MxMIndia

Tag: 9X

  • Presented by duo Bade & Chote

    9XM launches Loppipops Youtube channel

    By Our Staff

     

    Music television network 9X Media launched ‘Loppipops’, a kids’ learning channel available on YouTube. The channel will showcase specially designed and curated playlist of kids’ rhymes and videos, presented by duo Bade-Chote and their gang of animated characters.

     

    Commenting on the launch of Loppipops, Amar Tidke Chief Programming Officer, 9X Media said: “We are delighted to launch Loppipops Kids learning YouTube Channel on the occasion of Children’s Day. Loppipops will captivate the interest of its young audience in a fun and memorable manner. Over the years, Bade Chote and their friends have become iconic house-hold names extending the IP into the kids space was a natural progression with the ever increasing demand for kid’s content. Music is the building block of early learning and as a music network we have over the years experimented in various ways to entertain our audiences through music. The endeavour here is to entertain and make learning fun. The Loppipops gang will engage the kids in Child-safe screen time by providing them with the right edutainment. This should be fun ride for all!”

     

  • I hope the early success of &TV encourages more GEC launches, writes Shailesh Kapoor, adding: Sound business models can ensure good profitability at even 80-120 GRP levels.

    Shailesh Kapoor: Hindi GECs: There’s Space For More… &More

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    March 2 saw the launch of &TV, the second mainstream GEC from the Zee stable (not counting the highly differentiated Zindagi and the rerun-based Zee Anmol). The first ratings yesterday confirmed that the channel has managed to make its presence felt within its first week. It launched at 42 GRPs, making it one of the best channel launches in the last decade, close on the heels of Colors, Life OK and Imagine.

     

    The ratings universe has widened since 2008. &TV’s 42 GRPs would easily have been 55+ in a pre-LC1 environment, in which other GECs mentioned above launched. Also, the ratings are based on five-and-a-half days of content, which means a natural growth next week is expected anyway. We should see the channel comfortably crossing the 50-mark next week, and with a sizeable reach potential still untapped, it may be looking at the century over the next quarter.

     

    What interested me even more was to see if &TV got its initial numbers from other GECs or if it could grow the category. The top six GECs lost only 21 GRPs this week combined, which &TV got exactly half its viewership by growing the category. Its early days yet, but one could safely assume that in a more stable state, at least 30% of &TV’s ratings would be category growth, which could mean that channel would have managed to grow the already dominant Hindi GEC category by 3-5% by the time it crosses the 100 GRP mark.

     

    Yet, there has been persistent talk around there being no space available for one more Hindi GEC. Every time someone comes up with the idea of launching a new Hindi GEC, promoters or investors treat the thought with immense skepticism.

     

    It’s not a surprising response, however. You won’t expect most investors to be core GEC viewers themselves, and from the outside, it would indeed seem that all the GECs are essentially dishing out similar programming. I have voiced my concerns regarding lack of innovation on the GECs over the last two years, but lack of variety has never been an issue. The consumers see genres and sub-genres in what the non-viewers can just pass off as “daily soaps” or “saas-bahu serials”.

     

    Identifying strategic need gaps in the Hindi GEC space can be a tough ask today. But tapping the right genres and creating new sub-genres within them can indeed push the category viewership ahead. The size of investment may also be a deterrent, but for someone with deep pockets, a well-planned GEC business has a far lower risk than, say, a news or a niche channel today.

     

    The rise-and-fall stories of 9X and Imagine have often been used as an example of how a GEC business is high on risk. But there have been the success stories in Colors and Life OK too, the former a lot more significant than the latter. I hope the early success of &TV encourages more GEC launches. Sound business models can ensure good profitability at even 80-120 GRP levels.

     

  • In Media Mullings, Peter Mukerjea on why James Murdoch must move to India

    Peter Mukerjea: Rupert & Son

    By Peter Mukerjea

     

    So, it’s finally happened that James, or JRM as he is known within the company, has stepped down. I’d said that he should (see Firstpost.com article) and for whatever it’s worth, I’m glad that he has.

     

    Enough has been written and no doubt more will be written about the rights and wrongs of the people involved in the entire phone hacking case and we will never know who will finally go to jail for the crimes that are alleged to have been committed.

     

    But that would be looking back and surely it’s much more fun looking forward and trying to gauge what’s about to happen next. If Rupert is true to his word, JRM will now be spending more time on international operations and on the TV business at large . Now that leads me to suggest that he should for Newscorp’s sake spend at least 75% of his time in India looking at new business opportunities that exist in the country. STAR experienced it’s highest ever growth in it’s business under JRM’s watch when he was the CEO in Asia. That’s not a coincidence, I can assure you. Conversely, STAR experienced it’s lowest growth when JRM left the Asia region and handed it over to pixies in Hong Kong who had no clue about India. For example, the lady who was given the baton by JRM had never visited India ever in her life. Strange decision, it has to be said.

     

    JRM, on the other hand, was a respected executive and was seen as a path-breaking scion of his father. And the fact that not everyone loved him was simply par for the course and to be expected. He was effective in reshaping STAR’s fortunes and turning a loss making company into a profitable one.

     

    Incidentally I continue to believe that none of the new channels that popped up in 2007/8 would have happened if Rupert had not taken his eye off Asia but he moved JRM to London to run SKY and with that opened up the gates for newcomers. Some channels failed to make the grade – 9X & Imagine for example, and others did well – Colors & 9XM for instance, but none of these should ever have been allowed to get started given the complete dominance that STAR had on the market. And all the people that went to run these channels, including myself , were almost all from STAR.

     

    Since then STAR has held up well, although after a wobbly start. Credit for which should be given wholly to JRM for giving autonomy to the current leadership in managing their business and most importantly cutting them loose from the Hong Kong intermediary, which was rightly cut to size.

     

    JRM’s big opportunity is now to push ahead with developing a range of new TV and other media products for the India market and enable it to grow speedily to create a very clear leadership position with plenty of blue sky space between the No1 and the rest. And only he can make that happen by physically being there and making the big decisions which would otherwise be lost in power point presentations between numerous layers of management.

     

    This would in turn spur ZEE and Sony and MTV and the rest to do the same and compete with each other and with the pace that STAR would have set for them. This will then collectively turbo-charge and accelerate the industry as a whole and taking full advantage of the economic growth that the country is experiencing. The next 10 years for the media business in India will be huge and despite the slowdown in the global economy the pace of growth will be better than almost anywhere else in the world.

     

    JRM once said “let’s make the best use of a crisis” or words to that effect and I think this is a crisis that has presented itself for just that opportunity. He has moved to New York from London but may be he should have a home in Mumbai too and really shake up the market. There’s tons to do with a very exciting future for a 40-year-old – like JRM, which regular or even above average executives will simply not be able to take full advantage of. They can at best take limited risk, if at all – but JRM can and he should.

     

    Will he or won’t he? Or will he slip in and out of the country quietly, once very few months and leave the big opportunity to the pixies once again? If he ends up doing that he will have missed a great opportunity to grow the business and also to get himself back up and be recognised as being one of the best TV executives in the world. After all, he is the son of Rupert.

     

    Although it started as a fortnightly column, Peter Mukerjea’s Media Mullings will now appear regularly on MxMIndia, but with no definite frequency.