A new breed of TV titles is shaking traditional sales. Alasdair Reid
investigates
Television guides are not often the battleground on which magazine wars
are fought and won.
Except, that is, in Germany, where a relatively new phenomenon - the
fortnightly listings guide - has sparked a price war which has pitted
three of the country’s top publishers against each other in a bloody
battle for market share.
TV Today, which instigated the price war back in the spring of this
year, appears to have gained the most out of the war, increasing its
circulation by 60 per cent year on year, according to the latest figures
from Germany’s circulation bureau, the IVW.
Launched in 1994, Gruner and Jahr’s TV Today is the youngest of the
three fortnightlies and it has also proved to be the most aggressive. On
the back of a Dm10 million (pounds 4 million) advertising campaign, TV
Today cut its price from Dm2.30 to Dm1 for one issue, then raised it
again to Dm1.80, where it has stayed ever since. Its two rivals -
Bauer’s TV Movie and Milchstrasse’s TV Spielfilm - were both taken by
surprise. It was six weeks before they decided they had to follow suit.
Harald Kunzer, the advertisement director for TV Today, says: ‘We are
very pleased with the figures. We have achieved our goal. But the sector
as a whole is the winner - it has put on more than 700,000 copies in
total. I think we would all now like to see our cover prices raised to
somewhere around Dm3 for next year.’
All three fortnightly titles increased circulation during the summer,
mainly at the expense of the weekly listings guides. But TV Today’s
circulation has continued to rise, while TV Spielfilm and TV Movie lost
some of their gains over the third quarter.
Ironically, in Bauer’s case, the rise of TV Movie has been at the
expense of its own titles, two of which are among Germany’s top three
weekly guides. Auf Einen Blick and TV Horen und Sehen, have both been
feeling the pinch, although the third of the big weekly hitters, Horzu,
relaunched during the summer and appears to have halted a circulation
slide. The sector’s problems aren’t going to go away, however.
At the root of the problem with the weeklies is that the fortnightlies
target younger, more affluent viewers by focusing on sport and Hollywood
interviews.
They also provide a fortnight’s listings information for less than half
the price of two issues of a weekly. In contrast, weekly listings guides
are essentially downmarket women’s magazines, with listings information
thrown in.
The weeklies still have a combined sale of more than 15 million, but
there are 13 of them and the graph has been on a downward slope for five
years. In the same period, the fortnightlies gained a combined sale of
more than six million and have also pulled the all important tide of
advertising revenue strongly in their direction.
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Top Titles
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Sales 3rd Q 96 Sales 3rd Q 95
(millions) (millions)
Fortnightlies
TV Today 1.158 0.722
TV Spielfilm 2.514 2.132
TV-Movie 2.659 2.309
Top three weeklies
Horzu 2.367 2.426
Auf Einen Blick 2.310 2.504
TV Horen und Sehen 1.937 2.047
Source: IVW/HMS Carat
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