UTV Local Community Impact

As one of Northern Ireland’s leading companies, UTV has a strong history of investing in local communities; offering resources, staff time and experience to help community organisations get ahead and meet their objectives. Such investment brings real benefits to the local community but also plays a major role in UTV staff development and enhances UTV’s position as a major employer and good corporate citizen.

What they did

In 2007 UTV Television, decided to upgrade its commitment to social action programming by introducing a hard hitting campaign putting UTV's audience at the very heart of its output across all mediums - Television, Radio and Online.

'U Can Make a Difference' was launched in October 2007 aimed at making viewers more aware of environmental issues by showing how small changes in everyday life can make a big difference to the community we live in.

‘U Can Make a Difference’ represented a huge programming commitment by UTV which started with Brian Black’s breathtaking pictures from the Arctic in Cold Comfort, backed up by nightly reports on UTV Live, two current affairs ‘Insight’ specials and daily short messages fronted by UTV presenters.

Online www.u.tv provided valuable information backing up on air broadcasts and challenging users to check their own carbon footprint.

The hard work by staff to ensure this campaign was brought to the Northern Ireland population in a way that was both interesting and interactive delivered record numbers of viewers for programming and tremendous interactivity across all platforms as ‘U Can Make A Difference’ captured the attention of the local community.

Impact

U Can Make A Difference’ programming attracted an audience of 1,423,000 viewers.
The ‘go green’ messages represented an investment in airtime of £50,000 in one week which is exceptional by commercial standards and ensured that 80% of the Northern Ireland population saw them at least once.
Such was the success of ‘U Can Make A Difference’ that UTV Television’s Managing Director has already commissioned a follow up programme on environmental issues in 2008

Finalists of the NI Local Community Impact Award 2008