It's a teen thing. Oldies not wanted

Rapture TV is Lord Hollick's seven-day satellite and cable channel aimed at the clubbing generation. Richard Kilgarriff, its director of programmes, says the big boys don't know how to woo the young

Remember the excellent kids' show Why Don't You?, which began by urging its young viewers (usually in a Belfast accent) to switch off the television set and go and do something "less boring instead"? In those days "something less boring" could mean one of three things: a) Collecting plastic bread-bag tags; b) Turning your back garden into an Olympic obstacle course; or c) Making (green) marzipan vol-au-vents. So the excitement implied in the suggestion was a bit of a con.

Remember the excellent kids' show Why Don't You?, which began by urging its young viewers (usually in a Belfast accent) to switch off the television set and go and do something "less boring instead"? In those days "something less boring" could mean one of three things: a) Collecting plastic bread-bag tags; b) Turning your back garden into an Olympic obstacle course; or c) Making (green) marzipan vol-au-vents. So the excitement implied in the suggestion was a bit of a con.

But the programme proved itself ahead of its time because now, ironically, there really are better things to do with your time than watch television. Apart from the obvious outdoor distractions of free sports, film stars and the opposite sex, online activity and other PC-based pursuits are taking people of all ages away from the box.

So how does one go about inventing a proposition for a channel aimed at the very people who are busy doing something more interesting than watching television? This was the task we faced last year at Rapture Television, the satellite and cable channel owned by United News and Media and launched in November 1997 with a brief to "make television for teenagers". That brief was our first mistake. As anyone who has ever been a teenager will tell you, life changes quite a lot between the ages of 12 and 20. The audience figures in our first six months as a cable channel were testimony to our splendid isolation in the bowels of United's regional Leviathan, Anglia Television. Extra distribution and fresh blood at the end of 1998 helped us focus our creativity, and since then everything, including our ratings, has improved. All because we stopped trying to be all things to all teenagers and decided instead to target a spirit of adventure and decadence.

The long-awaited democratisation of the media through the Internet and multichannel television will reveal a world of people who cannot be categorised by their age or economic group. Instead they will express their identity through what they do and whom they choose to do it with. From ant-farms to the films of Catherine Zeta Jones, communities of interest will emerge and converge into psychographic groups, gathering around channels and portals, which filter their common interests through a television, a computer or a mobile phone.

For the purposes of listings magazines and old-school broadcasters, Rapture launched its seven-day schedule yesterday as the Clubbers Channel, but that term will never be used on screen. What viewers should see and feel through our programmes is a sense of all the things that make the clubbers' lifestyle worth living: hedonism, experimentation, risk-taking and new experience, all values that fit the Rapture acronym of Here, the title of our documentary strand and a symbol to announce our presence wherever we may be. From Bangkok to Sydney to New York and Honolulu, the world of digital film, e-mails, clubbing and travel is our communal oyster, and original content is the pearl within.

So, despite what you may read in the business pages, television is not just about boxes and decoders, television is about experience, community and mobility. A vehicle of the senses taking people where they want to be, when they want to go there, with people they want to be with, giving them something they want to see and hear, in a language they understand.

Advanced technology is merely a means of enhancing the experience of traditional television. And at the heart of this experience is content. From strong, fresh ideas a rich seam of applications can be mined, with layer after layer of complimentary yet self-sufficient media including television, the Internet and mobile telephony crossing over at various points in the viewer's mind, a kind of audiovisual lasagne, if you like. The industry buzzword, convergence, is just another way of saying, "multilayered television"; socially or technically it amounts to the same thing - shared experience of something or somewhere new.

So, rather than being under threat, television is suddenly exciting again. It is no longer a box in the corner of the living-room, but an entire world to be explored and enjoyed on a multitude of levels, just how many is up to you.

Television should not see other online activity as a threat but rather as an opportunity waiting to happen. AOL and Time Warner have become one for this very reason. Messrs Case and Levin know all too well that a portal without original content is no more than a revolving door, taking viewers in and out in one swift click of the remote control or the mouse. By embracing the benefits of more than one platform, communities of interest can begin on television and continue on other levels in the form of pictures, sound, text or all three.

Hot links between programme and channel sites will link people with the same interests to each other and develop mutual loyalties to brands and identities that will last far longer than the initial viewing experience. This can be achieved by immersing the channel in the events, lifestyles and cultural reference points of the target audience; staging and filming key events from the inside out, allowing the young viewer access to all areas of a highly attractive and appropriate people and places. For this immersion to be credible it must happen all year round, from winter sports to film festivals, club nights and concerts in the summer months. In a nutshell, the schedule planner has to synchronise the marketing, programming and production of the channel with the mental and physical calendar of the people they seek to satisfy.

Underpinning these convergent communities, reference points and technologies is a simple spirit of adventure, which must become policy for any broadcaster wishing to enjoy a lasting relationship with his or her audience. Passion for ideas and for people with ideas must set the pace as the channel evolves. With this philosophy, today's young viewers will have a good reason to stick to the channels they grow up with, whatever the shape of the box.