Challenge? gets a 0.3 share

[dickoon]

The Independent Television Commission is publishing today (5 August 2003) its twenty-sixth regular report on television audience share figures. Unfortunately they're only released to the nearest thousandth (ie, 0.1%) so Challenge's 0.3 could actually be anywhere between a 0.25% and a 0.35%. Nevertheless, in context, it's a very good figure, putting it well up there among the third tier of channels and meaning it has taken some notable scalps.

Removing those channels which are available by terrestrial analogue broadcast, we have:

Sky One 1.7%
Sky Sports 1 1.0%
UK Gold 0.9%
Sky News 0.7%
CBeebies 0.7%
E4  0.7%
ITV2 0.7%
UK Style  0.6%
Living 0.6%
Nickelodeon 0.5%
BBC News 24 0.4%
Boomerang 0.4%
Granada Plus 0.4%
Hallmark 0.4%
Sky Premier 0.4%
Cartoon Network 0.3%
Challenge TV 0.3%
Discovery 0.3%
Disney Channel 0.3%
Home & Leisure 0.3%
The Paramount Channel 0.3%
The Sci-Fi Channel 0.3%
Sky Sports 2 0.3%

...so on a par with the Dscovery Channel, the Disney Channel and the Sci-Fi Channel is doing really pretty well. How does GSN's audience share compare to that of the Discovery Channel, the Disney Channel and the Sci-Fi Channel in the USA, by way of comparison?

Notable scalps taken by Challenge include:
BBC 3 + BBC Choice (0.1%+0.1%)
BBC 4 0.1%
Bravo 0.2%
Eurosport 0.2%
MTV 0.2%
VH-1 0.1%

Note that while MTV itself only earns a 0.2, if you add together MTV, MTV Base, MTV Hits and MTV2, you get to 0.5. (Now I know you can't really do that - this could be a 0.16 + 0.06 + 0.06 + 0.06 which works out as a 0.34, or it could work out as a 0.66.) Ditto the Sky premium movie channels other than Sky Premier 1 all score 0.1s and 0.2s, but there are lots of them.

I think that Challenge? are going to be very happy with a 0.3, though. :-)

[uncamark]

How does GSN's audience share compare to that of the Discovery Channel, the Disney Channel and the Sci-Fi Channel in the USA, by way of comparison?

Nielsen is not free with their numbers (as would be understood for a commercial firm), but I've heard that GSN averages an 0.8.  Discovery, Disney and Sci-Fi, all of which are more firmly established, I believe do somewhat better.  In the kids market, which is all Disney cares about, they're competitive with Cartoon Network for the number 2 position (their programming also skews more towards girls, with \"Lizzie McGuire\" and \"Even Stevens,\" while CN skews towards boys, particularly with the Toonami block of anime and adventure cartoons).  Discovery sometimes shows up in the weekly top 10 of cable channels, although its sister channel TLC now appears more regularly in total households and in 18-49 demos, thanks to the success of \"Trading Spaces,\" the U.S. \"Changing Rooms.\"  Sci-Fi enjoyed a great ratings spike during the airing last winter of the Spielberg-produced miniseries \"Taken,\" but soon thereafter dropped out of the Top 10.

The important thing here, though, is carriage--while Discovery, Disney and even Sci-Fi are in pretty much every home that has cable or satellite (Discovery's in 85 million homes, Disney and Sci-Fi in 80 million homes), GSN is in only 52 million homes, which is *almost* half the number of U.S. television homes.  That puts them ahead of BBC America, Noggin or Toon Disney but still far behind the long-time established networks (and a couple, like Animal Planet and HGTV, that started at around the same time).  Discovery launched in 1986, Disney launched in 1983 as an extra-pay channel and relaunched as a basic channel in 1997, Sci-Fi launched in 1992, GSN launched in 1994.  By those standards, they have a long way to go.

And considering the fact that the UK cable/satellite market is still in the formative stages, Challenge tied for 16th in the cab/sat standings is not a bad place to be and is much better than GSN's rankings.  (For comparison, Nielsen ranks 61 cable networks and I estimate GSN as being somewhere in the second division.)

(BTW, it should be pointed out for those who don't know that the UK Bravo is much different than the U.S. Bravo--Bravo UK is a \"ladmag\" of the air (think Maxim, FHM) and would probably never consider airing a \"Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.\")

[Matt Ottinger]

And considering the fact that the UK cable/satellite market is still in the formative stages, Challenge tied for 16th in the cab/sat standings is not a bad place to be and is much better than GSN's rankings. (For comparison, Nielsen ranks 61 cable networks and I estimate GSN as being somewhere in the second division.)

Specifically, an article in USA TODAY earlier this summer said that GSN ranks 46th out of the 61 channels rated by Nielsen.  At the time, I didn't know why they were \"46th out of 61\" since there are obviously a lot more than 61 non-premium cable channels.  Leave it to Mark to answer questions he didn't even realize we were asking!

There's a thread on the GSN forum from early in our move to Invision that has more details about the article and GSN ratings.