Category: TV

By Shailesh Kapoor

 

India “celebrated” a largely incident-free Valentine’s Day this year. In the past, Feb 14 has managed to irk the moral police, who have objected to V-Day on account of its foreign origin, as well as for the public display of affection that comes with it.

 

But despite (or probably aided by) the protests over years, Valentine’s Day has found its way into the mainstream in India.  For example, over the last three years, box office collections on V-Day increase by around 20%, despite it being a non-holiday weekday. Every year at this time, social media is abuzz with V-Day content, ranging from outright mushy to outright hilarious.

 

I scanned the telly last night to see if there was any V-Day content being offered. There wasn’t much that I could find. The odd reference or two was strictly in the passing, with no real content being woven around it. Even the most “romantic” serials on television didn’t acknowledge the day.

 

Contrast this to how television celebrates other special days or festivals. Karva Chauth gets extended coverage in many serials, with highpoints built around the festival lasting a month at times. In January, at least six serials celebrated Lohri, essentially a Punjabi festival, with such enthusiasm you would have been excused for assuming Lohri is India’s Christmas.

 

However, when it comes to “love”, the response is muted. Our cinema, targeting the college audiences as a primary segment, lapped up the V-Day opportunity many years ago. Yash Chopra filmed an entire song (Pyaar kar) in Dil To Pagal Hai in a V-Day situation back in 1997. But in television, there is little place for the young audiences. It’s ‘family wala pyaar’ that works in prime time, and V-Day doesn’t fit that box very well.

 

About four years ago, while researching several show concepts for television, I encountered the nuances of the romance genre on television. It started with the genre name itself. The word “romantic” generally inspired giggles in consumer groups, while “love story” was spoken of as a matter of fact.

 

Over time, it became apparent to me that “romantic” in India has a definite sexual connotation attached to it. It suggests physicality of love – hugging or holding hands in public, kissing and making-out. “Love”, on the other hand, is clean and pure. It is about an emotion attached to a person and a relationship. It is also about adjusting and sacrifice. Hence, two clear sub-genres exist: Romantic and love-story.

 

Several serials on leading GECs have addressed the love-story genre successfully over years. However, there have been only a few, sporadic attempts at offering romance in prime time. Star One was the flag-bearer of this genre, and that positioning proved limiting for the channel over time.

 

Housewives, a core constituent of the TV puzzle, are quite dismissive of romance as such, often branding it “outdoor wali love story”. But give them a Ram-Priya, Archana-Maanav or Sandhya-Suraj, and they are at home, literally, with the real thing: the familiar “indoor wali love story”.

 

Yes, the indoor love stories too get physical, but that’s a rare highpoint in them, than a routine. Back in 2011,about six serials were running in the ‘married but not consummated yet’ stage simultaneously!

 

We may as well leave the romance to the movies. The home-made love stories are doing just fine.

 

Shailesh Kapoor is founder and CEO of media & entertainment research and consulting firm Ormax Media. He spent nine years in the television industry before turning entrepreneur. He can be reached at his Twitter handle @shaileshkapoor

 

 

 

By Shailesh Kapoor

 

Wednesday morning will now be replaced by Thursday morning. Actually, make that early morning, or even, very early morning. For the last few years, key members of the TV industry, including its senior leadership, have been waking up at unearthly hours ranging from 4am to 6am every Wednesday. The reason: That’s the time the weekly viewership data (popularly called TRPs) is released. From this week, the cycle changes to Thursday; because of a further inclusion of smaller towns in the respondent mix.

 

I have been on the other side till 2008, and gone through the drill myself. First, you spend a sleepless night wondering when the “data” will be released. Then, you actually get the information that “data has been uploaded” (or “the data has come”, as if it was a person who rang our doorbells).

 

So you wait anxiously for another half hour, while a research executive downloads the data files and updates the software, before proceeding to do the relevant runs. These runs are then converted into long text messages (also BBM or Whatsapp messages) and circulated. An entire industry wakes up to this every week!

 

The question is: Why this early? It’s business after all. And business hours start at 9.30am or 10am across most channels as well as media agencies, the two primary subscribers to the information in question here. Shouldn’t business be conducted in business hours, unless it is earth-shatteringly unavoidable?

 

Till date, I haven’t got a convincing answer. It seems evident that there is a certain element of “addiction” in this routine. The junior execs may not enjoy it, but the more senior ones approach Wednesday mornings with a mix of glee, nervousness and intrigue.

 

In one of my channel jobs, the entire senior team stayed up all night once, because the ratings in the morning were supposed to capture the impact of some key launches on the channel in the previous week. Ironically, the guest of the evening (“data”) was late, and by the time it arrived at 7am, most of us were already home, after a long wait.

 

There is something uniquely Indian about all this. We tend to overwork ourselves, stretching work into non-business hours almost as a matter of pride. But we also spend a sizeable amount of our work time discussing cricket and film stars. We are perpetually working, always handling some crisis or an urgent matter that needs our attention. With the advent of digital devices (starting with laptops, to smartphones, to iPads), the distinction between work hours and non-work hours has blurred beyond recognition.

 

Every constituent of the TV industry, including stakeholders like production houses and knowledge partners like Ormax Media, should reflect upon this: Are we creating a “healthy” industry for the next generation of television executives in India? Would our lives really change if the “data” arrives at 9.30am, only three hours “late”?

 

I hope BARC considers this earnestly in their new design for broadcast research in India. In a country that’s trigger-happy when it comes to censorships, this is one type of censorship that I’ll really welcome: putting a ban on early morning uploads of viewership data!

 

Shailesh Kapoor is founder and CEO of media & entertainment research and consulting firm Ormax Media. He spent nine years in the television industry before turning entrepreneur. He can be reached at his Twitter handle @shaileshkapoor

 

 

 

By Shailesh Kapoor

 

Entertainment tastes vary significantly across individuals. This is evident when we discuss films with our friends and colleagues, and wonder if “something is seriously wrong with them” because they didn’t like a film we simply loved, or vice versa. This applies to television too, where a disagreement over TV serials is sufficient trigger to start a catfight amongst housewives in a research focus group.

 

Yet, there are unifier movies and serials. It is hard to find someone who didn’t like Barfi or Kahaani. At their peak, Balika Vadhu and Bade Achhe Lagte Hain had no real detractors.

 

But an area where tastes can vary significantly more than films and serials is music. There are so many distinct factors that can make people like (or dislike) a song. Some prefer fast tempo songs while others tend to like melodies. Some are lyrics-oriented while others are more tune or beat-oriented. Many have their favourite singers and composers, whose work they like instinctively. Then there’s the video of course, which is the “face” to the song and a direct influence on its appeal.

 

As if all this was not enough, there is a new variable that complicates matters even further: the buzz the song generates. Today, songs are often liked and watched for their “social value”. It is cool to be in the know of what’s creating the buzz. Not knowing the signature step from Fevicol can be social suicide, for example.

 

Potentially the most subjective job in the entertainment business, therefore, is that of a music programmer. This is the person who decides the song playlist for a music channel or a radio station. This role involves deciding which songs to play, how often and when. A movie programmer who creates the FPC (Fixed Point Chart) for a film channel at least has the support of past ratings. For a music channel, though, the ratings are largely irrelevant, given the short song duration of 2-3 minutes, which makes the ratings highly “chance-prone”.

 

Having worked closely with several music channels, I have met some very knowledgeable people in the music programmer positions. Invariably, they have sound technical knowledge of music, and have an “expert” view on a song. But incredibly, none of these individuals have the same choices. Their natural preference towards certain types of music reflects in their on-air selection. Barring the latest songs airplay, it is tough to find much in common with the playlists across channels.

 

These programmers also have to handle some undue pressures at their work. For example, the boss walking upto them and saying: “I have not seen Phir Le Aaya Dil on the channel at all. It is such a lovely song. Why are you not playing it?” Or the exact opposite: “Why are you playing Phir Le Aaya Dil so many times? Young people don’t like these classical music type of songs.”

 

This is a typical example of the “everyone knows” syndrome – A job that seems so easy that anyone can try his or her hand at it, only because who’s to tell whether it was done well or not.

 

Ironically though, the consumers do tell, in their own way. Over a period of time, consistent consumer-centric delivery of music can work wonders to the preference created for a channel or radio stations. Of course, achieving this requires investment, commitment and loads of patience.

 

But in an industry where we live by the week, patience is not much of a virtue today!

 

Shailesh Kapoor is founder and CEO of media & entertainment research and consulting firm Ormax Media. He spent nine years in the television industry before turning entrepreneur. He can be reached at his Twitter handle @shaileshkapoor

 

By Shailesh Kapoor

 

It’s that time of the year. Film awards are here by the dozen. Last weekend was particularly packed. Saturday saw the on-air telecast of Colors Screen Awards, while Zee Cine Awards were shown on Sunday, even as the ground event for Filmfare Awards (Sony) happened the same day.

 

The weekend before, The Golden Globe Awards were telecast live. The sheer contrast in the quality of event execution should shake us up deeply. I’m not even speaking about the production scale here, but of the ideas, the script and the precision of their execution. Not to speak about the categories being more logical than all the Indian awards (true even more so for the Academy Awards).

 

It is not as if the Indian award shows don’t rate well. But, we don’t have a marquee event that rates 8+. We don’t lack the talent required to produce better award shows either. But every year, at the time of International events like The Academy Awards and The Golden Globes, we, including those of us who follow Hollywood only from a distance, lament about how things should change with the Indian award shows.

 

But this is an area where one can confidently say – Things will never change. Here are ten reasons why:

1. Film stars will never arrive on time for a live red carpet that can hence end within an hour.

2. Some top stars will never stay back for the entire show. They will arrive “just in time” for their performance and / or their award.

3. Film award events will never be telecast live, as a result of 1 and 2 above.

4. Lobbying for awards will never end. Categories will continue to be created to “accommodate” stars.

5. Inane categories like Negative Role, Comic Role, Action Film, Rising Star, etc. will continue to exist, to please more stars.

6. Nominations will continue to be ad hoc, with the winner in one major award not even managing a nomination in another.

7. Acceptances speeches of technicians will be edited out of the TV versions of the events, as they are not “mass” enough.

8. New award shows will continue to mushroom because either someone sees a business model in them, or wants to be associated with glamour, even if the association comes out-of-pocket.

9. The film industry will never unite to decide that they need only one (maximum two) award shows, which they will whole-heartedly back and attend, while they ignore the rest.

10. Unless all this changes, Aamir Khan will continue to boycott Indian film awards, and Salman will not go on stage to collect his awards.

 

Never say never, said Charles Dickens. Never say never, said Justin Bieber too! But then, some things will never change anyway.

 

Shailesh Kapoor is founder and CEO of media & entertainment research and consulting firm Ormax Media. He spent nine years in the television industry before turning entrepreneur. He can be reached at his Twitter handle @shaileshkapoor

 

By Shailesh Kapoor

 

Studies from across the world suggest that 70 percent of product launches end up as “failures”. In the entertainment industry, the failure rate is even higher. Only about 20 Hindi films in a year manage to rake in profits, out of more than 200 films that are produced every year (many of which don’t even get a release). About 40 fiction programmes launched in the Hindi GEC category in 2012. Of these, 21 are already off-air, and at least six others are scheduled to go off-air in the next four weeks. Among the remaining 13, only eight can be considered as having contributed anything significant to their respective channels – a success rate of 20 percent only.

 

“Failure” is a grossly under-rated concept. We analyse “successes” in great detail. Why did this work, what clicked, what was the big insight? Learning from one success, and using that learning to create another, is an age-old method. A significant amount of our television research work involves channels commissioning us for an understanding of their competition’s successes.

 

But when it comes to failures, the general tendency is to move on. Diagnosis of a failure is not a happy task. And I don’t say this from a research perspective only, but at a wider, business level. A key aspect of failure analysis is ascertaining a “cost of failure”.

 

Let’s say a channel launched a new daily serial in a slot that was delivering 3 TVR at its peak about one year ago, but subsequently had slid to less than half of that number, warranting content replacement. Suppose the new show “fails”, settling at less than 1.5 TVR about two months post launch. The channel would have started considering a replacement already, even though they may give the new show another few weeks – one last push.

 

Assuming that the ‘one last push’ doesn’t deliver, and the show is taken off-air around six months from launch, what is the cost of failure?

 

There are various components to this cost, depending on how you look at it. These components are not “additive” in nature, i.e., some of them may represent the same monetary consideration as another, but are conceptually different.

 

1. Revenue loss: if the prime time average TVR on the channel is 2.2 TVR, then the new show operating at 1.5 TVR will operate at a 32% lower revenue number, in turn affecting the channel’s revenue by a potential 2%.

 

2. Production cost: A straightforward cost of producing the programme. For six months (130 episodes for a Mon-Fri fiction daily), this can be upto Rs. 26 crore. Of course, similar investment would be required to produce a successful show too. But then, the investment would give returns there.

 

3. Marketing cost: The 5-15 crore spent on the programme’s launch is direct sunk cost if the programme fails.

 

4. Human Resource cost: At least 3,000 hours of human resource would be invested in a programme that runs its course over six months, across departments. A large part of this time would be senior and middle management’s, who would have rather used it for quality work in the strategy or brand area.

 

5. Morale cost: Nobody speaks about this much, but there is a huge confidence dent a failure can give. It works at two levels – personal and collective. At a personal level, programming executives are likely to be most affected, being in charge of the content hands-on. But at a collective level, everyone will tend to face the low, especially the department heads. My empirical research suggests that almost 80% of department heads who quit (or being asked to quit) in the last three year in the television industry in India did so within two months of a major failure (or a string of relatively minor failures).

 

How does one put a number to the morale cost? It’s not easy, but for me, six-months pay cheque of the entire department whose head quits is a good idea. That’s what it can take for them to bounce back and work at full potential again.

 

6. Equity erosion cost: This is the most under-rated and yet the most important component of the cost of failure. And evidently, the least analyzed too. A failure, especially when it follows another one, can lead to confidence attrition amongst consumers (also the advertisers to some extent). Channels work hard to earn a loyal base of viewers for themselves. Over time, failures can disillusion these viewers and make them question their loyalty for the channel, albeit in sub-conscious ways. Unless the trend of failures is reversed, it can escalate very fast into brand rejection, when even good content stops delivering because consumers have rejected the platform at large. Imagine the opposite – when everything works so well that even an odd failure is given a generous ‘it-happens’ pardon by the viewers!

 

Benchmarking models in brand studies can convert equity scores into viewership, and hence, turnover estimates. A drop of 1% in equity can potentially cause a drop of upto 2% in the turnover over time, but also vice versa.

 

Put all this together and you realize that the cost of failure of a program is a lot more than physical cost of production or marketing. Building failure evaluation metrics can change the way we look at our failures. And hence, at our successes too!

 

Shailesh Kapoor is founder and CEO of media & entertainment research and consulting firm Ormax Media. He spent nine years in the television industry before turning entrepreneur. He can be reached at his Twitter handle @shaileshkapoor