Bob Monkhouse has signed up with Carlton TV to host an entertainment
show for ITV called Bob’s Fab Ads. The one-hour, prime-time show, to be
screened next spring, will feature some of Britain’s funniest TV
commercials.
The Office of Fair Trading is to force the Disney Channel to offer
itself to cable homes that don’t subscribe to Sky TV’s premium movie
channels. Currently, a deal between Disney and BSkyB means that cable
operators can only offer the channel to subscribers who already take the
Sky movie channels. The OFT has ruled that the deal is unfair.
Premier Radio is launching its second major direct marketing campaign.
More than 500,000 leaflets are being distributed in a bid to raise
money. The mail-out comes as the station launches its new autumn
programme schedule in response to listeners’ demands for more news and
talk.
The Brighton Evening Argus has taken top honours in the Newspaper
Society’s Classified Ad Awards. The Westminster Press title was an
outright winner in four categories: in-house promotion, features
supplements and promotion of private classified columns. In addition,
the Argus was named overall winner and recipient of the prestigious
Tindle Trophy for ‘Argus Valentines’, an in-house Valentine’s Day
promotion.
Buspak is launching a new bus advertising creative award. The
presentation aims to illustrate how creative treatments from other media
can be adapted for bus advertising formats and highlights the services
Buspak offers to do this. Judging for the award will be carried out by
an independent jury of individuals from each of the major UK outdoor
advertising specialists.
The Observer’s national branding campaign moves on to posters in London
this week. The month-long activity, created by St Luke’s, will involve
new posters going up each week as the paper continues its theme of
different sections competing with each other. Media planning and buying
are through Pattison Horswell Durden.
Midland Independent Newspapers launches a classified property platform
on Teletext in the Central ITV region this week. Homeview will
incorporate continually updated week-long versions of property ads in
MIN’s newspapers, which include the Birmingham Post, Evening Mail and
Sunday Mercury.
Young newspaper readers would rather publishers raised their cover
prices or increased the amount of advertising instead of cutting the
number of pages, according to the latest Sensor survey from CIA Media-
Lab. When asked how publishers should offset newsprint price rises, 61
per cent of 15- to-24-year-olds said they would rather pagination stayed
the same but the cover price went up, while 34 per cent would prefer
fewer pages and the same cover price. More than two thirds (69 per cent)
would not mind if publishers increased advertising rather than raising
the cover price.
The Sci-Fi channel launches in the UK this week with a roster of
advertisers which includes Sega, Coca-Cola, Lego and Fox Video. The
channel is targeting itself at 16- to 44-year-old adults, with a slight
bias towards men, and is hoping to attract ‘super-innovators and early
adopters’.
Satellite dish ownership grew by 50,000 in September, according to the
latest figures from the market research company, GfK Marketing Services.
The report says that growth during the first three quarters of 1995 was
down by 13 per cent, compared with the same period last year. New
figures also show that churn - the number of homes cancelling their
satellite subscriptions - was down to its lowest level since 1991 at 3
per cent.
