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Prima primed for ratings war

Revamped newscast goes head to head with rival Nova

By Victor Velek
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
February 6th, 2008 issue

Prima TV is tired of being a second or third choice. Long stuck in the lengthy shadow of its dominant rival, TV Nova, Prima is attempting to shuck its label as the country’s “other” commercial broadcaster by targeting Nova’s dominant and influential newscast, Televizní noviny.
“Over the past 12 years or so, nobody checked to see if people watch Nova [news] simply because … they haven’t had a comparable alternative,” said Pavel Zuna, Prima’s news section head, as he announced a revamp of the station’s evening news broadcast last month.
Launched Feb. 4, Prima hopes Zprávy TV Prima will be the trump card in its battle with Nova over primetime eyeballs. Prima is taking Nova head on, moving its broadcast from 6:55 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., the same time slot as Televizní noviny, the country’s most-watched television program, which attracts some 2.5 million people daily compared with Prima’s 800,000.
“It’s an attack against Nova’s most sensitive nerve,” said Jan Potůček, a media commentator at the web portal DigiZone.cz and the weekly magazine Reflex. “Although it won’t win Prima news larger audiences than Nova’s, it is going to harm Nova — and that is what Prima is striving for.”
Nova has long dominated the Czech market, raking in high advertising revenues from its 40 percent audience share. Prima’s share sits at about 20 percent, slightly behind ČT1, the flagship channel of the public broadcaster Czech Television (ČT).
Between 7 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., when Nova broadcasts a successful soap opera and ČT does its news section, there was no space for further growth, according to Zuna, who will host the newscast along with Mirka Čejková, a defecting journalist from Nova.
“We could draw no more than 100,000 or 150,000 new viewers,” Zuna said. The only way to win a larger audience was by changing time slots.
Even worse for Prima, its newscast failed to pull in viewers for the rest of the night. As the show ended, the station would lose most of its audience to Nova or ČT news. By the start of prime time at 8 p.m., Prima’s audience had to begin from scratch while Nova had 2.5 million people in its sway.
Prima has heavily invested in its attempt to lure viewers from Nova, redesigning the show’s logo and on-screen graphics, refurbishing its studio, and reshuffling its lead-in programs to the news section. Now, the American drama Desperate Housewives and the quiz show Millionaire are paving the way for Zprávy TV Prima.
Prima’s executive director, Petr Chajda, emphasized that the station is simply trying to raise its ratings in prime time and is not positioning itself against Nova or trying to be the new Nova. Despite such protests, Prima can’t seem to escape Nova’s magnetism.
Both Čejková and Zuna are former Nova anchors and icons from its recent past. Millionaire, a licensed version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, drew large audiences on Nova several years ago. Roman Šmucler, who hosts the Prima version of the show, started his TV career at Nova. Media observers like Potůček are skeptical about Prima’s strategy.
“Prima should have stuck to its well-proven family channel identity, focusing on the women’s audience,” he said. “In this segment, it grew significantly and could reach a stable audience share of about 25 percent.”
Potůček also thinks it a miscalculation to believe that higher ratings before 8 p.m. mean more eyes for prime time. Prima’s reshuffling may revolutionize the pre-primetime slots, but “after 8 it won’t change anything,” he said. “People switch channels when they see a more attractive program.”
Nova remains cool to Prima’s concerted assault and seems confident in its role as top dog.
“Nova is the market leader and it’s natural that other stations will follow it and respond to its offerings and behavior,” said Nova spokeswoman Veronika Šmítková. Last year, Nova spent 600 million Kč ($34 million) erecting a high-tech news center that allows high-definition broadcasting, prompting other stations to innovate, she added. Prima has to make do with more modest investments, Zuna said.
On Feb. 4 at 7:30 p.m., Zuna and Čejková made their Prima debut, officially beginning the ratings war. Prima pulled in 1.43 million viewers, up 60 percent compared with the previous evening, narrowing the audience gap with Nova by 400,000 viewers. Nova’s ratings plummeted by some 850,000 viewers.

Victor Velek can be reached at vvelek@praguepost.com


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