The brand-new logo and look of the Universal Channel with the slogan "100% characters" which came into effect on Friday on MultiChoice's DStv channel 117, will place an ever bigger emphasis on shows with strong character-centric personalities, as the Universal Channel tries to broaden its reach as already the number one international entertainment channel on DStv in South Africa.
"The Universal Channel is our flagship channel from our set of channels here in South Africa and across Sub-Saharan Africa. But we're also broadcasting to more than 82 million households in more than 100 countries," said Colin McLeod, the managing director for emerging markets at Universal Networks International (UNI).
Colin McLeod visited South Africa and spoke to South Africa's press during a presentation announcing the channel brand refresh for the Universal Channel.
"In South Africa 89% of viewers say that the Universal Channel is important to them in their pay-TV subscription. So it's a great foundation for us. So we decided to take the channel to the next level."
"We spent over 12 months working with key executives within NBCUniversal internationally and also with the chairman of the cable channels, Bonnie Hammer, a guy called Lee Hunt who is an amazing brand specialist who did the entire network refresh of the USA Network in the United States, and worked very closely with us the past 12 months on Universal."
Then we also worked with a brand team in London, Red Bee Media who've done lots of great work with brands internationally. What we've done is to look at five key areas where we want to focus on the Universal Channel positioning," said Colin McLeod.
"The first is looking at the vision for the brand and what the brand values are. It's always tough to come up with something that's unique and what is a unique positioning. We're introducing new loops for the channel which is one of the most important things to get right. The key to this is how do we excite the audience?"
"We sit on DStv as a platform filled with great entertainment. That's great for us to some degree, but at the same time those other channels compete with us," said Colin McLeod.
"What we need to do is to make sure that we keep luring the audience back in. So we need to make the Universal Channel resonate with viewers. Then also what we can't live without, is the best possible content for the channel."
"So we have a relatively simple vision, which is to create a Universal Channel you want to watch with everyone, everywhere."
"It's pretty simple, but it's going to be tough. It's going to be really tough to deliver on that. We sit on this dynamic platform of DStv so we want to broaden the reach of the Universal Channel to increase audience frequency. Key to that is the positioning of the channel."
"We spent ages, ages looking at what is great entertainment. It took our own focus groups quite a few months looking at what is great entertainment? What is it resonates with audiences internationally? What do we do with the channel to give it the right positioning? When you think about great entertainment you think about great storytelling."
"Obviously you want a great storyline. You look at a compelling hook. When you think about the kind of shows that you love, whether its a crime drama or a spy story, whether its a battle or an epic movie, there is one thing in each and every TV series which brings an audience together and gives them an emotional connection and that is characters. Characters are so important to a TV show. They give the personal engagement to the viewer. "
"We are unique internationally with 'characters' with one exception which is interesting, and it's actually our sister channel, USA Network in the States. USA Network is a pretty interesting example for us in that it's the top cable entertainment channel for seven years with the biggest audiences in the States for over seven years, and that made us interested in that positioning of 'Characters welcome'."
"After we've worked with Bonnie Hammer who is the chairperson of the cable channels and USA Network we decided that that wasn't right for us, it wasn't right for the international market and '100% characters' is for us. As we look at 'characters' we will look broad. We want fully-developed, multi-layered characters for every show," said Colin McLeod.
"The new logo is much cleaner and refined for the brand. And added to it a small nick from the bottom left hand side. The nick became really important for us after we became comfortable with it. First we thought it looked like a bit was missing, but no, the nick is the piece which adds character to the logo itself. The ident is important in the idents and promos to help the logo bring the brand to viewers."
"Universal Channel shows will be character-centric and the shows we launch will be self-contained, and with a proven formulae," said Colin McLeod (top right).
"Often you find that you invest in a show. You get 10 episodes in, you get to the end of the first season. Nothing is resolved. You can't bear another season. It's not going to be like that with the Universal Channel. You can watch it absolutely any time, enjoy it, come in and watch another one. Maybe you miss the next one, you can come back and watch the next one."
"The Universal Channel will not be changing that much. The schedule has been performing very well up until now. And we're going to look at a few new additional key shows later in the year that fit with the '100% characters' positioning," said Colin McLeod.
TV with Thinus asked why the Universal Channel is changing so quickly and is spearheading the roll-out of the channel's new look globally together with a few other countries, when sister channels like E! Entertainment and Style took so long to change in South Africa where those channel rebrands lagged behind the rest of the world coming here.
"We have a schedule of transitions for the next eight or nine months internationall," explained Colin McLeod. "We had to adjust it to the best timing for each of the markets. This just worked for us for South Africa. We look at the content line-up, we look at the time of year and when the content is available, and how the audience respond. For every year there is a peak and flow across various channels. It just seemed like the right time to be doing it here."
TV with Thinus asked who the Universal Channel's target audience is since most of the shows on the channel except Fairly Legal has male leads and male lead characters. "Generally we find in the shows that we have at the moment that its more male led. But that's just the current line-up. It's not part of any strategy for a particular demographic," said Colin McLeod.
"The refreshed look looks fantastic," said Laura Mackenzie from content business development at MultiChoice.
"You bring great characters along with other great content which comes from Universal. The channel is one of the firm favourites in DStv's offering. The new look and feel is going to reward viewers even more and we look forward to many, many more years together with Universal. They're doing fantastic things for our platform with their portfolio," said Laura Mackenzie.
Editor's note: I've tried several times since 24 April; TV with Thinus made several media enquiries and waited since then, trying to secure anything besides the new Universal Channel logo from UNI and the publicists and PR people I have to work through.
I wanted to show, and work from it as reference to check my facts, the presentation Colin McLeod made, wanted to show the abridged block schedule as was shown to journalists, and show and share some of the new on-air idents and programming boards before it came into effect on 3 May. I've been unable to include or show any of that, due to unresponsiveness.
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