Magazine opens up television slot

NZ House & Garden magazine is hoping to stay at the top of readers' minds by partnering TVNZ to create a prime-time television show.

The 16-episode series will screen on TV One from next month, in the first initiative of its type for Fairfax Magazines in New Zealand.

TVNZ has several programme partnerships but this is significant because the TV show and magazine share the same masthead and editor Michal McKay will advise on the show's content and appear in every episode.

TVNZ programme partnerships general manager Alistair Duff says similar agreements include NZ Idol and ongoing stories in Woman's Day. In this case, the publisher is helping fund production and the TV network is signing a broadcast sponsor.

Each month, the NZ House & Garden magazine content will relate to themes and topics covered in the TV programme, fronted by presenters Miriama Smith, Tony Murrell and Peta Mathias.

The project began about a year ago, after TVNZ decided to make a new lifestyle show.

Fairfax Magazines marketing manager Chris Goss said the relationship might extend to other titles, which could struggle to get noticed in a competitive and crowded magazine market. NZ House & Garden's circulation fell 7.6 per cent last year to 70,629 but Fairfax says it remains the country's top home-and-lifestyle magazine.

The "key marketing" project, including the launch of a new website and the TV series at the same time, is expensive and aims to sustain exposure for the magazine throughout the month.

"Space at checkouts is at a premium. We are a monthly title, so it's hard to always have the visibility we'd necessarily like in a retail environment," says Goss. "It just really keeps your brand and masthead out there in a wider sense. You're in a peak viewing time and it's a time when our audience are actually looking for entertainment."

The title's promotional activity, which centres on direct marketing to attract new subscribers and reward existing readers, will be retained.

"That's a really major part of the brand strategy, [which] is to offer really high value incentives for subscription," Goss says.

"All sorts of things in terms of just making your brand stand out and then really rewarding your loyalists once they have brought the magazine."

The print and broadcast mediums will be run on a complementary basis but not identical stories, to avoid eating away the magazine's readers.

"We certainly aren't giving away exactly the same story in exactly the same way," says Goss.

"I think it's giving your loyalists more of the brand that they have a strong connection with."

TV One publicist Melanya Burrows said the episodes aimed to attract viewers in the channel's core 25-54 year demographic.

There was nothing like the show screening on the network and with footage of top homes, gardens and food, it was not like previous gardening shows.

"It's much less of a how to and more of a ... look what's out there," she said.

DIFFERENT LOOK

* Fairfax Magazines is partnering TVNZ to create a NZ House & Garden 16-episode television series, fronted by presenters Miriama Smith, Tony Murrell and Peta Mathias.

* Fairfax Magazines is also launching a NZ House & Garden website and will continue its subscriber rewards direct marketing campaign.

* NZ House & Garden magazine's circulation fell 7.6 per cent last year to 70,629.