Maori TV eager to build on Tua success

David Tua (left) in action against Friday 'The 13th' Ahunanya. Photo / Dean Purcell

Maori Television is celebrating its highest ratings after the David Tua fight but is hoping to sell more of a knock-out punch to advertisers come its next fight night.

Wednesday's four-hour "Tua De Force" broadcast reached 877,700 viewers - the highest-rating programme of the day across all channels - and the network has the rights to screen the heavyweight's next two fights.

This week's result capped off a month when Maori TV recorded its largest cumulative audience of 1,952,500 viewers, beating last June's record of 1.7 million.

Chief executive Jim Mather said viewers who tuned in for the first time would hopefully stay to build long-term audience growth.

"We have found that we retain many of the viewers who we attract through these special broadcasts and we expect to benefit with an increased audience base from the David Tua fights," he said.

The broadcast had 24 minutes of ads filled by 16 clients such as Demon Energy drink and multiple replays of the Multi Kai Cooker.

Technical difficulties also saw some ads interrupted before they had really started. It's a problem the broadcaster will want to sort out by the time it broadcasts Rugby World Cup games next year.

The station is fully funded by the taxpayer and not reliant on advertising revenue, but earnings are made off about four minutes of ads an hour. That income is then pumped straight back into programming, says sales and marketing general manager Sonya Haggie.

In 2008, advertising raised about $2 million, although that fell away last year because of the recession.

Ms Haggie wouldn't be drawn on how much the station made from advertising during the Tua fight but said she had hoped for higher sales.

"There were certainly lost opportunity for advertisers that didn't come on board. But don't you worry, that's definitely the message we'll be giving the industry given the ratings were outstanding."

She stressed that because MTS was not a commercial station, building an audience that would keep coming back to the channel was a higher priority than advertising.

Advertising industry consultant Martin Gillman said the ratings were terrific and the station, which is watched more in a month than any one Sky channel, should be proud of the result.

But from an advertising perspective, he believed Maori TV hadn't done enough to leverage off the fight. He estimated earnings of about $75,000, but said the channel should have targeted "blue-chip advertisers" - banks, supermarkets and big retailers.

The low number of advertisers over the four hours had the potential to annoy watchers because of repetition.

"It tends to operate just a little bit below most advertisers' radar. Generally speaking the ratings are too small to be measurable. so a lot of people don't bother."

Mr Gillman agreed with Ms Haggie that advertisers had missed an opportunity.