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Zierler Media teams with Media Icon to boost UK’s ethnic TV channels in battle for TV ratings points

image001Zierler Media, owner of ethnic TV sales agency ZMTV, is teaming with mainstream sales agency Media Icon to launch a combined sales operation. In the new operation, ethnic and adult-interest channels currently sold by ZMTV and Zierler Media will continue to be sold under the ZMTV flag with the existing management of Danny O’Sullivan and Natalie Forbes-Jones.

Zierler Media owner Gerry Zierler says: “The combination of my companies’ strong reputation and many years experience coupled with Media Icon’s BARB-rated channels and systems means a winning combination of service is now available not only to our client channels but to ad agency customers alike.

“Now that a number of ethnic channels are using BARB, our combined sales group can cater for all clients and channels, whether BARB-reported or not.”

The BARB panel of just over 5000 homes seeks to be representative of the UK’s 26m TV homes, monitoring a range of viewing devices. This provides the rating points media agencies use to trade TV but smaller channels, especially those aimed at ethnic audiences, sometimes claim that their audiences are under-represented. Cost is also an issue.

Therefore grouping such channels with those already represented on BARB makes sense. With the rapid growth in the UK’s ethnic population, currently about eight million, advertisers and their media agencies are keen to reach this audience and bundling the various channels makes life easier both advertisers and channel owners.

Andrew Pawson co-founder of Media Icon says: “We are delighted with this arrangement and the timing is excellent. There has recently been a significant landscape change at this end of the sales spectrum with advertisers and agencies waking up to the growing importance of ethnic audiences. This was underlined by the recent The New Britain report from the IPA.

“Our business now offers a blend of ethnic, sports, general entertainment and adult Interest. There has recently been a consolidation among TV sales houses which makes it easier for agencies to buy audience packages. This has helped to drive more revenue to smaller digital channels and combining Media Icon and ZMTV in this way will accelerate this trend.”

Among the channels to be represented by the new sales operation are ZMTV’s Venus TV (all south Asia markets), Prime TV (Pakistani), Phoenix CNE (Chinese), Bangla TV and Channel S (Bangladeshi).

Media Icon channels to be sold by the new sales operation include Vox Africa and SAMAA (Pakistani).

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