TV Channel Intelligence: Methodology

The Television Channel Intelligence service is driven by IHS Screen Digest?s wide-ranging data collection and analysis systems and is based on comprehensive data about channel carriage arrangements, feeds and tiering structure. The data includes detailed statistics on the carriage arrangements for channels and groups of interest. This is combined with a revenue model based around typical discount rate card levels for multichannel carriage and affiliate fees and an advertising market share model that draws on multichannel advertising revenues and forecasts already produced by our team of advertising analysts. These revenue models, when combined with our accurate cumulative and total subscriber reach data produce comprehensive numbers on the income of individual channels and channel groups.
Group coverage
The Television Channel Intelligence service is designed to cover the major international multichannel owners. The data currently contains detailed statistics and forecasts for the television channel businesses of the following companies:

BBC
BSkyB
Warner
Chello
MGM
CBS
Sony
Viacom
UKTV
Disney
Discovery
Fox
NBC
Viasat
Turner
Channel coverage
All active channel brands of the channel groups concerned are analysed. Channels are distinguished as either High Definition (HD), Standard Definition (SD) or Three-Dimensional (3D). Plus-one (+1) channels are also detailed and analysed.
Geographic coverage
Television Channel Intelligence is designed as a complimentary service to TV Intelligence and covers the same countries and regions as the TV service. A detailed US Television Channel service is also available.
Forecasts
Forecasts are based on current carriage arrangements and do not take account of unknown future channel launches. Regular updates ensure that new carriage arrangements are picked up and forecast within a few weeks of new carriage beginning. In this way, the data always gives an accurate reflection of current income and responds quickly to changes in carriage arrangement, including change of subscriber tier or package; launch or removal from an operator?s offer, new channel launches or rebrands. Using its existing data and methodology, IHS Screen Digest can undertake custom research to model likely reach and income of a new channel launch across multiple regions based on a number of launch scenarios.

Definitions

Affiliate fee: See ?Carriage fee?.
Advertising revenue: Revenue derived from the sale of advertising on the channel concerned.
A la carte channels: single or packaged (often niche genre) channels that carry an individual subscription fee but do not fall into the traditional movie/sport-driven premium category.
Basic television: the lowest level of service available for which the customer has to pay a monthly fee.
Cumulative subscriber reach: The sum of household or subscriber reach for all carriage agreements within on a given distribution technology, country or region. Thus, if a channel is subscribed to by 10m satellite homes and 20m Digital Terrestrial Homes, the cumulative reach will be 30m.
Channel Brand (a channel) : A channel brand is the standard name of a channel. The channel brand may be customised to form distinct feeds targeting different geographies. "Disney XD" is a channel brand; "Discovery Channel" is a channel brand, but "Disney XD UK" and "Discovery Channel UK" ARE NOT brands, they are feeds.
Carriage fee: The fee paid by a pay television platform operator to a channel in order to carry that channel for its subscribers. Carriage fees are generally paid on per subscriber basis, monthly.
Channel Feed: A channel feed is a specific version of a channel, often with a distinct language and advertising stream. It may also have a distinct programme schedule from channels with the same brand name.
Extended basic television: channels or packages of channels which would in the past have been packaged in the basic tier but which have been split off and are now offered as an add-on to the basic service. Extended basic services are often themed mini-groupings of channels, thus in situations where a small and large basic option are offered, the larger basic would not be considered to be an extended basic package. Instead, both would be considered basic.
HDTV: Stands for High-Definition Television and refers to a broadcast signal with a higher resolution than current standard-definition television. The greater resolution is a factor of the number of active lines of display resolution which commonly in HD formats is either 720 or 1080 with the transmission method being either progressive frames (p) or interlaced fields (i).
Pan-regional channel: A pan-regional channel is a single feed covering multiple geographies with a single or multiple language tracks. It is distinct from a Channel Feed in that the advertising stream and schedule are always identical across all geographies.
Premium television: single or packaged of high-value channels that contain premium content and command a high customer subscriber fee. Examples would include Canal Plus, TV1000, Sky Movies.
Total revenue: Total revenue is taken to be the sum of carriage fee income and advertising income.
Unique subscriber reach: Takes account of platform overlap to sum household or subscriber reach for all carriage agreements within on a given distribution technology, country or region. Thus, if a channel is subscribed to by 10m satellite homes and 20m Digital Terrestrial Homes, but half of the satellite homes also have Digital Terrestrial the cumulative reach will be 25m.