterrupted on Sky were too busy at work, earning enough money to pay for their subscription than tweet about it.

Continue reading »

We arrived back home in New Zealand on Sunday morning to read in the Newspaper that viewers of Prime’s free-to-air broadcast of the Olympics opening ceremony were upset that it finished 45 minutes after Sky Sport’s coverage due to ad breaks.

Comments like “Having frequent ads during the first third of the main ceremony is completely and utterly shameful” were seen on twitter.

Those who had chosen not to pay for the privilege of watching the Olympic Games opening ceremony uninterrupted by advertising also complained that Prime had gone to ads just prior to the New Zealand team’s entrance into the stadium.

Let’s now contrast this to what happened in the USA where we were. Continue reading »

SKY Sport is pleased to be screening the Brother Rally New Zealand from June 22^nd across the SKY Sport channels in what will be the seventh round of the FIA World Rally Championship for 2012.

Prime is also delighted to confirm free-to-air delayed highlights from each day of competition as the world’s top rally drivers battle it out over nearly 210km of competitive stages.

Follow every twist and turn on this highly anticipated event over roads in the Auckland, Northland, Kaipara, Raglan and Te Akau. Continue reading »

Freeview were experiencing problems this afternoon with the Prime service on FreeviewHD and Freeview satellite.

A message on their Facebook page alerted viewers to the problem.

The issue, which has now been remedied by transmission provider Kordia, did not affect all receivers.

This is the fourth post in a series of analyses that we’ll be doing on the last 12 months of ratings data from the overnights. The previous posts covered the “other” channels, Four vs C4 and TV3.  Today we’re looking at Prime.

2010 (blue line) was a better year for Prime than 2011 (pink line) thanks to the Winter Olympics and the Commonwealth Games.  The highlight in 2011 was the Tri Nations game on the 6th of August.

Overall, the channel share dipped slightly from 5.7 to 4.9.  The numbers are fairly consistent across the year but the rise towards the last quarter of 2011 is due to Downton Abbey.

2012 will be interesting to watch as the Summer Olympics in London will inevitably provide a solid boost towards the end of the year.

Next up we’ll look at Sky