You all know that I wasn't going to say anything else on this topic, but I do applaud Ross for trying something new. I wont begrudge him of that, he certainly managed to put a channel together and get it broadcast to the Nation. He took a vision and made it a reality.
Ross if you are out there somewhere, you have already proved that you can be a success, but you need to stop blaming others for your own mistakes, we did feel your pain, it was a difficult week, but things were surely about to get a whole lot better?
You had a good thing there, but it needed some work, not a lot of work, just some work. Major improvements could have been introduced slowly and over a period of time, nobody expected change to be quick; it never is! Things like chatting to the team at The Mall to find out what went wrong with the scheduling, working with them to get a better understanding of compression, and working to ensure that communication with The Mall never breaks down would have been a good starting point. Who knows, maybe you already did that? I cannot and will not make judgement there as I do not know.
Where you did go wrong though is being so public with your MD trait of blaming everyone else for the problems. You were good enough to be different from other shopping channel MDs by joining the forum, and to give you some credit, you did seem to be listening some of the time. So why suddenly stop, and why blame us (forum members) for upsetting your team?
No matter what you thought of this forum the other day, this forum and its members are quite possibly the best and biggest asset and support channel you could ever wish for. We all have one thing in common, a love and passion of Shopping Television, and you share that same interest; correct? What you have just done is effectively cut off your nose to spite your face. But all that can be forgotten and worked on, things can be put right, but only if you let that happen.
Irrespective of your ill-informed judgment you made about our so called lack of understanding (no hard feelings by the way), in my opinion, I think that we are perhaps the very people who best understand how to make things a success, and the good people over at TV Forum are also another huge asset too as they have excellent technical knowledge and fantastic graphics skills. Think of both forums as your focus group and action group, we have the ideas and we know how to put them into action. So lets do this, lets make it happen. You can't always be right, and I admit, neither can I, things can and will go wrong, but we are only human, we learn from this and progress as a result, we come back stronger! That's what the feedback was all about.
Were you wrong to launch a new channel? No! Were you wrong to imitate Bid TV? Possibly, but only if it gave the people the false impression that you were somehow linked to Sit Up. Remember, you did promise not to reincarnate Sit Up, but for reasons I will never fully understand, other than perhaps tight deadlines having to be met, you somehow did just that: copied Bid! I think even you will admit you got that bit wrong, but you made changes. So why stop there? Some of our feedback was invaluable, why didn't you hang around to get some more? Why didn't you work on rebuilding confidence and gaining that all-important trust and support? I don't think it was an impossible task, but some things needed to change, and not just with the output.
Work on your public interaction skills, or better still, don't take on that unnecessary load. You tried to be different, and you tried to demonstrate that as an MD you can be contacted directly, of course we applaud you for that, it was a good thing, but then out of the blue you ran away from that interaction. Don't do that! Come back and talk to us. We're all still here, so why aren't you? If you do want to respond to customers directly, do it, but for goodness sake stop telling them that they are wrong! If someone tells you there is an issue with the phone system, don't go all out to prove them wrong, apologise, get some details and contact them directly as a matter of courtesy. If someone questions why the broadcast is a repeat, don't go looking for an excuse, do the right thing and thank them for bringing that to your attention. If someone offers genuine feedback about the sound quality, picture quality, problems with the graphics etc, don't issue rehearsed excuses, again thank them for their interest in the channel and acknowledge that all feedback is valuable, then invite their suggestions for how to improve. Demonstrate that you care instead of issuing what could be perceived as misleading information i.e. we're in HD tomorrow! You care about your company, and you want it to be portrayed in the best possible way, but in doing so, you yourself put people off by trying to be over protective of the brand. That's only natural, but try not to react so quickly, think about the consequences before jumping in. You want that customer to leave happy, so happy they will be pleased to recommend you to others. Look at the Outlet Channel posts on facebook. Are you happy with the way the social media team are currently interacting with the public? It doesn't always look good. It does look like excuses. The same can be said about your responses to comments on this forum. They didn't always come across in the best possible way, but then I think perhaps I am guilty of that too as looking back, I was overly harsh even before the launch. I sincerely apologise if I knocked your confidence at all, but hope that you appreciate that my comments were meant to be constructive rather than seeming like criticism.
May I remind you of your first post Ross...
The Outlet Channel said:
Hi Guys. Ross here from The Outlet Channel. Don't panic we are not the reincarnation of Sit Up TV, nor do we have any past involvement! We would never dream of charging £7.99 P&P, however we have received plenty of ex Sit Up Presenters C.V's!!
The studio picture we gave Graham at ShoppingTelly.com is only part of our studio. Rather than hiring others facilities we have invested heavily in creating our own studios near Preston in Lancashire. To give you a bit of background on us....we have operated high street stores for many years across the North West and I have have always had a keen interest in Shopping TV. Watching the slow and painful death of Bid TV spurred me on to launch our new channel. A big risk in today's marketplace but I'm making a pledge to listen to feedback and not just go about it however we deem fit.
Initially the airtime slots available on Sky 682 are limited and we are airing 8pm - 9pm two nights a week but we have to start somewhere! Please support us and I welcome any feedback to my personal email address -
[email protected]. Of course I'll be a regular on the forums!
Happy Shopping Guys
Currently I, for one, feel let down by you Ross. You left the forum at the earliest possible opportunity, you didn't stick to your pledge of being a regular on the forum and listening to all feedback (well you are not here now, are you), you did more or less reincarnate Bid, admit it - it is true, and to be honest, it did come across as you going about it however you deemed fit, but only because you perhaps didn't articulate things very well at times. You left too early Ross, I feel a lot of good could've been achieved over the next few weeks, particularly if you worked closely with the forum members here, but now you have definitely lost lots of support and interest. Maybe you should come back, wipe the slate clean, and try again. There is no harm in trying, but if you do decide to do that, don't be afraid to admit to mistakes. We all make them, and surely learning from them is the most exciting bit?
Whatever happens Ross, good luck, enjoy it and please don't take things the wrong way. Hopefully we will see you on here again in the future. For the record, I only ever made comment because I was genuinely interested in your venture and its prospective future. You asked for feedback, I provided it. I was thankful for the rare and exciting opportunity to get involved a little bit by using this forum, whilst perhaps helping to shape the future of the channel.
