Posts by: MktGuru

Hob, that's one of the great mysteries of the changeover. Many also reported at the time that there was an announcement to similar effect made on GFL itself. Roopa's earlier comments on this thread only deepen the mystery about GFL and why it's not in repeats and why Jeni didn't "come back" as promised.

Well, let me submit this link for some suggestions on improvement!

[link]

Cheers.

Well, I don;t know if I'd try many of MF's attempts at cooking. So many of his dishes look very unappetising and THEN, voila, the audience just goes ga-ga for the dish. Give me a break. Tedious over-production. The tastings are simply a waste of time because we know they are phoney.

Thanks Haaitjie for your candid desciption of your experience!!

That looks like great fun Ms Wynnie. But as you are not having any luck with your current approach that would suggest to me you should try a different avenue. Approaching the TV channel is the least productive as they do not produce shows (although they do sometimes commission them)

May I suggest you put together a coherent package and send off to various production companies directly such as Optomem. Keep it professional and you'll be very surprised the repsonse you may get!

They are indeed copyrighted. The copyright holder is shown at the end of the show in the final moments of the credits. For example "Copyright 2003 Endemol SA"

You will need to get the written permission of the copyright holder for any recording, copying, retransmission, etc. regardless of purpose.

Big changes to the line-up it seems but I'm with Bazza, nothing will save the show in the long run. It's just a flawed programming concept. And why do they need so MANY presenters? It hasn't been able to develop any character because every week they keep switching around everyone.

So how many official presenters are there now? From what they say on the web, I count 6.

Well there are lots of changes with the presenters happening. I wonder how these decisions are made? It seems somewhat random or at least I cannot detect any consistency or theme with the changes.

I am looking forward to seeing Silvana. A very (very) strong personality the likes of Jeni Barnett. I wonder how the audience will react? Many also accused her of "interrupting". Mixing with sweet little TPB will be fascinating.

Boy, that's an understatement Arty: "She was not very good". I'm surprised she lasted as long as she did with all the negative reaction to her telegenics.

Her "cooking for children" spin never worked and she never showed much cooking talent at that. But it definitely was her terrible presentation skill that in the end did her in.

FINALLY!! The perfect idea for a replacement to Market Kitchen that everyone's been looking for!! That would have REAL entertainment value.

Go for it Ms Wynnie!

It looks like whatever horse you talked to has given you some dud info.

Our company does a lot of media buys for our office equipment manufacturer clients and we subscribe and have access to all the rating numbers.

Just looking at them it would appear that the arbitron numbers show that the reach of UKTVFood has steadily declined over the past year.

MickeyT I hate to dash your hopes but those numbers need to be taken with a bit of caution for 3 reasons:

1. Sampling error. In the good old days of three or four channels it was pretty easy to get a statistical extrapolation of the number of viewers. Now with all this narrowcasting it's becoming more and more treacherous. This is a problem the rating companies are trying to deal with worldwide. In the example of channels only getting an average of 50,000 viewers at any one time, just having two additional arbitron boxes tuned in to a channel can affect the estimate by tens of thousands.

2. The numbers are anomolous. These numbers indicate a doubling of viewership within a fortnight. This is absolutely unheard of in normal, non-event television. 10% increase, yes, 100%, no. I think we'll need to wait a bit before making any rash conclusions.

3. This is just a ranking report. It's really not useful to anyone and that's why it's offered for free to the public. A programme's rank has as much to do with what people aren't watching as much as what they are.

I am a subscriber to the viewing statistics and the real audited stats, where the viewership is actually followed up, won't be available for a bit more time.

BBQ, she's actually told and coached to say "as a mother". That's her marketing "position", it is her very identity created by the professionals.

In fact, such "positions" don't even have to be true. It could all be concocted, the book, the stories about the children's diet, all of it.

The fact that she says it so much is quite telling.

As with any product, don't be fooled by "market position", it's a very sophisticated science that is designed to maximise the earning potential of the celebrity and the companies that hire them.

Well for me it is #3 that really I find totally amazing.

#1 and #2 could be explained away as simple management errors that are admittedly hard to reverse.

But #3 could have been, and should have been, addressed very early on when the first feedback was being received in early February.

It really is inexplicable.

It's not that there hasn't been a whole series of suggestions on how to improve this show from people who really care and that want a quality, daily food show to complete their day.

The "live" factor is actually interesting as that alone can contribute to the sense of entertainment and fun due to the inherent "naturalness" of an unedited program, complete with gaffes, mis-speaks, errors and occassional cookery catastrophes!

These, of course, would be edited out in a programme like Market Kitchen, contributing to its "coldness" and lack of spontaneity.

Conch, that ratio wouldn't be very useful.

Coronation Street alone in its timeslot is often 2M+ and the total viewership at the 8PM timeslot sometimes surges well over 20M viewers. Variations are enormous due to season, weather, events such as we recently have experienced, etc.

Regardless, the data would show UKTVFood to be "a drop in the bucket" with the last 3 month average at 27,330 viewers at 8PM. Doesn't compare to "millions", does it!!?

Reading through this entire thread is phenomenal, the amount of support that GFL still has. I hadn't seen this thread before somehow but it certainly reinforces the hundreds of other postings eleswhere on this board.

Viewership numbers are hard facts, they really aren't manipulated as indicated earlier. This is an area that I deal with every day, it is cold hard calculations and is how advertising rates are determined.

The only manipulation I've seen is on this board where some viewers try to use "top 10" ranking as a measure of success. Whilst this does work somewhat for weekly programming on your typical networks as it quickly benchmarks relative popularity amongst single, different programs, it is TOTALLY irrelevant for a channel that has daily programs and a raft of repeats that are actually repeat twice or more on the same day. The statistics just fall apart, being in the top ten is not difficult and you'll tend to see the same show dominate the whole top 10 as its on multiple times per week.

The only valid measure of a program is total viewership and this is what determines advertising rates and what advertisers want to pay for. From the numbers that are available it would appear MK is in serious difficulty.

Anyway, regardless, I have found this whole thread absolutely chock full of great viewer feedback!!

Prodigal2, quite the missive!! I need to digest it fully but you have clearly taken the time to think this through, haven't you?

Unfortunately I am forced to agree with most of what you have said, obviously from a simple marketing angle.

Market Kitchen is essentially a "product" and the audience are "the customers". And what a terrible mismatch we have.

Customers buy because they have a need. From the comments on this board for those that need a food show at any cost, any quality it DOES seem to satisy.

Also obvious, though, is the sad fact that MK doesn't fulfil the needs of many others in the loyal UKTVFood viewing audience. This *should* be alarming to those in UKTV management.

As mentioned earlier, boiled down into a single word, the broader audience needs [wants]: ENTERTAINMENT.

This empty and dry production simply does not deliver.

Essentially that is why so many viewers are asking for GFL to be returned, for the simple enjoyment of a fun foodie program.

dustyfrg you're not wrong! That's what's so insulting to the intelligence of the viewers.

To deliberately put on "celebrity names" that do not have the proper television credentials and expect the audience to just swallow it is beyond the pale! The producers must think the viewing audience are idiots.

They are so awkward and uncomfortable it's painful. Have they ever even ad libbed one line?

It is their wooden presence that accounts for everyone's comments on how the show has no "humour" and has no "fun".

At least they have now taught MF to squint so that you can't see his eyes dart back and forth as he reads the autocue.

But for "froth on food" Yuk!! Nothing makes me send a dish back faster than some arty "foam" on the plate. eeeooo.

And, yes, as suggested elsewhere, let's slide Gary Rhodes to another slot and put GFL repeats in his place

conch, as someone who has spent their life in marketing and customer service, "fiasco" is an understatement. That UKTVFood would send a poor innocent to post a rather silly question in the midst of this tempest shows how amateurish the whole operation is.

At first I thought the commissioning of the MK programming was simply an ill-considered venture that has turned out to be an error. But the whole way in which UKTVFood seems to operate suggests serious mismanagement.

There has been literally hundreds of great suggestions from viewers WHO CARE and no apparent reaction at all. Now, they start a thread of their own and have mishandled it entirely.

They can't even explain the purpose of the censorship.

Not being that familiar with Good Food Live, except for my earlier observations about the viewer feedback, I don't feel I can add anything that hasn't already been said.

But as for Market Kitchen which I usually do watch the first few minutes, I would add my agreement to jannymac when she says it "lacks fun"

To me a cookery show MUST have an element of fun or some form of humour. When we commission a commercial, it is usually assumed the best form of humour is some type of self-depricating dialogue of some type. This brings the talent down to an equal level with the audience.

However, I get the feeling that this is asking too much from the class of presenters that have been chosen, though.

The only solution in my mind would therefore be to invite more voluble, extroverted chefs to balance out and eclipse the rather dreary presenters currently on offer.

At the end of the day [sorry], it boils down to respecting AND INVOLVING the audience to get that high level of involvement in the program that it is VERY clear Good Food Live had. This can only be done if the viewer enjoys and feels part of the programme.

I have finally got the motivation to jump in here and say my two pence worth! All of these comments, critiques and plaintiff calls are an ABSOLUTELY GOLD MINE to a marketer. My job is to TRY to get this kind of consumer feedback for my product [a line of office equipment] and we have to PAY to get anyone motivated enough to give us their opinion.

What is clearly obvious is that there is a large group of UKTVFood viewers that have what we call "high involvement". They really CARE about what they are writing about.

It actually take quite a bit of emotion and energy to bother to register and then compose a message. That is what is so impressive about the commentary...literally hundreds [if not more] of viewers have "bothered". and we have a rule of thunb that for everyone that DOES bother, there's a 1000 more that have the same opinions that don't bother.

That should be a worry to the producers of this show.

But also very impressive is the consistent feedback from such a diverse range of viewers. Whilst they all use different words to describe their anguish, they are very consistent. For those that are interested let me explain. There are wto groups of words that tend to be used over and over:


EMOTIVE: Boring, dreary, slow, wooden, patronising, dull, lifeless

DESCRIPTIVE: Contrived, incongruous, no fun, not entertaining,

Note how these words are almost synonyms! Everyone has the same gut feel about the program. This is also a dream come true to a marketer as this means that a remedy is at hand!!

IMHO, these words point to just a few tweaks to make the show far more pallatable to the broader viewership:

Eliminate the current "foodie" presenters, they're redundant to the chefs
Replace with a single professional, talented presenter
Set presenter's sole objectives to [1] keep the pace and [2] interject humour.
Remove faux props such as cafe - the audience isn't fooled by such silliness
Presenter to talk to camera - INVOLVE the audience in the programme
Have three or four people at the camera simultaneously to create "life".
Do not dwell on one dish/recipe more than 5 minutes- drifting, drifting
Remove "celebrity" - it cheapens the show and insults the audience
More casual chat and off-topic commentary to keep audience attention
Introduce humourous dialogue between presenter and chef
DO stabilise the camera to keep people focussed on the programme.


These small changes are easily scripted and they all really boil down to having respect for the audience. Involve the audience, educate the audience, talk to the audience, allow the audience to enjoy - and become "part of" - the programme.

This is how MK can have the same "high involvement" viewers than GFL had enjoyed for so many years.

IMHO.