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Introducing: The 1 Minute View where our editors will comment on one of the key issues of the day… short and never sitting on the fence. For instance, the ‘view’ today notes that as the new chairman, Rajan Anandan needs to grow the IAMAI out of its current mode and assume the role of a more aggressive trade association.

 

If the internet and mobile media are going to take over our country as many make them out to be, then the position of the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) chairman that Google India managing director Rajan Anandan has been appointed to can be quite an interesting one.

 

Many of the bizarre charges raised against cyberspace are coincidentally against the organizations the new IAMAI chair and vice-chair Kirthiga Reddy (head of Facebook India) represent. IAMAI needs to grow out of its current mode and assume the role of a more aggressive industry body.

 

So while at one level it needs to deftly handle the outlandish complaints against the online media, the IAMAI also needs to repose faith amongst law-makers that its members do not wish to duck the system or be a platform for hate speech. Against individuals, organizations or the nation. Some education of our political constituents will help.

 

The IAMAI needs to also look at evangelising adspends in the digital media. While there’s much growth in various projections, it’s because of a low base. Print and television rule even as we know that digital has rewritten the rules of the game for print, and is already beginning to do so for television (entertainment included). For digital publishers to grow, spends must increase. And not the token social media campaign or banner ad to please the bosses in the West.

 

Rajan Anandan, lage raho. Hum tumhaare saath hain! 🙂

 

By now the socially networked advertising world would’ve already known that Goafest, our version of the Cannes Lions, has been tainted by scam ads and plagiarism. It’s critical that corrective measures are taken before the image of the country’s entire creative frat is tarnished.

 

The ‘superjury’ meeting may well help do that, but we weren’t surprised when told that lobbying has already started and attempts are being made to overrule all the complaints and institute guidelines for the next year. If you read the comments of some of the biggies in the business in MxM Mondays, you’ll know what the sentiment is at the higher levels of adland.

 

MxMIndia has taken a view to not name agencies and clients as plagiarists unless and until officially named by the Awards Governing Council of Goafest 2013. However, that doesn’t mean we are going to sit quiet on the issue.

 

The fact remains that there are some ads similar to those crafted elsewhere (and released earlier). In the days before the internet, it used to be the Blackbook and now adsoftheworld.com and various other print and online showcases that people refer to for inspiration. The worry, then and now is when this inspiration turns into copying an idea.

 

India’s track record elsewhere in the creative world is not the bestest. Our films and music are often lifted from works produced elsewhere in the world. Many of us in journalism also do not think twice about picking up pictures and graphics from the internet without seeking permission. Thankfully, in entertainment television, since most have global majors/ partners, care is taken to license formats.

 

While we will get the decision from the Creative Abby superjury soon enough, the question is how does one put a stop to the plagiarism? Yes, there is a legal recourse available, but the best bit for the fraternity is to expose the plagiarists. Being included in a ‘hall of shame’ is we think a good deterrent.

 

Text of the keynote address delivered by Sanjay Gupta, COO, Star India on the dynamics of sports broadcast in the country at the Asia Pacific Pay-TV Operators Summit in Bali, Indonesia.

 

While offering insights into the issues affecting sports broadcast in India and steps required to reinvent the genre to make it profitable, Mr Gupta shared Star’s rationale to enter sports broadcasting, a segment that critics consider to be drain on any broadcaster’s financials.

 

Good afternoon, and thank you for inviting me to deliver this keynote address. I am especially thrilled to be here today to talk about an exciting part of Star’s story in Asia, its sports business.

 

By the end of 2011, Star in India had clearly established itself as the premier entertainment network in India and for Indians worldwide, with 400 million people watching our drama and movie channels in 7 languages every day. In one of the most competitive markets in the world, we had established substantial leadership in every genre and in mostgeographies.And while Star and Fox had built an attractive franchise in entertainment, in sports, very unlike our traditional approach, we had tucked the business away in a joint venture with ESPN that was not managed or controlled by us.

 

Starting in April 2012, this started to change. We acquired the rights to India’s international cricket calendar that month; a few months later, our parent company bought out its partner from the ESPN Star Sports joint venture in Asia with the intent to roll the Indian part of the joint venture into Star; we launched two new domestic leagues in university cricket and hockey; and we renewed the rights to English Premier League football with a substantive bid. All in all, we invested a billion dollars in less than 6 months.As a result, by the end of 2012, we had established ourselves as India’s leading sports broadcaster.

 

So, why did we get aggressive on a business where the traditional wisdom is that no one makes money?

Manyexperts mused loudly that Star had found a way to quickly kill a highly profitable franchise built on leadership in entertainment across genres and languages. I still run into these questions every day. Just two days ago, a leading Indian business daily ran a big story wondering why Star had entered a business that usually never makes money. After all, one sports broadcaster had gone bankrupt trying to pay the bills for the Indian cricket rights, another is struggling to break even and yet another is trying to run a sports business without much sports content. Why would Star make such a big, bold moveparticularly at a time when the overall sentiment on the India story has gone cold?

 

So, again, why did we do this? Did we lose the plot?

In order to answer this question, it is important to take a close look at a few facts, some conventional wisdom and manymyths that surround the Indian sports business.

 

Everyone in this industry knows one thing. India is a single sport country. It is a country where cricket is a religion, where passion for the game is deep and where the country shuts down when the national team is playing.

 

And yet, this is only half the truth. Even for a big match where India plays arch rival Pakistan, consumers do not view the entire match, they viewonly 15% of the match on an average. The reality outside of really big tournaments is even starker. Out of more than 1000 hours that an Indian viewer spent watching television last year, only 20 hours was on cricket, about 2percent.This is actually less than the time spent on a singlesuccessful show on Star Plus!Consumption of domestic cricket is even worse. Although matches are played round the year, only 50 matches are broadcast on television in a year.And very often, the best of the country’s talent do not participate in these games.

 

Imagine if soccer crazy England manifested its interest in the game only by watching the FIFA World Cup once in 4 years and only really paid attention when England played Spain or Italy. That is the equivalent of India’s current state in cricket viewership. In fact, until the Board of Control for Cricket in India introduced the Indian Premier League, there was not even a domestic league, the equivalent of an EPL or an NFL.

 

So, India is not a single-sport country, it is at the moment a zero-sport country that occasionally follows 11 Indian cricketers when they play a big marquee tournament.

For us, though, the more interesting question is why this happened, and what has led to the current state of affairs. We believe that the biggest culprit is the Indian sports broadcaster. Let me explain why.

 

A big shift happened in the last twenty years in cricket in the profile of its followership. It moved from being a sport for the urban elite to one that has a mass following across the country.The BCCI deserves credit for this transformation by making substantial investments to improve the quality of stadiums and infrastructure around the country.Today, some of the country’s best cricketers come from outside the large cities; and small towns host international matches on a regular basis. It is also a country where less than 1% of the population has actually watched any sport in a stadium.

 

And, yet, sports broadcasters have not made any effort to make their programming more relevant to the new audience.

 

In a country where less than 10% of the population understand English, and a much smaller number are native speakers, sports broadcasters programmed only in one language: guess which one? English. This, despite the fact that everyone knew that the big growth in entertainment consumption in the country came when programming on satellite switched to Hindi and other local languages. And even for the very few that actually understand English, it is quite a world they have to navigate to understand the diversity of commentator accents on television: from the Westernized Indian accent to the local Indian accent to the Aussie accent to the Kiwi accent to the Scottish accent to the West Indian accent. It is almost as if the sports broadcasters were not relaying sports, they were running extraordinarily painful accent training programs on television for the very small English speaking audience that came to watch in the first place.

 

The pain did not stop there. Around the world, sports graphics is used to bring the game closer to the viewer and to help the viewer understand the game. Yet, in cricket, graphics is more a nuanced tool meant to tickle the sensibilities of the fewdeep masters of the game, not the 99% of the country that has never even been to a stadium. The same story extends to television commentary too. Rather than being the anchors of the game who explain the game and bring the excitement of the stadium to the viewer’s living room, the cricket commentator is invariably an expert talking to his peers.

 

It is no surprise then that the Indian viewer does not spend much time on sports on television.

But, it would be unfair to put all the blame on just the sports broadcaster. The broadcaster has had many fellow partners-in-crime in ensuring that sports viewership remains miniscule.

 

Its biggest partner has been the cable and satellite platform. Around the world, sports have been a huge driver of revenue and profit for pay television operators. In India every operator complains about the low ARPUs they get from the business. And yet, instead of using compelling sports content to get more money from consumers and reduce churn, the cable and satellite operators make it difficult for their subscribers to discover and develop a habit of consuming sports.

 

And this attitude shows up in the distribution of sports channels, which are treated less like the mass product that they should be, and more as premium add-on products for a small, rich, niche audience.

 

To make matters worse, these platforms turn off the channel when a marquee event is not on. While this may have made sense in the old, bandwidth-limited analog world where you could only put 20-30 channels, it makes no sense that even DTH operators are employing the same tactic when they have 300 channels to offer. Compare this to other content categories. They do not switch off a news channel when a breaking news event is not on; they do not turn off the movies channel when a blockbuster is not on. But this is exactly what they do in sports. It is the worst kind of behaviour that limits the ability to build habit for the sports fan.

 

Even worse is the behaviour of a few platforms that have created their own channels that switch to the most marquee sports events of multiple broadcasters. While they hide under the pretence that they are addressing a consumer need, what they are really doing is illegal piracy. But what is distressing is that they do not understand the long term damage they are doing to the business. Instead of multiplying choices and triggering demand, they are creating a structure that will ensure that viewers only watch a few cricket events.

 

Put together, it is therefore not a surprise that the reach of sports channels lags that of even niche channels like DiscoveryandMTV!

 

So in a zero-sport country, sports broadcasters and pay TV platforms have worked very hard to make sure that it is only the deeply committed, rich expert fan comfortable with English that actually watches a match on television.

Of course, if the sports broadcaster and the platform have done their part in eroding the value of sports franchise, the regulator and the government have not been far behind.

 

For the regulator and the government, the overwhelming objective must be to further consumer interest. It is in the interest of consumers to have more and more sports available for them. It is in the interest of any country to have more and more people play sports. And the reality is that people play sports only when they passionately follow games and teams. If India has to break its poor status in international sports and use sports to create a virtuous cycle for the larger society, then the regulator and the polityhave a powerful role to play.

 

I am reminded of an incident that happened in Canada last year. When the hockey union went on strike, the prime minister of the country got involved because his fear was that a prolonged strike would have an adverse impact on the GDP of Canada! More than anything, it showed the power of sports and its ability to be a huge economic growth engine. It also shows the lens with which politicians and executives approach sports globally.

 

However, the regulator, the bureaucracy and the political class have not shown such an enlightened approach to sports in India.

 

Of all things, the regulator has imposed a cap on prices. A price cap is never good for the long term health of a business but it is especially absurd in the context of sports, where the market we operate in is truly global, where the acquisition costs for rights reflects a global market. What is even more absurd is that a news channel, a general entertainment channel, an education channel and a sports channel are all capped at the same level, without any linkage to the underlying cost of content or the relevance of its shelf life.Shockingly, Star Sports which has the most compelling portfolio of content in the country can charge no more than the country’s weakest sports channel with practically no sports on it.

 

To make matters worse, the government has mandated that the most expensivesports events are events of national importance that need to be made available to the public broadcaster – who in turn not only retransmits an unencrypted signal to all its subscribers for free, but also makes it available to private platforms to carry the content under a statutorily mandated ‘must carry’ law. So even as you are making no effort to ensure wider coverage for all sports for the long term, you are killing the economics of the sports broadcaster by forcing it to share the most popular content today without adequate compensationand also legitimizing piracy by permitting access to sports content by platforms for free.

 

The entire eco system has therefore unwittingly conspired to ensure that sports broadcast is unprofitable, sports consumption is limited and sports followership is minimal.

 

So, the question comes back to: if things are looking so bad, why did Star decide to make a big push into sports?

For only one reason.The current state of affairs is just not right, is not sustainable and is not good for anyone. Somebody needs to change this unhealthy equilibrium which is hurtingthe country, the consumer and the media industry.

 

And as the country’s media leader, and as a company that has faced such hurdles before and still managed to build an outstanding franchise, we believe that we can shape this change.

 

Clearly, change will not happen overnight. It will require a lot of effort to break the status quo. We will have to ensure that we create compelling sports content, across multiple sports, across multiple languages, with an economic structure that will add value for all.

 

But, we are patient, as we always have been in India. And our history, our parentage and the coherence of our approach gives us confidence that we will build India’s first successful and profitable sports franchise.

 

As the curtains are drawn on a rather forgettable chapter in India’s rich and creative advertising history, there are many questions, the answers to which could tell yet another story.

 

01. Is there a rule determining whether or not complaints will be entertained on issues concerning plagiarism – either at the shortlist stage or after the awards are announced?

02. Did Goafest 2013 put up the images/audio-video links of the shortlisted entries for people/the fraternity to view?

03. Why did the Goafest Award Governing Council (AGC) accept the complaint against BBDO Proximity and later withdraw the metals awarded to it?

04. Why did the AGC accept various other complaints and also request media to put up a notice saying that no more complaints will be accepted post the evening of April 12?

05. Why did the AGC constitute the superjury and why was a meeting was convened when the consensus was that no complaints should be accepted the judging process should be honoured?

06. Since some of the allegedly plagiarized work is from internationally networked agencies, what is the view of the global and Asia-Pacific headquarters on their agency’s names being drawn into the controversy?

07. And what about the clients? In the case of one ad, the metals awarded to it which have been reinstated, the client was known. Do clients really care about plagiarism? Is the media making too much of it when all that clients care is that their ads must deliver results?

08. Did someone at the superjury meeting suggest that there is a rule that complaints will be accepted only for five days post awards? We are told that no one from the officials or auditors told him/her that there was no such rule at that point, and when they did at the fag end of the meeting, it was too late as that statement may well have influenced the rest of the superjury to ‘unvote’. True?

09. Does the Goafest 2013 committee and the AGC have the rights to disqualify all the entries which are found to be dubious or just scrap the entire Creative Abby awards for this year?

10. Why don’t the agencies which have in fact plagiarized own up and withdraw?

 

Postscript: MxMIndia undertakes to not name the agencies if they own and withdraw their entries as raised in #10

 

 

By A Correspondent

 

Depending on when you are reading this, the Samsung S4 would have launched in India. The World Tour commences in India at Gurgaon’s Kingdom of Dreams at 12noon and there will be special displays at malls starting the weekend.

 

So let’s forget the preface, and ask a direct question: Will the Samsung S4 be an iPhone 5 killer?

 

Our verdict is: well, almost.

 

It’s much a nicer version of the S3, but clearly not a generational jump from its predecessor that released last year.

 

And the price: Rs 41,500 MRP for the 16GB version, a few thousand rupees lower than expected. The actual market price may come be lower. There are bundled offers with Vodafone which, a Samsung official told media, will make the S4 a more attractive buy.  at the time of writing, the India price was not known. But in South Korea, where it’s been launched, it’s 899,800 won which is roughly Rs 43,797. We’ll update this story with the India price as soon as we get it.

 

First, let’s look at some of the features, which, as per the Samsung site, will help make our “life richer, simpler, and more fun”. The phone is being billed as a ‘Life companion’ which will simplify our daily existence. And then, there’s something more: “It cares enough to monitor our health and well-being”. Now we don’t know how many people will want to be reminded about watching their weight everytime they are out on a binge. Wink, wink.

 

Dual Shot:  This is a winner. Two cameras, one extraordinary photo. Capture the ‘I was there’ moments of your life by simultaneously shooting with the front and rear cameras.

 

Listen to your photos:  Every picture you take on the Samsung GALAXY S4 can come with sound. So now you can remember what was said, played, and heard, not just what it looked like, adding another layer of excitement.

 

Group Play: Get your friends together and let them enjoy your music simultaneously. Wirelessly connect multiple S4s to play games and share photos and documents. Get all S4 handsets together and create a powerful sound system that enhances the sound quality and keeps the party going.

 

S Translator: Say or text what you need translated into your S4 and it’ll read or text back the translation. The languages supported currently are: English, German, French, Chinese, Spanish, Italian, Japanese and Korean. Note: other than English, no Indian language yet.

 

Air View and Air Gesture: Want to do something with your phone when your hands are messy eating Pani Puri? This feature makes it, easier, and super-convenient to enlarge content and photos, preview emails, and speed dial all with your finger barely hovering over the screen. With Air Gesture, you can control your phone by just waving your hand over the screen without actually touching the screen.

 

Samsung Smart Pause: Building off of the S3’s Smart Stay, the Samsung GALAXY S4 knows what you’re doing and intuitively moves along with you – automatically scrolling up or down emails or websites when you tilt the phone from one side to another. Whenever you look away, the S4 pauses whatever you’re watching and resumes where you left off when you look back at the screen again.

 

Samsung Home Sync: What you get here is 1TB of storage capacity…. Super for banking pictures and music

 

Samsung WatchON: We don’t know how well this will work in India but this helps you connect to your home entertainment system and then suggest different programs based on your preferences, provides programme schedules, and does the channel surfing for you. It also turns into a remote for your TV and set-top box.

 

S Health: The S4 can track your workouts, daily intake, and weight levels. Get the current status of your surroundings for your activities with the S4’s Comfort Level.

 

If the Samsung Galaxy S4 is so feature-rich, why aren’t we calling it an iPhone 5 killer. Note, it may well sell more than all the phones launched in the series so far, but the iPhone is a religion, and the S4 may have some cool features, but it’s not got a cult following yet. After all a better price and great features don’t make for everything!

 

It’s heartening to see reports of new appointments in media organisations, so what if some of these are internal elevations.

 

As we went to publish this morning, we were alerted that some 78 people in the Mumbai of a New Delhi-headquartered TV network were being laid off.

 

We spoke to the spokesperson of the unnamed channel and were informed that the number isn’t true, and since the production base (PCR) is being shifted from Mumbai to Delhi, employees were being asked to relocate or find other jobs.

 

It’s unfortunate. While tough times require tough measures, these measures require kid gloves. There are a variety of sensitivities: kids’ education, loan repayments, medical bills and of course day-to-day living.

 

We hope media organizations rationalizing manpower resources will take into account the human(e) factor. That’s our wish (and plea) on Labour Day eve.

 

First some useless statistic. We did a dipstick of television viewers in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Pune and interior Bihar to figure if their television experience had improved given the absence of ads.

 

No, they said, very emphatically. We enjoy the ads. We can plan our cooking and dinner accordingly. One couple we spoke to even said that often when a soap’s storyline stretches much, it’s the ads which provide the real entertainment. “That was the case in the Doordarshan days and even now with all the saas-bahu-reality shows era,” one homemaker told us. Ads, according to our dipstick, are a pain for consumers when there are innumerable breaks in movies and award shows.

 

The IBF and AAAI are meeting this evening (May 2) in Mumbai to iron out the problems, though not everyone is too happy with the IBF decision to ask its members to yank out advertisements released by all those unwilling to switch to its net billing system.

 

While media agencies MxMIndia spoke with are in agreement that the net billing cycle is what they have to look for as far as broadcasting is concerned, smaller agencies don’t agree. They say that their survival depends on the 15 percent commission. “Unlike the large agencies – where media agencies may charge 2-2.5% commission and creative agencies charge their own retainership, smaller agencies dish out creative services thanks to the 15%. It’s important hence for broadcasters to not forget us, especially since they are now targeting advertising from SMEs and small-town India.”

 

The broadcasters we spoke to are insistent on changing the rules since they are being taken to task by the tax authorities. They want to be on the right side of the law. An agency CxO though countered this with a refrain that if broadcasters are indeed serious about doing all things right then they must also stick to the 12-minute per hour rules.

 

Evidently, there are more cross-currents at play between the media agencies and broadcasters, some of which were also seen at the time of the constituting of BARC a few months back.

 

It’s time for all parties to bury the differences. Rather than fight it out through the media, we would urge that today’s meeting between the stakeholders sees a resolution of all the points of concern

 

The broadcast media can’t afford to operate without revenues, the agencies can’t lose commissions and advertisers need all the promotional arsenal.

 

As for viewers, allow us to be a little cruel: they too are missing all the entertainment that comes from the TVCs.