MxMIndia

Tag: C&S television

  • 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 by Paritosh Joshi, until recently CEO, Star CJ, analyses issues concerning the business of media, measurement and research

    Paritosh Joshi: Wither Digitization?

    By Paritosh Joshi

     

    We are down to just over a month for mandatory digitisation in the 4 metros. Newspaper stories suggest bullishness among DTH players even as major cable providers signal some nervousness and even seek extra time to get all their ducks in a row.

     

    Let me say this bluntly.India will lose a massive opportunity if all the spoils of digitization went to DTH.

     

    But first, a quick look back. To the beginning of this developing story.

     

    India’s economic liberalization and initiation into C&S television happened almost simultaneously. Even as Peter Arnett on CNN was telling the world about the bombing of Baghdad during Operation Desert Storm in early 1991, Dr Manmohan Singh and Prime Minister Narasimha Rao were getting busy with preparing the blueprint for India’s economic liberalisation. Almost by some divine providence, television and the economy were both getting set to kick into high gear in tandem. As the period since has shown with impressive consistency, as television has grown wider and deeper, so has the economy.

     

    Inevitably, technology has reached the point where the legacy of the analog system must be superceded by digital technology. The change is not sudden, having begun with the Conditional Access System (CAS) in 2002 and gathered momentum with DTH’s arrival in the form of Dish TV in 2005. While CAS was unable to make much headway, even in markets where it was made mandatory, DTH saw accelerating growth after the launch of Tata Sky in 2006, and then an operator explosion, starting 2008.India now has as many as six commercial and one public service DTH services, more than any other major market in the world.

     

    By definition, DTH services cover a very wide footprint, typically the entire Indian subcontinent, and often extending to points well beyond that. This provides great advantages to multi- or pan-national audiences, but is of little use to broadcasters or content owners who target a more tightly defined audience, be it based on ethnicity, language or geography. Also, since the service is delivered via satellite and doesn’t have a native return path, return paths have to be bolted on separately using a terrestrial or cellular telecom network, or an independent vendor’s internet service as is being tried by Indian DTH operators.

     

    Terrestrial digital cable services, on the other hand, frequently bundle television and internet services on the same cable and, by implication, have an inbuilt return path from viewer to platform operator. This creates a range of opportunities in terms of bringing transaction based services, payment solutions and so on that are accessible from a simple TV remote. Indeed, the best of breed in many parts of the world now offer triple play (TV, Internet and Basic Telephony) or even quadruple play (triple + Cellular Telephony) off a single connection.

     

    In addition to their versatility, digital cable systems simply have much more bandwidth to accommodate more content and services than satellite transponders. This advantage will become more significant as more genres and channels move from standard definition to high definition (or SD to HD is common parlance). HD channels use 3 to 4 times the bandwidth of SD and as setup costs of HD fall, broadcasters will be looking to deliver better viewer experiences with the switch.

     

    Amongst all the issues we have raised above, perhaps the most significant is the possibility of localizing television. Every city and town in the country is, potentially, a distinct television market. There is local news to be reported. There are local stories that must be told. There are local merchants who must advertise to their customers. And there is plenty of creative talent that is raring to have a go at tapping into these opportunities. If only there is a platform that can support them.

     

    That platform is not DTH.

     

    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