• The Australian, Tuesday, October 24, 2006 12 PM

Australia's $3.5 billion free TV industry is pushing hard to stop the drift of revenue to other media, recruiting retailer Gerry Harvey to help sell the benefits of advertising on the tube. Harvey, whose companies spend more than $100 million on advertising a year, appears with three other advertisers in a $5 million testimonial campaign citing the strengths of the medium.

The "Think TV" campaign was commissioned by industry body Free TV with the involvement of the three commercial networks and their regional counterparts. It follows 18 months of some of the flattest revenue figures in the mainstream media. Data from industry group CEASA showed that free TV advertising grew more slowly than that of all other mass media last year--up just 2.35%, while newspapers rose 4%, pay-TV was up 30%, and the Internet grew 60%. And in the six months of 2006, Free TV's own figures reveal that the market fell .08%.

Says Anne Parsons, chief executive of media agency MediaCom, "I think (the networks are) being realistic about structural change. It's only at the beginning, but the increasing move from analogue to digital is going to have widespread implications. Even maintaining spend will ultimately be seen as a good result for them."

Read the whole story at The Australian »