Attentional Limited 2010
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© Attentional Limited 2010 AAnn AAnnaallyyssiiss ooff tthhee AAuuddiieennccee IImmppaacctt ooff PPaaggee OOnnee EEPPGG PPrroommiinneennccee A Report for Ofcom By Dr Farid El-Husseini July 2010 Non-Confidential Version 33-39 Bridge Street, Taunton, Somerset, UK, TA1 1TP Tel: +44 (0)1823 322829. Fax: +44 (0)1823 323093 1 © Attentional Limited 2010 1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ..................................................................................................................4 2. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................6 3. AN OVERVIEW OF THE PRIMARY EPGS IN THE UK MARKET ...........................................9 3.1. FREEVIEW, VIRGIN MEDIA AND SKY: THE KEY EPG FACTS ..........................................................9 3.2. CORRELATION ANALYSIS ............................................................................................................. 11 4. ASSESSING THE EVIDENCE FOR THE VIEWING IMPACT OF EPG PROMINENCE ..... 16 4.1. STATISTICAL METHODOLOGY FOR ISOLATING EPG CHANGE VIEWING IMPACTS ......................... 16 4.2. INTERPRETING & CATEGORISING OUR RESULTS ........................................................................... 18 4.3. EPG CHANGE EXAMPLES WHERE THE EVIDENCE IN SUPPORT OF A VIEWING IMPACT IS HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT .............................................................................................................................................. 22 4.4. EPG CHANGE EXAMPLES WHERE THE EVIDENCE IN SUPPORT OF A VIEWING IMPACT IS SIGNIFICANT .............................................................................................................................................. 27 4.5. EPG CHANGE EXAMPLES WHERE THE EVIDENCE IN SUPPORT OF A VIEWING IMPACT IS WEAKLY SIGNIFICANT .............................................................................................................................................. 28 4.6. EPG CHANGE EXAMPLES WHERE THE EVIDENCE, BOTH FOR AND AGAINST A VIEWING IMPACT, IS INCONCLUSIVE ........................................................................................................................................... 30 4.7. EPG CHANGE EXAMPLES WHERE THE EVIDENCE DOES NOT SUPPORT A VIEWING IMPACT.......... 32 4.8. ESTABLISHING IF EPG CHANGE INDUCED VIEWING IMPACTS ARE LIKELY TO BE PERMANENT .... 32 4.9. SOME ADDITIONAL EVIDENCE ...................................................................................................... 38 4.10. CONCLUSIONS ............................................................................................................................... 39 5. ESTIMATING THE IMPACT OF LOSING EPG PROMINENCE ............................................. 41 5.1. IMPACT ESTIMATION METHODOLOGY .......................................................................................... 41 5.2. FREEVIEW PLATFORM IMPACT ESTIMATES ................................................................................... 51 5.3. CABLE PLATFORM IMPACT ESTIMATES ........................................................................................ 54 5.4. SATELLITE PLATFORM IMPACT ESTIMATES .................................................................................. 57 5.5. ALL MULTICHANNEL PLATFORMS IMPACT ESTIMATES ................................................................ 60 5.6. ALL PLATFORMS IMPACT ESTIMATES ........................................................................................... 63 5.7. CONCLUSIONS ............................................................................................................................... 66 6. APPENDICES ..................................................................................................................................... 69 6.1. APPENDIX A: OVERVIEW TABLES FOR THE FREEVIEW, VIRGIN MEDIA AND SKY EPGS ............... 69 6.2. APPENDIX B: RELATIVE EPG PLACEMENT PERFORMANCE COMPARISON TABLES ....................... 75 6.3. APPENDIX C: SUMMARY TABLES OF EPG RESHUFFLES ANALYSED BY PLATFORM [CONFIDENTIAL AND NOT FOR PUBLICATION] ...................................................................................................................... 77 6.4. APPENDIX D: SUMMARY TABLES OF FINAL VIEWING IMPACTS INCORPORATING ALL CONFOUNDING INFLUENCES WHERE POSSIBLE [CONFIDENTIAL AND NOT FOR PUBLICATION] ................... 77 6.5. APPENDIX E: SKY EPG IMPACT CHART [CONFIDENTIAL AND NOT FOR PUBLICATION] ................. 77 6.6. APPENDIX F: ANALYTICAL OUTPUT TABLES AND CHARTS FOR EPG CHANGE EXAMPLES WHERE THE EVIDENCE IN SUPPORT OF A VIEWING IMPACT IS HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT [CONFIDENTIAL AND NOT FOR PUBLICATION] ............................................................................................................................................ 77 6.7. APPENDIX G: ANALYTICAL OUTPUT TABLES AND CHARTS FOR EPG CHANGE EXAMPLES WHERE THE EVIDENCE IN SUPPORT OF A VIEWING IMPACT IS SIGNIFICANT [CONFIDENTIAL AND NOT FOR PUBLICATION] ............................................................................................................................................ 78 6.8. APPENDIX H: ANALYTICAL OUTPUT TABLES AND CHARTS FOR EPG CHANGE EXAMPLES WHERE THE EVIDENCE IN SUPPORT OF A VIEWING IMPACT IS WEAKLY SIGNIFICANT [CONFIDENTIAL AND NOT FOR PUBLICATION] ............................................................................................................................................ 78 6.9. APPENDIX I: ANALYTICAL OUTPUT TABLES AND CHARTS FOR EPG CHANGE EXAMPLES WHERE THE EVIDENCE, BOTH FOR AND AGAINST A VIEWING IMPACT, IS INCONCLUSIVE [CONFIDENTIAL AND NOT FOR PUBLICATION] ..................................................................................................................................... 78 2 © Attentional Limited 2010 6.10. APPENDIX J: ANALYTICAL OUTPUT TABLES AND CHARTS FOR EPG CHANGE EXAMPLES WHERE THE EVIDENCE DOES NOT SUPPORT A VIEWING IMPACT [CONFIDENTIAL AND NOT FOR PUBLICATION] ..... 79 6.11. APPENDIX K: ANALYTICAL OUTPUT TABLES AND CHARTS FOR 3E ON SKY IN IRELAND [CONFIDENTIAL AND NOT FOR PUBLICATION] ............................................................................................. 79 3 © Attentional Limited 2010 1. Executive Summary As set out in the Introduction (Section 2), the objective of this report is to assess the viewing impact of EPG prominence by analysing actual examples of EPG reshuffles, and to use this evidence to generate a range of possible viewing impacts for ITV1 and Five, were they to lose their prominent page one slots and move to the bottom of the Entertainment sections on the Satellite, Cable and Freeview EPGs. In Section 3 we provide an overview of the EPGs under consideration, including details of the number of channels in the different EPG genre sections and what proportion of viewing these account for. We also investigate whether or not there is any relationship between a channel’s Share of viewing and its rank within a given EPG genre section. We find that, even when outliers are excluded, there is generally a negative correlation between a channel’s performance and its EPG positioning, whereby channels further down a given genre section generally do worse than those nearer the top. However, apart from establishing this broad fact, there is a limit to what a correlation analysis between EPG positioning and channel performance can tell us about the likely underlying causalities involved. In Section 4 we review the evidence from actual EPG movements and find that 28 of the 33 examples looked at (85%) support an argument that EPG positioning affects audience performance, 4 examples are inconclusive and 1 supports an argument that EPG positioning does not affect audience performance. On balance, the evidence therefore strongly supports the view that EPG positioning is likely to have a significant impact on a channel’s performance. Based on this evidence, we consider that if a major digital entertainment channel suffered a significant loss of EPG prominence, this would be associated with a 10-20% drop in audience Share on the Freeview platform and a 20-40% fall in audience Share on the Sky and Virgin Media platforms. In Section 5 we outline our methodology for generating a range of audience impact forecasts for ITV1 and Five resulting from a significant loss of EPG prominence. Our methodology combines the empirical evidence for our analysis of actual EPG change moves with an algorithm designed to take account of the extent to which the uniqueness of the content and overall brand strength of ITV1 and Five are likely to mitigate the viewing impact of a significant move down the EPG. This results in a number of scenario options that vary in the extent to which they are tied to the available empirical evidence, and therefore also as to how speculative they are. For Five, the range of predicted outcomes generated by the central scenarios gives a minimum performance loss of 6.5% and a maximum loss of 23.9%. For ITV1, on the other hand, the corresponding minimum predicted performance loss is close to negligible at 0.3%, with the maximum predicted loss still remaining relatively small at 2.4%. That being said, a much more speculative (though 4 © Attentional Limited 2010 not totally implausible) scenario puts the likely loss for ITV1 at between 8.4% and 16.8%. The corresponding loss under the same scenario for Five is somewhere between 13.4% and 26.8%. 5 © Attentional Limited 2010 2. Introduction Channel