Communication Group awaits BDB launch plan.

Digital television licence-winner British Digital Broadcasting is

expected to review its PR arrangements for the launch of its service

next year.

A BDB spokesman said that the first priority will be to appoint a

management team. Once it is brought in, marketing and PR agency

appointments will be sorted out. But he would not comment on whether BDB

would retain its current PR agency, The Communication Group, to handle

next year’s launch.

The Communication Group was hired by BDB in February to handle PR in the

run-up to the award announcement.

Now that BDB has been awarded the licence, the next part of The

Communication Group’s brief is to launch a high-profile consumer PR

campaign to educate the public about digital terrestrial television.

’We are aiming to capitalise on the news value of the announcement,’

says The Communication Group director Gary Freemantle.

’This is a golden opportunity to demystify the whole idea of digital

television before the launch in the second half of next year,’ he

said.

The Communication Group is using both its consumer team, under

Freemantle, and its corporate team, under director Jon Aarons, to handle

the PR push.

Over the next few weeks they will be targeting technology correspondents

on newspapers and magazines, as well as a wider range of consumer

correspondents, identifying angles to aim the message at all levels of

consumers ’to excite and inform’ the public.