Last night Horse & Country TV proved that the equestrian industry is a force to be reckoned with, as it walked away with the Best Specialist Channel award at the prestigious Broadcast Digital Awards.
For the second year running Horse & Country TV were shortlisted in the Best Specialist Channel category and this year the channel saw off stiff competition from the Food Network UK and the Horror Channel to take the award at last night’s ceremony at London’s Hilton Hotel.
The Broadcast Digital Awards are held every year to celebrate the best in digital television. They are run by Broadcast magazine, the leading publication for the UK television industry. For the Best Specialist Channel category entrants are required to demonstrate innovation, creative programming and scheduling, as well as a clear appeal to the specialist audience.
H&C’s entry also focused on the success of advertising initiatives such as the recent Stud Break (dedicated ad breaks for stallion owners and stud farms) and the online strategy where 59,000 Facebook friends regularly interact with H&C.
The award continues to highlight H&C TV’s on-going popularity. Heather Killen, H&C’s Chairman commenting on the award said: “We are thrilled to win this award, which we accept on behalf of all our programming partners, producers, advertisers and sponsors, and of course, our viewers. It’s also a testament to the efforts of the H&C TV team, who have worked so hard over the past two years to give the equestrian sector the channel it deserves.”
In the same week that the shortlist was originally announced back in May, The Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB) released their Quarterly Channel Reach report for the first quarter of 2011. This showed that H&C’s average monthly reach (defined as the total number of unique individuals who watched the Channel during the period) was 588,000 whilst, across the quarter as a whole, 1,149,000 people tuned into Horse & Country TV, a 20.5% increase on Q4 2010.