MxMIndia

Category: NEWS

  • The Commission has also directed that the contravening entities should 'cease and desist' from indulging in anti-competitive practices

    CCI penalizes Fast Way group MSOs Rs 8cr

    By A Correspondent

     

    The Competition Commission of India has found Fast Way Group abusing its dominance in the cable TV service in theterritoryofPunjabandChandigarhin violation of the provisions of the Competition Act, 2002.

     

    The order was passed pursuant to investigation carried out by the Director General upon information filed by M/s Kansan News Private Limited, a broadcaster of a news and current affairs TV channel known as Day and Night News, operating in the states of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Union Territory of Chandigarh.

     

    The Commission has imposed penalty on the Group entities, namely – M/s Fast Way Transmission Pvt. Ltd, M/s Hathway Sukhamrit Cable & Datacom Pvt. Ltd, and M/s Creative Cable Network Pvt. Ltd at the rate of 6 per cent of their average turnover for the last three preceding financial years. The penalty so worked out amounts to  nearly Rs8 crore.

     

    The Commission held that the Fast Way Group is having more than 85 per cent of the total subscribers in Punjab and Chandigarh, and due to this fact not only every broadcaster including the informant is dependent upon their network, even the consumers of cable TV in Punjab &Chandigarh have huge dependency on the Fast Way Group. They do not have any effective substitute to switch over to the other network. Abusing its market power, the Fast Way Group has denied the informant the opportunity for transmission of it channel on its network and thereby has effectively denied it access to the market.

     

    The contravening Multi Service Operator has been directed to deposit the penalty amount within 90 days. The Commission has also directed that the contravening entities should ‘cease and desist’ from indulging in anti-competitive practices which have the effect of denial of market access as discussed in the order.

     

  • While Dainik Bhaskar has achieved 136 million page views, Divya Bhaskar has 61 million to its credit

    Bhaskar digital biz nets 200 mn page views

    By A Correspondent

     

    The Dainik Bhaskar digital business has achieved 200 million page views (PVs) and to commemorate their success, the group had noted filmmaker Ekta Kapoor visit their Noida office and participate in the cake-cutting ceremony with Pawan Agarwal, Director and Promoter, Dainik Bhaskar Group, Gyan Gupta, CEO, Dainik Bhaskar Digital Business, Harrish M Bhatia, CEO, My FM and employees.

     

    Highly impressed with the wide digital reach of the Dainik Bhaskar digital business, Ms Kapoor said, “This achievement speaks volume of the interest people take in their content and how successfully they have catered to the varying demands of the readers.”

     

    With the number of people accessing their websites – Dainik Bhaskar (www.dainikbhaskar.com), Divya Bhaskar (www.divyabhaskar.com), Daily Bhaskar (www.dailybhaskar.com) and Divya Marathi  (www.divyamarathi.com) -  increasing by the day, it is obvious that their readers not only relate to their news and articles, but also find these interactive and engaging.

     

    The local language websites have found a connect with the viewers. While Dainik Bhaskar has achieved 136 million page views, Divya Bhaskar has 61 million to its credit, explaining the impact local languages leave on the minds of the readers.

     

    Since the websites’ highest traffic is generated from their cardinal sections such as local news section, e-paper, entertainment, sports, business and stories flashed on flicker, all websites are designed keeping in mind viewers’ interests.

     

    Considering the interesting blend of articles, news items, movie reviews, videos and audio links, which all websites offer, there is something substantial for everyone!  In addition to presenting the news of national and international significance in a rational way, it is planned in a way which is simple, enlightening and attention-grabbing!

     

    Commenting on the group’s accomplishment, Mr Gupta said: “We have been making constant endeavours to give our readers what they want, beyond news. Our huge growth is an endorsement of the fact that our readers are right.”

     

  • A weekly column by Paritosh Joshi, until recently CEO, Star CJ. Given his varied experience in the media and industry bodies, Mr Joshi will analyse issues concerning the business of media, measurement and research

    Paritosh Joshi: Who will cast the first stone?

    By Paritosh Joshi

     

    You’ve got to give it to Aamir Khan. Any theme he raises through his cinema, and now his television show, instantly becomes the issue du jour. Dyslexia (Taare Zameen Par), rigid education practices (Three Idiots), anguish at the political establishment (Rang de basanti), morality of terrorism (Fanaa) and now in rapid fire succession the weekly episodes of Satyameva Jayate (everything from female foeticide to medical malpractice). If the worlds of the social media are anything to go by, people in the Media & Communications industry are particularly engaged in Aamir’s weekly broadsides. Minutes after the week’s episode goes on air at 11am on Sunday, Twitter is deluged with views and opinions agreeing, and less often disagreeing, with Mr. Khan.

     

    You would imagine, looking at the stridency of tone that characterizes a lot of the chatter, that we belong to an industry that has solid claim on the high moral ground. Does it?

     

    I became involved with the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) about 6 years back. As a communication professional, I was conscious of the close and incessant scrutiny that our industry attracted and of the permanent Damocles’ Sword of statutory regulation that hung over it. The ASCI charter’s commitment to self-regulate resonated strongly with me and joining the Consumer Complaints Council, which gives force to the Self Regulatory Code of the ASCI, was a natural next step.

     

    If Awards Functions like the Abbys and Cannes are the Halls of Fame of the industry, CCC must qualify as its identification parade for the Rogues’ Gallery. Education institutions that claim their superiority, not based upon quality of education facilities they offer, but the acreage of their campus. Cooking oils that assure you of defence against cancer. Fairness potions promising enhanced employability. Malted beverages that deliver anything from height gain to better grades in the exams. A whole spectrum of beers and spirits veiled very thinly under guises of ‘Music CDs’, ‘Unique Events’, ‘Golf Equipment’ or ‘Soda’. Apparatuses that promise the benefits of a cardio workout by merely placing your feet in a harness and allowing them to shake about for a few minutes. Perfumes and deodorants that will instantly cause the user to become a sexual dynamo around whom people of the other gender experience spontaneous orgasms. Plastic beads and metal baubles that will ‘guard against the evil eye’, pacify irate planetary deities and result in a shower of wealth. Or in a particularly horrifying instance, a hospital that advertised radical hysterectomies as a permanent solution against pre-menstrual syndrome. We’ve seen them all.

     

    While some offenders are no-name businesses, the largest majority are big and prominent businesses that we all hold in high esteem. Indeed, we must look well beyond the brand owners to understand the circle of culpable accessories that enable the offending communication to reach the consumer. The creative work originates in an advertising agency. A marketing team approves it for release. A media agency sets up a media schedule. Multiple media outlets finally convey it to the consumer. In many cases, all the organisations that are involved through this value chain are members of the Advertising Standards Council by virtue of which they are presumably committed to the ASCI Code. While the complaint is made and upheld against the brand owner, the actual burden of guilt correctly lies with all the accessories that participated in the process.

     

    Interestingly, whenever the issue of legally dodgy, false, misleading or vulgar advertising crop in professional discourse, the ASCI is indicted forthwith, for its abject failure in bringing the perpetrators to book. Of recent days, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs has joined the chorus, promising a ‘National Consumer Protection Agency’ aka the other NCPA, to become the consumer’s paladin against advertising mischief. Apparently the phrase ‘Self-regulation’ is indecipherable to the average communication industry professional.

     

    Self-regulation begins by a body representing all stakeholders in a particular context agreeing to a code of ethical practice. This code is then widely shared with all stakeholders so that they may understand and assimilate its letter and spirit. Once this has been done, self-regulation transfers the burden of compliance upon the practitioner. The overseeing authority is not a policeman. It is a conscience keeper.

     

     

    This is an exhortation. A humble request. How clean is our own escutcheon before we pronounce moral judgment on all and sundry? Or as Aamir might say, “Apne ghirebaan mein jhaank kar dekha hai kabhi?”

    Paritosh Joshi was until recently CEO, Star CJ. He has been a marketer, a mediaperson and been a key officebearer on industry bodies. He can reached via his Twitter handle @paritoshZero

  • In Media Matrix, Paritosh Joshi discusses, analyses and deliberates on the fundamentals of key industry issues

    Paritosh Joshi: Unbundling the Living Room

    By Paritosh Joshi

     

    An erstwhile colleague was talking about the proliferation of the second television set. In her assessment, as many as 10% of all C&S homes now have more than one TV. Listen close. 10% of ~100 million homes. That’s 10 million multi-TV homes in the country. From 1 TV for every 5 viewers, the equation has changed sharply, for these 10 million homes to 1 TV for every 2.5 viewers. Evidently there will be consequences. (And as you shall soon see, it is even better (or worse) than that).

     

    Whether you look at Hindi, English or any of the languages in which TV is offered in India, there is a common architecture that defines the structure of the market. Three pillars hold it up: big and hefty General Entertainment, massive Sports (shared across language barriers by offerings only in two languages) and wildly proliferating News with lots of fragile strands. Since Sports really has no local identity, focused as it is on the national obsession with Cricket, and News offers no heft, the defining feature of TV in every language is GEC. Dig a little deeper and the content logic of the GEC genre starts to become evident.

     

    GECs got blueprinted by the late 1990s. Indeed, you could argue that the basic template was in place even long before that, in the form of Doordarshan. Homes had one TV. Most people in the family, barring the housewife, would be away from the home for educational or employment reasons for several hours a day. The family would only start to congregate in the Living Room from about 6 p.m. as the members returned from wherever the day’s chores had taken them. By 8ish, there was a full house and smart programmers would be offering up delights that everyone would lap up without discomfort or embarrassment. The stereotypical picture of the Great Indian Family sharing and bonding before the Great Indian Entertainment TV Channel would now be complete. It was almost hard to discern where the khandan on TV ended and the parivaar in the Living Room began.

     

    Anyone who lived through the late 90s and early years of this millennium will recall vividly, as the stentorian authority of Amitabh Bachchan delivering his signature ‘Namaskar! Aadab! Sat Sri Akal’ echoed through domestic hallways in over a half of our country, he would have everyone jostling to find their favourite spot before the TV dabba. Once said spot was secured, it would be squatted on until the day’s K serials and such wrapped up.

     

    While all Hindi channels picked up the simple formula of family values and ‘rona dhona’ very quickly- thereby making them all look like reduced sized copies of the industry’s 500 pound gorilla, the regional players weren’t far behind. The model was perfected in Hindi and swiftly exported to markets in all regional languages.

     

    In the meanwhile, India was getting more prosperous as the economy saw half a decade of near double-digit economic expansion. At the same time, the telecommunications revolution was well and truly upon us. Call rates for mobile telephony fell in a frenzied race to the bottom. Handsets started developing capabilities far beyond the basic voice and text and shedding the boring monochrome screen for a jazzed up colour display. More onboard memory with scope of incrementing it further by more and more capacious SD cards, faster processors and rendering engines that took blur and dullness out of the mobile desktop screen enabled altogether new consumption possibilities on the tiny (but also growing fast) cellphone screens. Other screens were entering the repertoire. A second TV was seen as a mark of upward mobility. Desktop computers were becoming indispensable particularly in middle class homes with school- or college-going youngsters.

     

    Sources of AV content were growing far beyond C&S TV with young, urban consumers discovering the forbidden joys of ‘torrents’ that had reawakened, in a new morph, the only recently exorcised Napster. And there were so many alternatives on where the content, thus secured, could be consumed. The second TV would often come attached to a DVD player, or even a gaming console both of which did a commendable job of playing content. Even the little mobile device in the pocketwas rapidly becoming powerful enough to store and play not just songs and clips, but long form entertainment sourced from friend and stranger.

     

    The tyranny of the compulsory assembly before the glowing siren in the Living Room was being challenged by sundry interlopers big and small that were leading an uprising of person specific content.

     

    Oblivious to these tectonic changes in the landscape, programmers and channel heads, with their heads still stuck firmly up their <scatology deleted> outmoded notions of the ‘One big, happy family’ continued to design and programme General Entertainment. “Hey, you can have a car of any colour you want”, they incanted, “so long as it is black”. But who was listening? The young ‘uns had already found shiny, sleek, colourful new rides that they could scoot away in.

     

    p.s. for Programmers and Channel Heads: You may not have noticed it yet, honey, but someone just unbundled the Living Room.

     

    Paritosh Joshi was until recently CEO, Star CJ. He has been a marketer, a mediaperson and a key officebearer on industry bodies. He can reached via the comments board below or his Twitter handle @paritoshZero.

     

     

  • A weekly column by Paritosh Joshi, until recently CEO, Star CJ. Given his varied experience in the media and industry bodies, Mr Joshi will analyse issues concerning the business of media, measurement and research

    Paritosh Joshi: Ratings & readerships must come with a Statutory Warning

    By Paritosh Joshi

     

    If you are reading this column with any professional interest, it is safe to assume you have done or been closely involved with one or more of the following things within the last year:

    • Sold media inventory
    • Bought media inventory
    • Planned a media schedule

     

    In any of these situations you would have to:

    • Define the target audience
    • Use widely used market research to assess and compare impact of the medium or media in consideration
    • Price the medium or media as a buyer or seller or assess its or their value for money for the advertiser’s planned media expenditure

     

    Inevitably, you would have to deal with television rating points, publication readerships, radio listenerships and the like. That’s where the fun begins.

     

    With the target audience.

     

    “Housewives SEC A and B, 5 lakh+ towns, UP,Bihar, Jharkhand”, one might say. “Men and Women, SEC A1, Top 6 metros” another might demand. Or even, “Women, SEC A1+, Mumbai and Delhi”. I have to add I am not inventing these, having heard them as specific asks or offers in situations I have been in close proximity to. To be sure, you could probably assign brands or media to all of them with not much effort. So far so good. It’s what happens next that makes no sense.

     

    Someone with access to the right research will actually produce numbers purportedly accurate to within a decimal point to size said target audience and the extent to which a medium or combination of media will reach it.

     

    This is bovine excrement, euphemistically speaking. Why, you ask?

     

    Because all media research is based on statistical sampling, not a person-by-person census of every reader, viewer or listener of show or medium. Statistical numbers are estimates. They work on the twin ideas that all large populations are distributed according to the Standard Normal Distribution, the good old Bell Curve that we are all familiar with. Put simply, the notion that in any large enough group, there are a few thin people, a few fat people and a lot of people of intermediate weight (thereby making you wonder what happened to all of us in the Media and Entertainment fraternity, or whether there’s also an ABnormal Distribution to explain it). And that if you were to draw an adequately large random sample from this normally distributed population, the sample would retain all the statistical characteristics of the population such as Mean and Standard Distribution.

     

    It can be shown that the minimum sample size required to ensure that the sample follows the behaviour of the parent population is 30. Samples of smaller size will exhibit asymmetries and other oddities of shape (things statisticians call measures of Skewness but never mind), that make them useless for drawing reasonable conclusions about their parent populations. As the sample available to extrapolate from becomes smaller, the error in extrapolation becomes larger, exponentially larger.

     

    Thereby bringing us back to the issue of ratings and readerships and such. Take readership and the Indian Readership Survey for a moment. About 67 per cent of India’s population of 1.2 billion, ~160 million households are represented by just over 2.5 lakh respondents. Put another way, every respondent represents nearly 1000 households. Things get even more interesting when you look at television metering.India’s 130 million (your guess is as good as mine on what the actual number is) are represented by ~8,000 meters.  Of course, TAM makes no claim to represent all India, so even if these 8,000 only represented the top 100 cities that have a 2011 population of 128 million or a population above the age of 4 of ~115 million people in over 20 million homes, there would still be only 1 meter in every 2,500 homes. We will get more generous and allow for the fact that TV penetration across the top 100 cities is 70 per cent. In other words out of 20 million total households, there are only 14 million TV homes. Even in this situation there is just 1 metered home in 2,000 TV owning homes.

     

    You see where this is going?

     

    As users slice and chop large aggregate populations and search for meaning in the samples that supposedly represent the segments thus generated, the available sample used to do the statistical prediction shrinks to a point where there is no predictive integrity within it. And yet, statistically naive people in every corner of our industry routinely use these frail foundations to build imposing edifices of brand and media transactions and planning.

     

    Then again, even the Taj Mahal is built on flimsy marshland that may eventually cause it to sink out of sight.

     

    So here’s the suggested Statutory Warning: “Irresponsible use of audience measurement may lead to impaired business diagnosis”.

     

    Paritosh Joshi was until recently CEO, Star CJ. He has been a marketer, a mediaperson and a key officebearer on industry bodies. He can reached via the comments board below or his Twitter handle @paritoshZero.

     

  • This week, in Media Matrix, Paritosh Joshi discovers in Singapore what a great cable system like StarHub can bring to the party!

    Paritosh Joshi: Cable on steroids

    By Paritosh Joshi

     

    This week, Media Matrix comes to you live from Singapore (ok, so ignore the hyperbole).

     

    Just last week we were expressing disappointment about the direction in which digitization appears to be headed with cable not being able to hold its own against DTH. This week, we will look at what a topflight cable system can actually bring to the party.

     

    I give you StarHub.

     

    Before someone points out that StarHub is Singapore’s monopoly cable operator and reaches over 99 per cent of all Singapore households, let me say it myself. While this certainly bestows advantages, StarHub also has to contend with a natural cap on the number of households it can service – just over 5 lakh by the way, with nothing left to expand to. For comparison, just the Mumbai (suburban) district has over 17 lakh households, lots of room for a good cable service to deliver compelling services and grow.

     

    Here is what StarHub Interactive’s landing page looks like. Just five icons but with loads of stuff tucked away under each.

     

    As you drill down, all manner of options become available. You can check the winning ticket numbers for various lotteries. You can also buy them. Under Movie Ticketing, you can find out films/screens/showtimes and also buy tickets. Under Finance, you have access to all securities and currencies traded on a range of regional and global bourses. That isn’t all.  You can set up your own portfolio, complete with buy/sell triggers, reminders and even connect to your trading account to execute orders.

     

    It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to conceive of the endless range of possibilities such a service could deliver in India. Remember that vastly more consumers are familiar with the TV ‘UI’ – the good old remote – than with the user interfaces offered by browsers and apps.

     

    Also, each of these services will find participation interest from whole categories of vendors. Financial intermediaries wanting to develop retail interest in a wide range of saving, investment and insurance products will compete to be on the platform. Every personal and domestic service provider will crave for the customer base. Banks will offer payment gateway facilities to encourage use of credit and debit cards in a more secure environment than the open internet. The nascent Indian homeshopping industry would positively lap up the possibility of concluding transactions in real time. Each of these will be an income opportunity for the cable platform operator, providing an additional B2B revenue stream and accelerating amortization of capital investment in high quality digital infrastructure.

     

    But is the cable community listening?

     

    Post Script: Regulatory Overreach

    Those who have been involved with the Television industry long enough might recall Mr. Pradeep Baijal, Chairman- TRAI from 2003 to 2006 commenting to the effect that once the last mile to the consumer’s home became competitive, there would be no case left for tariff regulation and the TRAI would switch to forbearance as it was progressively doing in its primary, telecommunication domain.

     

    What has actually happened is quite the opposite. The Authority has got ever deeper into tariff regulation. Funnily enough, the entire thrust of the regulatory exercise is in the wrong place. We will deal with what is wrong with TRAI’s television tariff regulation strategy in a subsequent piece but does anyone else share this view? Please use that comment box below. I will be waiting to hear from you.

     

    Paritosh Joshi was until recently CEO, Star CJ. He has been a marketer, a mediaperson and been a key officebearer on industry bodies. He can reached via his Twitter handle @paritoshZero.

    Media Matrix appears every Thursday. Due to an oversight, we didn’t carry it yesterday… sorry!-Ed.

     

  • Media Matrix is a weekly column by Paritosh Joshi, that started last Thursday. Given his varied experience in the media and industry bodies, Mr Joshi, until recently CEO, Star CJ, will analyse issues concerning the business of media, measurement and research.

    Media Matrix by Paritosh Joshi: Valuing audiences

    By Paritosh Joshi

     

    Media advertising has been priced based upon audiences that it reaches for a very long time. Audit Bureaux of Circulation were set up in Western Europe and North America by the early years of the 20th Century and even India’s own ABC has a hoary past, dating back to the 1930s.

     

    However, circulation audits only revealed the number of ‘revenue’ copies i.e. sold copies of a particular publication. This was not a particularly good guide to how many actually read it. Specialist publications may have sizable circulation but very few readers. Conversely, a general interest publication may appeal to many people and be shared around extensively.

     

    This was a serious deficiency. Market Research was a rapidly evolving discipline that offered a solution: readership surveys. Initially starting out as proprietary studies of individual publications, it soon became clear that for widespread use, they would need to be conducted at the industry level. Such studies, run by a ‘syndicate’ of clients have since been referred to as Syndicated Research.

     

    It was evident, even at the dawn of the age of measurement, that it was not enough to have a single number that represented the sum total of all readers. At the crudest, you would have to segregate males from females, children and teenagers from youth and adults. You would also want to discriminate on income-high, middle and low and by geography: rural or urban, state, district and town. These ‘demographic’ variables used to identify ‘segments’ have since become a staple of audience targeting.

     

    Brands and products would make specific media choices based upon the volume of a particular audience segment they delivered. Typically, the price of reaching a thousand individuals with a specific sized insertion became the basis of comparing a medium’s ‘efficiency’. This measure, variously called CPT (Cost per Thousand), CPM (Cost per Mille- mille being Latin for thousand) or simply the Mille Rate became the universal yardstick for evaluating the print media.

     

    Television began to grow in significance, first in theUnited Statesthen inEurope, after the end of World War II. Broadcast over the airwaves, television offered no ‘paid sale’ opportunity. Funding television could only be done two ways. Public broadcasting systems would be funded by the government exchequer and private broadcasters would have to earn revenue from advertising insertions. The pre-existing analogy of the Print media made it clear that television needed an audience measurement system. It was also recognized that viewers showed greater volatility than readers appeared to do, thus necessitating a much higher frequency of measuring the habit.

     

    A solution was found in asking randomly chosen viewers in a ‘panel’ to maintain a viewing diary. Diaries were collected weekly and collated to determine the ebbs and flows of viewership. Since the panel was relatively stable in composition and size, viewership was reported as a relative measure – the rating point. A rating point equals 1 per cent of the total audience. A show watched by every person on the panel would have 100 rating points. Since panels were constructed to mirror the overall population- being a representative random sample – the relative measure could be used to estimate the broader behaviour of the population. Inevitably extending the cost efficiency analogy from Print, it was only a matter of time before the cost of reaching 1 rating point began to be compared across shows. CPRP – cost per rating point – was born.

     

    And that is pretty much where the art and science of valuing audiences has rested, for over half a century.

     

    Now think for a moment about how you consume different media. There’s that television show well past your normal bedtime that compels you to stay awake until midnight – on a Tuesday. That automobile magazine with a big feature by a maverick British journalist that you spend a small fortune on every fortnight. And those news shows run by the world’s most intrusive interviewer that irritate the hell out of you but you watch with an almost masochistic regularity every night at 9. On the other hand, there are those 5 newspapers that are barely glanced at on your office desk, the daily weepies that you are forced to deal with as your spouse devours them every weekday or the fashion magazines that somehow land up in the bathroom stack. Surely there must be a difference in how they are evaluated by a media planner who somehow knows of your media habits? There should be. There aren’t.

     

    In the relentless focus on audience volume as the prime metric, we have lost sight of audience quality. Is it possible to objectively evaluate quality? Do current audience measurement systems pay adequate attention to measuring it? We will deal with these issues in Part II, next week.

     

    Paritosh Joshi was until recently CEO, Star CJ. He has been a marketer, a mediaperson and been a key officebearer on industry bodies. He can reached via his Twitter handle @paritoshZero

     

  • Introducing a new weekly column by Paritosh Joshi, until recently CEO, Star CJ. Given his varied experience in the media, as a marketer and on industry bodies, Mr Joshi will analyse issues concerning the business of media and marketing. And more!

    Introducing: Media Matrix, a new weekly column by Paritosh Joshi

    By Paritosh Joshi

     

    A young man who currently works in one of the Big Three television networks dropped by for some career advice last week. After graduating from business school, he has spent almost five years at the job, the first two in Ad Sales and the next three in Marketing. He feels like he is beginning to stagnate and has raised the issue with his boss. Boss suggested that he move back into Ad Sales.

     

    What would you advise him?

     

    If he planned to be in the broadcast industry for the long haul, say the next decade, I suggested that he stay in Marketing. If it was just the next two or three however, he was likely better off shifting back to Ad Sales.

     

    Seems cryptic? Hang on, we should soon see why.

     

    Marketing’s role at most Indian broadcasters only comes in when all aspects of the channel, show or event have already been finalized. All that remains is to build awareness of the impending launch to try and ensure the quickest possible pace of sampling among viewers. Talented creative agency is called in and briefed. Wit, emotion, action and drama are poured in and out pops a striking, often award winning, campaign. All that remains to be done is splashing out a large sum on a media plan and the job is done.

     

    If you learned your Marketing at one of the putative Universities of the discipline, P&G or Unilever or one of the beverage majors for instance, you would expect to lead, not follow the process and centre every decision at each stage on the consumer. It would probably offend you to be treated merely as a deliverer of advertising and media campaigns. Given the circumstances, you would want to shift closer to either the Content or the Ad Sales side of the business, where the action really was.

     

    Things are going to start changing. As soon as July 1, 2012 actually.

     

    For as long as we’ve had C&S TV inIndia, going on 20 years now, the biggest impediment in its expansion has been limited bandwidth due to analog delivery. With capacity of less than 70 channels delivered at indifferent resolution and scratchy audio, the biggest challenge before a channel is to get distribution at whatever cost. Once this hurdle has been negotiated, it enters a relatively limited range of options available in any given genre. The rest depends on casting as wide a content net as possible. Almost every channel tries to be all things to all viewers.

     

    Mandatory digitization arrives in the big metros on July 1. In a fell swoop, channel choice is set to grow three-fold or more. Costs of distribution should fall rather sharply, removing a significant entry barrier and opening doors for many more content providers. Inevitably, the days of every channel wanting to be ‘One size fits all’ must give way to specific consumer needs driving product design. International channels already show this precision in proposition and content. Comedy Central makes no bones about what it stands for and will stay close to the promise. Fox has a whole portfolio of well-designed channels that identify and then single mindedly go after a tightly defined benefit.

     

    And make no mistake. This is the direction where all of Indian television is headed; the era of the Marketing-led broadcasting business.

     

    Paritosh Joshi was until recently CEO, Star CJ. He has been a marketer, a mediaperson and been a key officebearer on industry bodies. He can reached via his Twitter handle @paritoshZero

     

  • He will report to Nisha Narayanan, senior vice president, projects and programming, Red FM

    Vidyut Patra is Red FM’s new Station Head-Mumbai

    By A Correspondent

     

    Red FM has appointed Vidyut Patra as Station Head for its Mumbai station. At Red FM, Mr Patra will be responsible for strengthening the revenue stream and the brand for the Mumbai station. He will report to Nisha Narayanan, senior vice president, projects and programming, Red FM.

     

    Ms Narayanan said, “Vidyut Patra has extensive experience across revenue, brand and content domains and will add immense value to the station and the brand. We are delighted to have Vidyut on board and look forward to his work at Red FM.”

     

    On his role at Red FM, Mr Patra said: “I’m very excited to come on board and given RED FM Mumbai’s history of exceptional talent and genre-defining content, I look forward to further strengthening the ‘Bajate Raho’ proposition of the brand and  the exciting times which lie ahead.”

     

    Mr Patra comes from a strong broadcasting background. He spent his last 4 years at Viacom 18 handling various responsibilities for MTV, prior to which he has been with INX Media and Star India Pvt Ltd.

     

  • Mumbai's perception only takes a further beating when you look at other factors that influence a city's brand image

    Can Brand Mumbai be revamped?

     

    By Rahul Sachitanand

     

    Rahul da Cunha

    The raid by the social service branch of the Mumbai police dominated dinner chatter at Cafe Zoe, a hip restaurant in Lower Parel a few days ago. Affluent diners whispered about the people who were stuck in the restaurant on the day of the raid, how rudely the police behaved and even made bad jokes about what to do if they should turn up again mid-meal.

     

    All this was a bit much for Rahul Da Cunha, ad man and theatre person who was having dinner at the joint recently. “Mumbai’s brand has taken a bad beating,” he complained.

     

    “The spirit and hustle that defined the city is ebbing away.” Over-reaching law enforcement tangling repeatedly with the city’s commercial capital is hardly the sole factor battering its brand. Living in a city of 15 million people – give or take a couple of million hapless immigrants – has become increasingly impossible.

     

    Narinder Nayar, chairman, of NGO Bombay First, has worked with four chief ministers and five chief secretaries, and a raft of other politicians and bureaucrats to try to rejuvenate India’s commercial capital, but has rarely seen his forum’s ideas get beyond the stage of conceptualisation. “Everyone is receptive to ideas and suggestions,” said Mr Nayar in his office in the commercial district of Nariman Point. “There are lots of ideas but the thought behind them is poor and their execution tardy.”

     

    He points to the Bandra-Worli Sea Link, initially planned as a Rs400 crore proposal to connect the suburb of Bandra to Haji Ali towards the southern tip of the city. While the sea link up to Worli in central Mumbai helps decongest some of this north-south traffic, commuters will have to slog through jams for some time more, since the second leg of this sea link has been scrapped.

     

    “Mumbai has 15 different agencies responsible for its upkeep …some are based in the city and some like the railways in Delhi and they rarely talk to each other,” said Mr Nayar. The city’s infrastructure as a result has struggled to keep pace – no new railway lines have been added to the existing network in over four decades and monorail and metro plans are behind schedule.

     

    Mumbai’s perception only takes a further beating when you look at other factors that influence a city’s brand image. For example, it has few open spaces and gardens for its inhabitants to relax in, antiquated laws, exorbitant rentals for matchbox housing and once a year during the monsoons they prepare for the worst as clogged insufficient drains usually bring India’s capital of commerce to a standstill.

     

    “We are a city living with 19th century infrastructure and 21st century population,” said Mr Nayar. While the administrators of Mumbai may seek to position it as a global business nerve centre, the likes of Shanghai, Dubai, Hong Kong and Singapore have stolen a giant march on it.

     

    Sanjay Nayar, who returned to India a decade ago – after stints in the US and Europe – to run Citibank’s India unit and then moved to private equity giant KKR, is incensed at the state of affairs.

     

    “As a city to live in, Mumbai’s reputation has crumbled,” he said. “There is little governance and the city is in total neglect.” Hobbled by two different parties controlling Mumbai and the state administration, few sweeping civic reforms have been possible and the patience of corporates is beginning to wear thin. “There is a lack of direction and conviction with the people running this city and that’s adversely affecting its perception,” he added.

     

    Some corporates have even begun to work out of Singapore and Hong Kong, even though they live in India, he claims. It is these over-the-top solutions that are hurting Mumbai’s reputation and its brand on the global stage the most.

     

    Luis Miranda, a veteran investor who lived in south Mumbai before moving to the tony suburb of Bandra, said overall the city’s no longer the same.

     

    “There is a sense of lawlessness in this city and a breakdown in civic sense everywhere,” he said. The result is that characteristics that defined Mumbai – like lifestyle and diversity have vanished. For instance, the city was always one that welcomed outsiders and despite the odds, gave them a fair opportunity to start from scratch.

     

    “This is no longer the can-do city where you can get your job done and then relax without being worried that you’ll be thrown in jail,” said Rahul Akerkar, managing director and director, cuisine of de-Gustibus, a hospitality business which runs the popular Indigo chain of fine-dining restaurants.

     

    Jacques Challes spent four years in India as managing director of cosmetics and personal care giant L’Oreal’s country operations and has seen the city evolve in that time. While he lived a cushy life in south Mumbai, he began to increasingly look forward to heading out on an Enfield motorbike to take in the Indian countryside.

     

    “I was happy as an expat, although I could understand the desperation of my Indian friends with a city that is evolving so slowly and maybe in the wrong direction,” said Mr Challes who returned to France in May this year to take up a bigger role at L’Oreal. For a multinational, the opportunity for growth in India may outweigh valid concerns pertaining to quality of life. “As long as there is growth and potential in India, people will live with these conditions,” Mr Challes admitted.

     

    Agnello Dias

    Agnello Dias, co-founder of Taproot, says the city may be paying a price for its commercial success. “Mumbai’s economic rise has resulted in its spirit being taken away,” said the long-time resident who has seen the character of the city transform over the past decade or so to a point where people have little ownership of it and therefore, take little interest in its upkeep.

     

    “Mumbai has become a cash cow for the country,” he added. “Bombay has been broken up into many Mumbais.” Mumbai is doubtless a struggling brand, and ad folk have a few suggestions on how to renew its jaded brand.

     

    Josy Paul

    According to Josy Paul, chairman & chief creative officer of BBDO, Mumbai should focus on its people, arts, culture and heritage. “Mumbai is a melting pot of talent,” he said. “People can make cities great.”

     

    Mr Paul also says that as part of a re-branding exercise, the city’s administrators can use existing natural resources to brighten brand Mumbai. At the end of the day, Mr Paul says, Mumbai is like the world’s largest piece of blotting paper, willing to absorb an astonishing amount of people. “The key to fixing Mumbai’s brand is building a sense of belonging among everyone who call the city home.”

     

    Source: The Economic Times

    Copyright © 2012, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. All Rights Reserved

    Photograph of Gate way of India: Fotocorp

     

  • This is the first big external acquisition this year for Colors, after the channel sold a large chunk of 500 films from its library to Star Network earlier in January

    Colors strikes deal with Eros to acquire 9 films @ Rs95 cr

    By Nandini Raghavendra

     

    Raj Nayak

    Colors, Viacom18’s entertainment channel, has struck an exclusive seven-to-nine year deal with Eros International to acquire a slate of nine yet-to-be-released films for around Rs95 crore, marking a return to the movie space.

     

    This is the first big external acquisition this year for Colors, after the channel sold a large chunk of 500 films from its library to Star Network earlier in January this year, as it deferred the launch of its own movie channel.

     

    Earlier this year, the channel had picked up an entire slate of 17 movies from Viacom 18 Motion Pictures, a Viacom group company.

     

    Confirming the deal, Colors chief executive officer Raj Nayak said: “The way movie prices are going we decided to take a pause. It is not viable for one channel to pick up films at those prices as we cannot amortize it across our channels. At the same time, being a leading general entertainment channel, we cannot not offer movies.”

     

    The deal is exclusive to Colors, which retains the right to syndicate the films. As for building their library again with more movies, while talks with a few independent producers to acquire more films is on Mr Nayak says price will be the deciding factor.

     

    It must above all make business sense. Which is why as a strategy, Colors has made a big shift into non-fiction programming and experimented with shows like ‘Ring Ka King,’ and the recently acquired the dance reality show, ‘Jhalak Dikhla Jaa’.

     

    While the satellite market has seen many ups and downs, it remains a huge source of income for producers and makes for as much as 20-35 per cent of a film’s recovery costs, especially the big ones. For Eros, it also reduces risk prior to release. Broadcasters who are in a race for ratings have been paying huge sums for big films.

     

    Industry insiders say, on condition of anonymity, that it is difficult to recover anything beyond Rs20 crore per movie. But the pressure to improve viewership is unrelenting. “The reality on a movie premiere is that it cannot recover more than 30 per cent of its cost; and the rest is across the years,” said Mr Nayak.

     

    Source: The Economic Times

    Copyright © 2012, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. All Rights Reserved

    Photograph: Fotocorp

     

     

     

  • The CNN veteran brings extensive experience from previous roles in the newsroom and broadcast sales team

    Ann Chu joins CNN advertising sales team in Asia

    By A Correspondent

     

    CNN announced that it has appointed Ann Chu as Director – Partner Solutions Group, CNN Advertising Sales Asia Pacific. Based inHong Kongand reporting to William Hsu, Vice President, CNN Advertising Sales Asia Pacific, Ms Chu will be responsible for generating and managing sponsorship opportunities and projects across the region.

     

    “Ann’s experience in both the newsgathering and content sales functions position her extremely well to provide our clients with first-in-class sponsorship solutions,” said William Hsu. “As the CNN ad sales team in Asia continues its solid sales performance this year, we look forward to Ann’s continued commitment to the network and our clients.”

     

    Ms Chu began her career at CNN in the newsroom more than a decade ago, writing and producing for award winning programs including CNN Today and BizAsia. She was most recently the Executive Director of CNN Broadcast Sales and Affiliate Relations, responsible for managing sales and support of the network’s broadcast services to networks across the region. Ms Chu was instrumental in driving the expansion of the network’s affiliate training and support services across both traditional and new media platforms, including the development of a web-based content delivery system for the network’s broadcast affiliates.

     

    Prior to joining CNN, Ms Chu worked at MTV Asia and Dreamworks in Los Angeles. She has a BA in Communications and Business from the University of Southern California, and a Masters in Journalism from the University of Hong Kong.