ARTV makes its mark on Canadian specialty landscape

The French-language specialty service ARTV, which marked its fifth anniversary last year, is getting its feet firmly planted in TV land according to CEO Marie Côté. The arts-focused specialty channel has doubled its market share from 0.7% last year to 1.4% today."It is an exceptional number for a cultural channel given the competition from other cultural channels increasing every year, and the wealth of documentaries, including profiles of painters, on the air," she said during a panel discussion at the 25th International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA), held last month in Montreal.She told Decima Reports the rise in popularity was a result of broadcasting more popular TV fiction series related to Quebec culture, introducing theme programming that's tied to current exhibitions or other topical issues, and participating in more events, such as FIFA.Also to mark its fifth anniversary, in December 2006 the channel produced and broadcast live the 21st Prix Gemeaux, the awards show recognizing the best in French-language television programming and sister event to the Gemini Awards. In 2005, Astral Media Inc.'s specialty channel Canal D, which airs documentaries and drama, broadcast the awards show live."We doubled the audience from Canal D the previous year," noted Côté, who took over as head of the channel in September 2004.The foray into the live production of a major Quebec TV event was a one-off, according to Côté, but it has sparked discussions around the channel starting a weekly show or two that would give employees the same kind of production rush. "We won't do the Prix Gemeaux again. We realize that when we do something again that has that many people involved, we won't go where we have already been but we will go further," she said. "We're looking for a show that would give us that kind of event feeling - and that is not something that you would normally do when you're an arts channel."Côté said the channel is examining doing a show linked to news events that could be live and in talk-show format. That kind of show would be a switch from the recent acquisitions the channel has been making - namely, programming that it can re-broadcast down the road."You want to do good shows that you will still be able to broadcast in 20 years, but I think you have to balance that with shows that are more reviews of events that are live and that bring a contemporary feel to the channel, and that you probably wouldn't be able to broadcast in three or four years," she noted.An example of the fictional shows introduced to ARTV is Les Belles Histories de Pays en Haut, a teleroman that began in the 1950s on Radio-Canada and lasted 14 seasons. ARTV also aired the TV series Duplessis starring Jean Lapointe when the Gomery Commission was releasing its reports. The series about the former Premier of Quebec plagued by corruption originally aired on Radio-Canada in 1977-78. "We had a lot of success because we launched that show that people had forgotten about when the Gomery Commission was in the news. People could compare the two," Côté said. "It was almost the same story as Gomery because it was about political corruption."Another example of a tie-in is ARTV's purchase of a documentary from France on an exhibition on the influence of Walt Disney on European art, currently in Montreal. "I'm quite sure after people have seen the exhibition, when we broadcast it again we will get 200,000 viewers instead of the 60,000 or 70,000 that we got two years ago when we aired it when it was first produced," stated Côté.Despite the programming throwback to an earlier age, Côté noted the audience of the channel is lowering. "When I arrived our viewers were mostly 50-plus...I'm looking for movies and fiction that will attract people between 35 and 45 - people that were going to the movies in the 1970s and 1980s," she said.The 18-29 audience has doubled in the last few years for shows like Les Belles Histories de Pays en Haut, she noted, adding that her main target is the young baby boomers.Côté isn't aiming to increase the channel's reach to 2% of the market, however, but rather looking to solidify its 1% share as additional TV channels arrive. "I want a ‘good-quality' 1% - where we create shows or series that have more depth and more quality, and we do not rely as much as we are right now on fiction," she said. "If you take out the fiction maybe we would have 1% instead of 1.4%. I think fiction is part of cinema and art, and we're presenting great TV shows, but we shouldn't rely on them."Airing the Prix Gemeaux and other old popular fiction though has helped generate awareness of the channel. Côté said that when she arrived in 2004 one in two people in Quebec had heard of the channel, but the latest survey revealed four out of five Quebecers knew of ARTV.ARTV had a rocky beginning. The first licence application for the French-language arts channel, initially called La Tele des Arts, was rejected by the commission. Radio-Canada appealed the decision to the Cabinet, which asked the CRTC to re-examine the matter.The regulator then opened the licence process to everyone; two applications were received - a slightly modified Radio-Canada one that included more partners, and a joint bid by CHUM Ltd. and Astral Media. The CRTC granted the licence to Radio-Canada and its partners in September 2000.ARTV is 37% owned by Radio-Canada, 25% by Quebec educational broadcaster Télé-Québec, 16 % by CTVglobemedia, 15% by ARTE France and 7 % by L'équipe Spectra.The CRTC has mandated that the channel be carried by Class 1 cablecos in Francophone markets on the existing discretionary tier with the highest penetration and by DTH in the package of discretionary services containing the greatest number of French-language services with a monthly wholesale rate of 55 cents.

ARTV makes its mark on Canadian specialty landscape

Broadcast | May 3, 2007

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