By Shailesh Kapoor
We are just two games away. This Sunday night, the ninth edition of the IPL will be out of the way. Out of the way for the rest of the mainstream media, especially GECs and big-budget Hindi films, who stay away from taking panga with the league. Since 2008, when the IPL started, this has been the tradition, barring a few exceptions.
The Friday after the IPL final has become a key week for Bollywood releases. Only five new Hindi GEC shows have gone on-air since the IPL started, two of them in non-match hours (before 8pm). A typical month over the last five years sees six launches. At that rate, we should have seen at least 11 launches in the IPL period.
Clearly, IPL is the thing to avoid. After all, most shows do not come with an expiry date, and shifting a launch by a few weeks only means extending a long-running show by the same period. Piece of cake!
The thought process of avoiding IPL is based on sound marketing logic. When there is disruption and distraction around, you can get lost in the noise. IPL certainly impacts the viewing patterns in a predominantly single-TV India, shifting the control over the remote, with complex negotiations that families have worked out for themselves over the years. In such a scenario, a new launch could be easily given a skip.
But is it as simple as that? Nine to-be-launched Hindi GEC shows are being promoted aggressively by various channels currently, all slated to go on-air from this Monday (May 30) till the end of June. At least three others may announce their June presence soon. So we have two months’ quota being delivered in one month. Add to that the various events and movie premieres, and you realise the problem is back!
Part 2 of the problem is equally important to state. Many existing shows will plan a major plot point in the month of June, leading to promotional focus. IPL is out of the way for them too. We may see a couple of leaps, some new characters and a few maha-episodes and maha-sangams.
The very disruption and clutter that led to the IPL being ducked is going to be on full display in June. The viewer’s appetite to handling new shows is fairly limited. Even the most seasoned viewers cannot recall more than two upcoming shows unaided. In such a scenario, the more high-profile launches on bigger channels like Colors and Star Plus will still make the cut, but the problem multiplies significantly for the next set of channels, who do not have that kind of daily reach or equity currently.
The GECs will be caught in a promotional traffic jam this June. Time for one of them to come up with a fresh, almost lateral, approach to manage the IPL in 2017?