NATIONAL POST READERS DISCOVER VIEWER'S GUIDE
By Adnews Staff
Toronto-based Discovery Channel has teamed up with National Post newspaper to distribute a complimentary issue of the channel's Viewer's Guide in the August 30 issue of the daily newspaper. The Viewer's Guide is usually distributed quarterly to 15,000 viewer's homes. This issue of the high-gloss magazine style guide will be distributed to 240,000 homes in the Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, Greater Toronto, Ottawa and Halifax markets. To promote the partnership a 60-second promo spot is running 24 times a day on Discovery Channel as well as daily on TSN. A direct mail campaign also supported the partnership. Both the direct mail piece and the 60-second promo were created in-house by Discovery Channel. According to Discovery Channel, this is the channel's most ambitious public relations partnership ever, also noting that its viewers happen to hold the same demographic as the National Post readers. The guide is published by Telemedia Communications Inc. of Toronto. Meg Pinto, senior vice-president of marketing and sales for Discovery Channel said the guide is an information piece more than a simple television guide. The next Discovery Channel Viewer's Guide will be distributed in January but it is not known if the specialty channel will team up with the daily newspaper for distribution.