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BRITCOMS:   The Salt Lake City Model
Prepared by Julius Cain

In July 2000, I traveled to KUED in Salt Lake City, UT to meet with staff about their use of Britcoms as part of their overall programming and development strategies.     What was originally intended to be a three month tracking of Britcom performance eventually became a year long look-in on the SLC Model, and I offer this study to all of KUED’s sister stations’ programmers and development professionals for their consideration.     Lisa Schibley of Innovative Data Services has assisted me greatly in the preparation of this report.    All ratings information provided in the report are courtesy of Nielsen Media Research and Innovative Data Services.   Carriage information was gleaned from PubTV Online. 

Special thanks go to all the extremely talented and very helpful professionals at KUED who graciously gave of their time to help me understand how the SLC Model came into being and how it presently works.   So kudos go to:

As much as possible, I am going to segment what follows into programming and development issues.   However, as was made very clear to me by everyone at KUED, all related departments must buy in on this concept fully if it is to work to peak efficiency.    And it was very clear to me during my visit that all members of the above named choir were singing from the same page of the songbook.  That said, let’s begin on the programming side of the ledger.  (At this point you will want to open and print out this spreadsheet that does a one-year track on the KUED late night schedule.)

For those of you who look in on overnights from Salt Lake City on anything like a regular basis, you will not be surprised at the findings in this report.   Viewers there love Britcoms and respond to them enthusiastically.    But as Scott and Brian would be sure to caution, their productivity with Britcoms was not achieved overnight and required patience during a long growth period.   As Scott says, “Britcoms are an acquired taste and viewing habits change slowly.”   The first sustained Monday through Friday night Britcom presence was with Are You Being Served?    It ran for years in the 10pm slot against local news, and then around 1990, Scott slowly expanded the M-F half-hour strip to a M-F strip/stack of three shows.    The series that get incorporated into the M-F lineup are long running and tend to be middle of the road.

Saturday night is a different, younger skewing stack with Red Green (OK, it’s not a Britcom, but it’s funny), followed by Red Dwarf.     It also varies from the other nights of the week in that the stack is only two deep here.    (I include Doctor Who numbers for anecdotal purposes only.)   This is a fine example of intuitive thinking as applied to acquisitions and scheduling.    There are simply not a lot of titles in the public television arsenals that can effectively deliver young males.   The "Two Reds" happen to be among the very best examples of these.    Those of you who might be looking to dissect the SLC Model and import only portions of the model into your own schedules would do well to consider KUED's Saturday nights closely.

Sunday nights are filled with Britcoms that again are more or less middle of the road but which exist in smaller number than their M-F relatives.   This is a logical scheduling stratagem, as a weeknight strip will burn out a 13-parter in less than three weeks.    And one of the goals of the strip/stack is to build viewer loyalty through consistent scheduling.   As you will see later in this paper, the Sunday night numbers are slightly below those of the other six nights of this week.   A reasonable posit is that these entries tend to come into and out of the schedule more frequently, and this programming turnover might lead to slight less viewer loyalty.  

In this first table you will see the actual programs by number of transmissions that comprised the three elements of the strip/stack from January 2000 through June 2001:   the M-F line-up, the Saturday night shows and the Sunday night shows.    Further below is a "report within the report" on the effective use that KUED has continued to make of Last of the Summer Wine as part of its overall scheduling strategy.

This next table, derived from the Excel spreadsheet above, shows the breakdown of ratings split first into weekday and then into Saturday and Sunday numbers.

A final table summarizes ratings for individual shows averaged from the period covered in the Excel spreadsheet above.   The tables are split into Weekday, Saturday and Sunday shows.

So, what do Britcoms as played out in the SLC Model mean for KUED?    The answers from staff included:

 *   Consistency of scheduling - leading to strong pledge and underwriting support

*   A branding element for the station - a particularly strong and potent identifier in their market overlap situation

*   KUED strongly identified as sole source provider of Britcoms

Except in those cases where prime time overrun from the NPS intrudes on the schedule, viewers are assured that during late night hours some kind of Britcom, whether it is one of the tried and true or a new schedule entry, is going to be there.    This mix of the old and new that is difficult to achieve in less telecasts per week explains KUED viewer logs recovering a nearly equal number of comments like “I watch that show all the time” and “I just saw this program for the first time.”    And do they watch.    Scott tells me that it is not unusual in any given sweeps period to have 15 or more of his top 25 programs derive from the Britcom genre.   Sometimes the Britcoms run the table and occupy all 25 top slots.    And this even when one of the Indies in the market has slipped Friends and Frazier into the 10pm and 10:30pm slots, a move that Scott estimates to have had about a 10% negative effect on his Britcoms those nights.

If you opened the spreadsheet when prompted above you will see that my tracking took place over the period from July 2000 through July 2001.     The central findings from the twelve-month study:

*   Total Gross Ratings Points (GRPs) delivered by KUED primetime were 4078.   Total GRPs from KUED late night ninety-minute blocks were 2430 (adjusted as reflected at the bottom of the spreadsheet for preemptions).    This means that late night delivered 60% of the GRPs of prime time in just half the viewing hours.

*   The first half hour of late night out performed the prime time lead in on 213 of the 308 nights where the slot was not preempted.   The average quarter hour of prime time was a 1.86 while the prime lead out number was a 1.87.   The first half hour of late night averaged a 2.52 against that 1.87 lead in, an increase of 35% on average.   

*   Adjusting for just BBC distributed programs in the first half hour of late night; those titles averaged a 2.37 versus a 1.81 for lead in, an increase of 31% on average.

*   The whole week (seven day) picture for prime time and late night ratings would distill as follows:

This means that the 10PM slots increased over their lead-ins from prime by an average of 36%.    This also means that the 10:30PM slots increased over the last half hour of prime by an average of 37%

There is at least one story within the story here, and that regards Last of the Summer Wine (LOTSW).   It is an interesting sub-study if for no other reason that it illustrates two truisms from the SLC Model.   First, it takes a while for a program to find its sea legs.   One has to recall that there are a lot of LOTSW episodes.   Lots and lot of them to be technical:  over a hundred available to syndication.    One of the most difficult traits to develop as a programmer is that of patience, particularly for those of you who program in metered markets.   If the results "aren't there" in a month or so, the itchy trigger finger suggests giving a program the old heave-ho and trying something else in its place.   For their patience with LOTSW, Scott and Brian were rewarded by with solid performer over nearly the entire year.    As this is a more gently paced Britcom than the other entries, it took it a while to settle in with its core viewers.   But once those viewers found LOTSW, they certainly did not let it go.

Second, overruns from primetime (and there were lots of them where that 10pm slot was concerned) tend to bring down weekly series averages.    In the first eight weeks of the fifty weeks during which LOTSW occupied the 10pm slot, the series averaged a 1.9, a very healthy number against local news and Friends.    But in the final eight weeks of the fifty weeks, LOTSW averaged a 2.6, a 37% increase over the first two months it was in the schedule.   Similarly, during those 30 weeks when LOTSW was preempted one or more times during the week, it averaged a 2.2.    In the 20 weeks when the show was uninterrupted during the week, it averaged a 2.5, a 14% higher number than during the preempted weeks.   

   As mentioned further above, there is another happy programming story within the SLC Model in the form of their Saturday night stratagem.   The intuitive pairing of the "Two Reds” created a synergy that was measurable in terms of viewing.   Red Green during the study averaged a 3.46 rating; Red Dwarf during that same period averaged a 3.01 rating, some of the highest viewing figures the series has attained anywhere in the system.   Only Keeping Up Appearances, among the pure Britcom entries, averaged higher ratings than Red Dwarf.

Having looked briefly at the programming portion of the picture, it’s time to turn attentions to the development side of the story.    Happy results simply abound here.

At the time of our meeting in July, 2000, every single underwriting spot around the late night programs was sold out on a Rotation of Schedule (ROS) basis weeknights.     Saturday night and Sunday night programs are sold directly, and those were nearly sellouts as well.   The six underwriters who were then in the ROS were:

The ROS is sold on a 52-week contract at $12,000 per sponsor per year.   Those of you who are good at running numbers in your heads understand this quickly totes up $72,000.   There are three sponsors per spot in weeknight spots, four per in weekend spots.   Although this is an ROS (run of schedule) flight, sponsors do have some say about which slots they spots will occupy, so development liaises closely with Scott and Brian as programs rotate into and out of the schedule.   The staff is convinced that they will have no difficulty replacing any of the above sponsors should any of them choose not to extend their contracts.   This fact is reflected historically in that these slots have been sold at a 95% level over the past twelve years.  

It takes about $100k per year to “fuel” the Britcom engine in SLC.   We just above noted that underwriting of the weeknight slots generates $72k.     However, staff estimates that the Britcoms generate nearly $200k per year for KUED.    Where are those other individual income components beyond the M-F ROS?

What other development related points might be made about the SLC Model?

* While present FCC and station guidelines preclude selling true advertising spots, KUED has received a number of advertising agency calls that say that the Britcom numbers and demos could make spot sales easy on a CPM (cost per thousand) basis.    

* While pledge has reached a plateau and while pledge income is largely premium driven, the Britcoms are left intact during all pledge periods for the sake of consistency and because they represent KUED’s most-watched programs.    It is our hope within the next year that we can work closely with stations and fulfillment houses to provide new pledge incentives that can drive up the dollars raised around Britcoms.

* Staff feels that the underwriters get excellent exposure as surfing takes place across their credits from prime time lead outs and channel switches.   Beyond the exposure that the underwriters receive on air, they also receive mentions in every edition of the KUED program guide and are occasionally singled out for a half page story in that guide.    The loyalty of the underwriters certainly suggests that KUED is giving its clients what they need.   

* In two intangible areas, KUED further signals its Britcom commitments to viewers in the SLC market.   It operates a British Comedy Club and it also does a bi-annual viewer survey that consistently reflects Britcoms as a primary respondent viewing preference.

Many of you have developed very successful Britcom strategies on a local market basis, often utilizing either Saturday night primetime or Sunday late fringe for your stacks.    And there is also the very interesting model from West Virginia of long standing where Saturday mornings are home to the Britcoms.    I offer you a look at the SLC Model both because of its huge success in the Salt Lake City market and because of the concerns many of you have expressed over the years about whether PBS might seek at some point in the future to grab hold of portions of Saturday night primetime for extensions of the NPS.    There is no question that viewers across the country treasure their Britcoms on public television.    Perhaps this is a model that some of you might want to consider as an alternative or addition to your current scheduling of the Britcoms.    In any case, either Lisa Hofer or I stand ready to help you explore possibilities for this or any other Britcom models you might want to contemplate.    Don't hesitate to give us a call if we can be of assistance or answer any questions you might have regarding this study.

Julius Cain 504-866-5735
Fay Yu 212-705-9444