U1 is (still) looking down the tube

Private television Last fall
U1 TV has set itself seven goals. The interim results show
Last fall, the TV station U1 dared to take the risk of
TV has set off after a year and a half in the doldrums. The revamped
team not only went through a relaunch as part of a
marketing strategy, the daily marketing
Free TV program guide was launched. Furthermore, the
U1 Board of Directors set the crew fixed targets. Since then, the station
but has gone quiet again. Reason enough to ask and send U1 to the
goals set in communiqués or by U1 project manager Peter Kölbel
communicated directly.

Target 1: By the end of 2006, U1 must achieve an average market share of
3 percent, by the end of 2008 it should be 5 percent. That is
ambitious, considering that according to Telecontrol 2004, U1
reached a maximum of 0.7 percent. The current situation and whether the
relaunch is having an effect, however, nobody knows, because U1 has
at the beginning of 2005. But Peter Kölbel wants to change this. First
Negotiations took place with Publica Data (PDAG), from which
For cost reasons, however, he does not want daily figures, only quarterly ones
be raised. An offer from PDAG is still pending, according to its
Managing Director Rolf Müller confirms.

Goal 2: More people should program U1 TV on their remote control.
This is not verifiable. Nevertheless, Kölbel has evidence that the
awareness of his station increases. An example: When the
U1 breakfast television on January 19, a conversation with Caspar
Bijleveld, the director of the Papiliorama in Kerzers,
its visitor numbers rose over the following three weekends from
normal 400 to 500 to 1200 to 1300 people. "This is clearly due to the
influence of U1 TV," says Bijleveld.

Goal 3: A marketer must be found. "We did not succeed in finding a
marketer to conclude a suitable agreement," says Peter
Kölbel today. That is why U1 will organize the advertising sales itself. The
A dual strategy was launched on March 1: the previous sales manager
Werner Meier was commissioned to build up a team of five. Still
jobs for advertising salespeople are advertised on www.u1tv.ch. The team
will present the channel to agencies or customers. The second
Strategy targets trade and industry: the St.Gallen call center is now
Callworld made advertising on U1 attractive to SMEs with a "starter package":
The offer includes the production of a 30-second spot with 140
broadcasts in 14 days for 1800 francs. The cross-media version with
Program booklet Free TV Switzerland, U1 homepage and Teletext costs 2400
Francs.

Goal 4: Two million francs in sales in 2006, twice as much as
2005, can this budget target be met? At the moment it looks
did not look like it: Due to delays in marketing, U1 was in the
already 30 percent below target in the first two months of 2006, admits
Kölbel.

Nevertheless, he believes he will be "right on target" for the first cut-off date on June 30.
and "possibly even 2.5 million francs" by the end of the year
to achieve. The reason for his confidence: although advertising sales
only cooked on a small fire, it went better than expected. So
Amag now advertises on U1 instead of the German advertising windows,
says the project manager happily. And a test run with Callworld three
months generated 14 new customers, a third of them due to the
high responses, one even for 50000 francs.
Various European TV stations are also planning a cooperation for
big live events, with U1 being part of the party and thus becoming
could result in unplanned income.

Goal 5: U1 must be break-even by the end of 2008. "We will achieve this goal
possibly as early as 2007," says Kölbel. He believes that the
Operating costs that are "in the single-digit million range",
to remain at the previous level despite increased live broadcasts
can.

Objective 6: The Free TV Switzerland program guide should be published three months after the
The new program will be rolled out in other German-speaking Swiss cities after its launch in Zurich.
Three months have long since passed and expansion is a long way off.
Kölbel confirms: "Free TV will be available after the summer vacations at the earliest.
be distributed to other cities." He justifies this with the excessively long
production time currently required for the magazine, which is printed in Bratislava.
is 14 days. As a result, the TV program is never really
current. However, it should be possible to halve the lead time from May onwards,
says Kölbel. Before the launch of the booklet, Kölbel was still talking about a
lead time of "about four days", which is why the paper is "one of the
most up-to-date TV magazine". The costs for the magazine to date
Kölbel states "under one million francs".

Goal 7: Free TV must be self-supporting one year after launch. The
seems realistic if one considers the U1 communiqué of October 12, 2005
at face value. The first three weeks are fully booked, it said
there. Today Kölbel admits: Free TV has "zero income" so far
generated, but this was planned from the outset. The previous
advertisements published were therefore unpaid and were all based on
countertrade. However, with sales via call centers, the
change.

In addition, there is apparently little demand for free TV in Zurich.
The magazine has already been the subject of public ridicule via a weblog (see
Box page 17). Kölbel admits that the daily circulation
only 30000 copies, of which, however, there are still 3000 to
6000 copies remain. On the website www.freetvschweiz.ch
However, 50000 distributed copies are still reported.

After all, U1 TV has also made a program change in recent months.
Success achieved: On April 23, the station will be able to broadcast the
prestigious Prix Walo, which has helped to raise the profile and
image of U1 will undoubtedly benefit. Kölbel also announces "five
bigger things in the sports sector", two reality shows and the
Broadcasting events from sports that hardly have any space on SF
have. So the next interim balance sheet is sure to come.

"Waste of raw material"
At http://freetv.twoday.net you will find the weblog "Kein Mensch
reads Free TV", which calls for the daily full
Documenting Free TV Switzerland newspaper boxes with (cell phone) photos -
as a campaign against "unnecessary waste of raw materials", as it is called. There
under "Thou shalt not copy" there is also a link to an article
in which the author demonstrates that the free TV editorial team
copying most of her stories verbatim from Wikipedia or
without doing any minimal research on the web.

Markus Knöpfli