The world of (TV) branding

You might wonder why I’ve decided to look at branding for TV as a subject for research I’ll summarise here

1) TV in the UK was until the mid 1980s characterised as a ‘public good’ rather than a consumer commodity, the powerful and the good administered it and decided the rules that it should play by, strangely they were often the people who viewed it least and considered it little.

2) In the 1980s technology and a government that favoured deregulation (re -regulation?) conspired to change the rules of the game, Sky and BSB saw a new economic opportunity that could be commercialised.

3) The multiplicity of TV channels had a mixture of distinct and not so distinct programming, University Challenge moved from ITV (Granada) to the BBC, reruns of The Avengers appear on the BBC, Men Behaving Badly moved from ITV to BBC. ITV and BBC followed the Channel 4 model and moved from being a straight broadcaster/producer to a broadcaster, producer, publisher commissioner. UK Gold and similar re packaging channels became common .

4) New technology emerged that further blurred the origin of content people watched BBC content as they wished via Sky plus.

So where does ITV stand as a broadcaster and a brand – ITV play was launched as a part of a multi-channel answer to BBC and Sky offerings or was it just a method of creating a new revenue stream?
Does ITV Play fit with a historic public service broadcasters’ programming treasures such as Brideshead Revisited, World in Action or The Prisoner?

Who better to tell us than the viewer?

The research seeks to determine what the ITV Play project tells us about ITV as a brand – can it use the window of opportunity around the remaining days of bandwidth scarcity to ensure its future?

If this resonates with you in any way drop me a line at ITVPlaysurvey@btopenworld.com and I’ll be happy to consult with you, I’m particularly interested to hear from

* Viewers and participants
* People in the broadcast industry and those working on participation content,
* Brand consultants,
* And those working on regulatory issues (ICSTIS and OFCOM)