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Lees de Nederlandstalige versie onderaan.

In these times of cross-media thinking and convergence of channels, a debate in which public television broadcaster VRT, as well as radio station Studio Brussel want to and must play a crucial role in the future, Studio Brussel comes out with a campaign that is wrong in so many ways.

In a long teasing campaign, the radio station announced the arrival of a television channel, named StuBruTV. A whole range of known actors and singers were brought up on the stage, pretending to be dismissed by StuBru as anchors for their new television network. And an extremely predictable and tedious soap (no less than 14 episodes!) about the behind-the-scenes of the new channel played with the clichés of the confused net manager and the arrogant consultant from Holland.
So far everything could be forgiven. Studio Brussel has scored some hits in the past. They cannot always be right on the spot. Yet the teasing campaign did raise our expectations about what was coming, especially since the spots were very present on television, where the unveiling of StubruTV was announced and even counted down. The mystery grew. On the net, the tension rose and the initiative received many posts on blogs and forums. A proof on itself that people today are open for a television initiative by Studio Brussel. The radio station was even contacted by many players in the media sector to talk about possible partnerships and opportunities.

The final on Sunday night couldn’t be more disappointing: StuBruTV seems to be, as predicted, nothing more than a gimmick, a fictitious television station brought to life by some witty advertising boys & girls, in order to point out that Studio Brussel is first and foremost a good radio station, and nothing else.
First of all, it means that I have swallowed their whole boring teasing campaign to eventually, at the end of it, see five minutes of television that lack any spark of imagination. Talking about an anti-climax. But most importantly, this campaign gives a completely wrong signal. In times where screens converge, where radio is consumed via podcast, tv via mobile, and phone via internet, Studio Brussel brings us a message that is both old-fashioned and completely irrelevant: that they are foremost and apparently only radio makers. While the essence of the Studio Brussel brand, carefully and cleverly built up during these last years, is all about music, a feature which is perfectly transponable to other channels, like internet (already an important channel for StuBru), mobile, podcast (in which they are leading the market), and…television. “StuBru TV is a complaint against the decreasing quality standard”, claims Dirk Domen, creative director of Duval Guillaume Antwerp, the agency responsible for the gimmick, in De Standaard. Why didn’t the agency make a strong television program around music with the same budget, that shows it can fight against the low quality standard and putting StuBru again in the market as an innovator? ,,Apparently, we put a lot of peole on the wrong foot with this”, he says a bit further. Indeed, for a moment, I thought StuBru was ahead of the curve. It’s much the opposite, so it seems. The ultimate contradiction, finally, comes from Isabelle Baele, StuBru’s net manager, proclaiming in De Standaard that she considers nevertheless to make television with Studio Brussel in the nearby future. She’s very right, but one wonders why she made this campaign in the first place?
The conclusion seems to be, as they state themselves in their (fictitious) open letter: we want to, but we can’t.

Lees hier de Nederlandstalige versie.

In deze tijden van crossmediaal denken en convergentie van verschillende kanalen, waar ook de VRT en met name Studio Brussel een leidende rol in wil en moet spelen, komt Studio Brussel met een campagne uit die op alle niveaus de bal misslaat.

In een sterk uitgerokken teasing campagne kondigde de radiozender de komst van een televisiekanaal aan, genaamd StubruTV. Bekende acteurs en zangers werden ten tonele gevoerd, die zogezegd door Studio Brussel als onvoldoende (more…)