ID Upgrades Channel Slot, Hits NYC With Campaign

Investigation Discovery is getting out of the Witness Protection Program, leaving the anonymity of its triple-digit channel position on Time Warner Cable’s New York City lineup for the friendly confines of the low-20s. On August 19, ID will move from channel 113 to 23, bumping Turner’s TruTV. In a bid to raise awareness along Madison Avenue, the net has mapped out a three-day guerilla campaign targeting all key Gotham media agencies, an offensive ID president and general manager Henry Schleiff promised will be “a little mischievous, a little humorous.” Beginning Monday the 17th, ID agents will fan out across Manhattan, delivering dossiers stuffed with demographic data, programming descriptions and an invitation to lunch at Schleiff’s go-to eatery, Michael’s. At street level, operatives will festoon Midtown with “lost pet” posters, and actors bearing large “Where is 23?” signs will stake out the major agencies. The reveal comes the following day, when the first wave of material is replaced by the message, “Found! ID is 23.” On the third and final leg of the campaign, the postings become more explicit, reading, “Lost & Found: ID is now on channel 23.” Each element in the creative will be enhanced by an image of a magnified purple fingerprint and the Time Warner Cable logo.Schleiff said the idea is to catch the eye of younger agency talent who are already familiar with ID’s new neighbors. “You’ve got a number of young planners dancing around nets like E! and Bravo, and quite frankly that audience has never sampled ID,” he said. “This is the media capital of the world. You have to get the agency people excited. That’s TV 101.”Since assuming his new post on August 3, Schleiff has had a hand in nearly every aspect of the channel’s day-to-day operations, from development to marketing. In an interview from Discovery’s New York base camp, Schleiff said he was looking to own the criminal investigation space, in much the way that his former network, Court TV, became the go-to destination for trial coverage and justice-themed programming.“The breadth of investigation as a category is phenomenal, and I feel that we have a license to explore more interesting subject matter, be it business, entertainment, sports or history,” Schleiff said. “So much of what goes on in the world is a mystery, and we can investigate. What really happened to Amelia Earhart? Or what is perhaps the most significant business story of the century, Bernie Madoff. How did one guy manage to do so much damage?”An inveterate magazine reader, Schleiff said he scours the glossies for potential ID material. “There’s an entire arena of investigative journalism that we can benefit from…articles that appear in places like Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone that could be jumping-off points for us,” Schleiff said.Since launching in January 2008, ID has enjoyed 17 consecutive months of year-over-year, prime-time ratings gains and is the fastest-growing cable net among women 25-54, per Nielsen. Female viewers account for 60 percent of ID’s audience. All told, ID averaged 192,000 total viewers in prime time in the second quarter, an increase of 12 percent year-over-year. The network reaches 53 million U.S. households. While the ratings will improve as ID lands more distribution, a major selling point is its C3 deliveries. When live program ratings are compared to commercial ratings plus three days of DVR playback, ID retains 98 percent of its audience, tying it for fourth place among ad-supported cable nets. As Schleiff settles into his new role, he says the big channel shift brings him back to a similar move he engineered at Court TV, where he served as president and CEO from October 1998 to May 2006.“When we made move from out of the 100s to 23, it was an inflection point for Court TV, and it really changed our profile,” Schleiff said, adding that it was merely “an ironic coincidence” that ID will assume his former network’s channel slot. “When I heard that 23 was available, I smiled. But it wasn’t part of our strategic plan to go after 23.”

Convergent TV

ID Upgrades Channel Slot, Hits NYC With Campaign

Anthony Crupi

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Anthony Crupi