TV broadcaster, programme budgeting
Situation
The French public TV group needed help in allocating its 4-year £1bn p.a. programme budget.
Approach
We assessed the historical performance of each one of the 5 state channels. Working with the Direction of Programme Resources and the Direction of Studies and Marketing, we analysed how the audience and advertising revenues versus acquiring/producing costs and programming expenses varied according to the timing and repeat cycle of when the programming is aired.
The team benchmarked this performance against competitors (both traditional and digital terrestrial television broadcasters) and identified the best practice used by European TV broadcasters in order to reduce costs whilst maintaining the audience.
We interviewed the Programme Directors of the 5 French public channels in order to identify their editorial objectives, and potential cost reduction initiatives.
We developed a budgeting model and quantified both the editorial objectives and the cost reduction potential. We also summarised the regulatory requirements in terms of investment and broadcasting, and we took them into account whilst developing two scenarii of budget allocation for the French public TV group.
Results
The findings were successfully presented to the Executive Committee.