In response to another slot on the Freeview platform being auctioned off, Attentional’s analysts have been looking at how much it is really worth to a channel operator, and what sort of channel could get the best value out of it.

Attentional’s UK Television Forecast predicts that the number of people in Freeview-only households will rise by a further 7.6m by the time digital switchover is complete, but these households will become increasingly skewed towards older viewers. This makes the Freeview slot less attractive to channels with a younger audience profile, as they stand to gain fewer additional viewers.

We created two hypothetical channels broadcasting on the Cable and Satellite platform, both currently averaging the same number of adult viewers and commercial impacts. One of the channels has a younger audience skew (with one third of its adult viewers being 16-34), and the other is skewed towards older viewers (with only one sixth of its adult viewers being 16-34). We then ran these hypothetical channels through Attentional’s 2012 forecasting model. The model is designed to test different hypothetical scenarios for UK television through to 2012, comparing them against a base case scenario.

If the older skewed channel were to launch on Freeview in January 2009 we estimate that it would earn an additional £26m in 2009, rising to £30m by 2012. As might be expected, the younger skewing channel shows fewer gains, with a maximum additional revenue of £20m in 2009, rising to £22m in 2012.

Our forecasts therefore suggest that, depending on audience profile, a major entertainment channel could expect to earn an additional £20 to £30m a year in advertising revenue if it launched on Freeview, with an older skewing channel likely to do significantly better than one skewed towards a more youthful audience.