MxMIndia

Tag: Paritosh Joshi

  • Red Bull Stratos, then, was the creation, in a fleeting instant, of a global, owned medium. There are lessons for our advertising-funded television, notes Paritosh Joshi

    Paritosh Joshi: What did Felix Baumgartner teach us?

    By Paritosh Joshi

     

    “Felix Baumgartner, who?” did I hear you say? May I request you to crawl out from under that rock, Mr Rip Van Winkle?

     

    Last Sunday, October 14, 2012, Felix Baumgartner reset the previous world skydiving record of 31,333 metres held in the name of Col Joe Kittinger since 1960, by a ginormous (that really is a word) 8,000 metres to 39,045 metres. Let me put some perspective on this. Commercial jet aircraft (that you haven’t travelled in, Mr Winkle, seeing as you have been asleep these past 100 years) travel at a height of 10,000 metres. Felix ascended in his balloon to a height almost four times greater, right into the Stratosphere, for kicking off on his skydiving mission, Red Bull Stratos.

     

    What does all this have to do with a column called Media Matrix? A whole lot, actually. Before all else, this was a media event. By paying for the cost of the mission, Red Bull bought, essentially gratis, a moment of high drama that was played live on over 8 million youtube streams and was telecast live to a few hundred million more across the planet.

     

    A few months back, this column argued that every brand of consequence was not prepared any more to be merely a buyer of media space and time but endeavoured to‘earn’ and eventually ‘own’ media outlets. There are many good reasons why this should be so:

     

    • Commercial media inventories are expensive. As audiences get ever more sharply segmented, large pools of audience at a single media ‘location’ are ever scarcer. The latest US Upfront Market, in June 2012, pulled in over $ 9 billion delivering the networks 6% y-o-y increases in CPM (cost per thousand impressions).Current primetime CPMs in the US average ~$24, ~Rs. 1200. Research suggests that CPMs have generally risen at double the secular inflation rate in the US.
    • Commercial media are cluttered. Indian television audiences are used to seeing commercials taking up anything up to 30 minutes per hour. Not easy for a brand to be noticed if it is crowded in with 59 other brands doing their 30 second song and dance routine over an hour of programming time.
    • Commercial media appeal to diverse audiences, not all of whom are relevant to the brand. This multiplies the CPMs to reach the ‘desired’ audience as against the ‘aggregate’ audience that an insertion might yield.
    • Commercial media are primarily about the content and not the advertising break. Shows will remind you, “Don’t go away. We will be right back after the break”. The break is an unwelcome intruder, both for the audience and the broadcaster that they tolerate only with the greatest reluctance- or so it would appear.

     

    It is easy to see why brands would seek out alternative opportunities to expose their brands to audiences that are inexpensive, uncluttered and focussed and where the brand is not an interloper but the protagonist.

     

    Red Bull Stratos, then, was the creation, in a fleeting instant, of a global, owned medium.

     

    We can’t wish away more brand owners asking their communication partners- creative and media agencies, to develop such ideas that focus solus attention on them. We must however recognize that this undermines the advertising funded television model unless broadcasters are willing to push back with the right response (and the right response isn’t an ostrich’s dive into the silica). What lessons does it have for television broadcasters who depend on advertising as their primary source of revenue (aka most Indian broadcasters)?

    • Tighten your audience focus. The days of loosely defined target audiences are gone forever. Nostalgia might be wonderful thing in many ways but it is not a good guide to winning the television market.
    • Embrace co-creation of content with brands. Brands are as much a part of the cultural milieu that consumers inhabit. A lot of ‘owned’ media initiatives work precisely because consumers intimately associate brands with their lifestyles. Red Bull Stratos tapped into a carefully crafted association of the brand with instant energy, captured in its memorable “Red Bull gives you wings”, baseline.
    • Shorten commercial breaks and tighten bloated inventories. It may not show up immediately but eventually, price is a demand/supply interaction. The more you are prepared to supply, the lower your price will drop.

     

    Heck, this is a good prescription for ALL advertising funded television, owned inventory or not.

     

    Paritosh Joshi has been a marketer, a mediaperson and a key officebearer on industry bodies. He is developing an independent media advisory practice. He can reached via his Twitter handle @paritoshZero

     

  • Paritosh Joshi: Can we do without TV ratings from time to time?

    By Paritosh Joshi

     

    By now the trade is probably abuzz with concerns about how the suspension of TAM reporting is going to play havoc with the lives of broadcasters, agencies and advertisers. Must this be so?

     

    Broadcasters and agencies have got accustomed to trading in television inventory using the ratings as currency. However, here’s the simple truth: what the trading system prices is not what the advertiser buys.

     

    Peoplemeter markets represent not just a minority of the overall population, they represent a minority of the television household population too. Indeed, thanks to the rapid growth of DTH in rural India, they represent a minority of digital households.

     

    Here’s the truth hiding in plain sight. There is a study that covers 30 times as many households as TAM does which also picks up who watches what. And this study is possibly far better suited to picking up the ever lengthening ‘long tail’ of television channels better than the ~9000 TAM Peoplemeter homes. It is called Indian Readership Survey.

     

    The IRS, which everyone sees as a readership measure- and it does this role with commendable certitude- is actually a comprehensive study of all media, new and old. In addition, it picks up the household’s consumption of a very wide range of goods and services that enable strategists to develop a sharper understanding of how media consumption and product /category usage correlate with one another.

     

    While TAM takes a monadic view of television channel consumption and deals with nothing else, the IRS sees both sides of the picture: input (as represented by media consumed) and output (goods and services). IRS picks up demographic information in much more detail and actually takes a dynamic view of how different segments are changing in size and composition while TAM ratings have a population grid that stays unchanged for long periods of time- running into years. This, in a country that is experiencing change at unprecedented pace. Finally, IRS is based on a simple random sample, each home showing up in the study only once and not on a panel where familiarity may breed contempt.

     

    Today, instead of worrying about the absence of TAM in the weeks to come, use the opportunity to understand TV in IRS.

     

    Paritosh Joshi has been a marketer, a mediaperson and a key officebearer on industry bodies. He is developing an independent media advisory practice. He can reached via his Twitter handle @paritoshZero

     

  • Consumers are no longer quiescent bovines who will passively feed on whatever the brandowner masters of the universe place before them, notes Paritosh Joshi

    Paritosh Joshi: Of Marketing & Participative Curation

    By Paritosh Joshi

     

    “The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience”. Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune wrote these memorable words as part of an imaginary commencement speech published as a news column on June 1, 1997. As good a way of issuing a disclaimer for whatever follows in this column.

     

    Got talking with an old friend about brands earlier today. Inevitably the phrase “Brand Architecture” popped up. In the continuing spirit of full disclosure, I do not like it. Never have. It has, unfortunately, gained so much currency of these last few years, probably on account of fancy schmancy, charcoal grey-suited consultant types using it as a jargon staple that it rears its ugly head every time brands are discussed. However, it was only this morning as our conversation developed that I began to understand what it was about the notion of (air bunnies) brand architecture (air bunnies) that so bugs me. Enough prefatory remarks already.

     

    Architecture. Cue overwhelming intellect: Frank Gehry. Le Corbusier. Charles Eames. Cue blueprints and plans: sections, elevations, façades. Cue elaborate embellishment: balustrades, colonnades, arches, inlays and marquettery. Cue imposing landmarks. Versailles. Empire State. The Gherkin. That’s it. Imposing landmarks. From the lay perspective, that’s what architecture boils down to.

     

    And that is probably the exact notion that the proponents of the theory aspire to in the context of brands too. Overwhelming intellects (at least in their own assessment) creating detailed plans for elaborately embellished edifices that will stand, unchanged and defiant to the deleterious effects of man and nature, for a dozen generations. A notion informed by breathtaking hubris, I regret to add.

     

    I could, right about this time, veer off into anecdotes about storied brands that to all appearances look a lot like enduring edifices that have weathered a thousand storms but on closer inspection reveal themselves to the result of decades of endless tinkering by generations of uncelebrated custodians rather than xanadus that sprung fully formed from the imagination of imperious Kubla Khans. My reader, you are well informed about these anecdotes and I shall not bore you with repetition.

     

    I learnt brand management in the mid ’80s. Back then we believed ourselves to be in the possession of special tools, called ‘consumer learning’ or similar, that would enable us to develop ‘consumer insights’ that could then trigger the development of ‘consumer propositions’, ‘selling ideas’ and eventually ‘fat bonuses’. We were seekers. The consumer was merely a passive vessel who would submit herself to our incisive explorations into the innermost recesses of her soul and spirit.

     

    As you can see, there was a patronizing patriarchy not just in the process but also in its philosophical underpinning.

     

    The model worked well enough, though, for us to survive our brand management years reasonably unscathed and move on to fancier designations where the cut and thrust of everyday skirmish was no longer our bailiwick. People who now run Marketing divisions in large corporations across all sorts of sectors belong to this cohort and their understanding of how brands are built has been ossified circa 1985.

     

    The reality of brands though is light years distant from what the fossils are thinking. Consumers are no longer quiescent bovines who will passively feed on whatever the brand owner masters of the universe place before them. They are confident, opinionated, often raucous commentators who are insistent on dialog with their brands of choice, not platitudinous sermonizing.

     

    This too has a label that those smarmy consultants use: brand conversation.

     

    Let’s say you knew nothing of the way consumers are really weighing in on brands and all you had heard was this label “brand conversation”. Wouldn’t you start imagining a well appointed place with subdued lighting and comfortable chairs where small knots of people were engaged in friendly banter? Well then, think again. Less Chambers and more Chandni Chowk. Busy, bustling, boisterous.

     

    How does a brand owner or manager do anything useful with the loud marketplace of ideas that her brand catalyses?

     

    Think of another world that is marked by posturing, contentiousness and endless ferment: the world of art. Now think of the last time you were at a museum. A meander through any of its galleries would suggest such tranquility and orderliness, you could be forgiven for imagining the art world as particularly genteel and bucolic. How does fervid reality transform thus? It doesn’t, really. It is curated.

     

    Curators are incredibly clever storytellers. They work with a huge heap of (mostly) verifiable facts to construct a plausible, but more importantly, compelling narrative. All the provenances of each individual strand of the tale they spin can be fact checked, however the whole that pops out is always going to be greater than the sum of its parts.

     

    The future, scratch that, the new reality of brand management isn’t supercilious architecting. It is participative curation.

     

    P.S. And trust Mary Schmich on the sunscreen.

     

    Paritosh Joshi has been a marketer, a mediaperson and a key officebearer on industry bodies. He is developing an independent media advisory practice. He can reached via his Twitter handle @paritoshZero

     

     

  • Agencies, which splintered into creative and media specialist entities over a decade ago, earn the bulk of their income from fees and incentives and almost nothing from media commission. And yet, the commission doesn't stop

    Paritosh Joshi: Agency Commission – an anachronism that must be retired

    By Paritosh Joshi

     

    There is an advantage in writing in column that only you, my dear solitary reader, read. I can say well nigh anything, no matter how controversial and get away with it!

     

    The title is up there, you’ve read it and must now wonder what it is that I am really driving at. Fikar not, as an old uncle used to say, all will be clear.

     

    But first, a little history.

     

    The idea of a commission agent is old and well established in the annals of commerce and commercial law. A commission agent acts as an intermediary on behalf of a principal, buyer or seller of a good or service, and earns commission based on transactions concluded. Advertising agents emerged in 19th century USA to sell inventory on behalf of newspapers to businesses interested in placing advertising. This arrangement developed as newspapers had no other modality at hand to sell advertising space, their personnel being devoted principally to creating and publishing the product. Observe the nomenclature. Not brand or marketing agents but advertising agents. Advertising was a product on offer by the newspapers. While several advertisers crafted their own advertising communication, there were always those who did not have the creative flair to and sought the agent’s help. Creative execution that we identify as almost central to the advertising agency was, incredible as this sounds, a capability that arose to fill an extant gap. Considering that the agent would only earn commission on advertising actually published in the principal’s newspaper, there was a real incentive for the agent to do whatever it took to get a client in, including producing the creative material, at little or no cost to the advertiser, given that the main income was being derived from the newspaper.

     

    As advertising grew and the creative task expanded in scale and complexity, there was a progressive realignment in the role played by the agent, shifting its primacy from the seller- the newspaper, to the buyer- the advertiser. Strangely enough, the commission system worked so well that it wasn’t considered necessary to change it. Newspapers would bill advertisers an amount grossed up for the commission due to the agent. The agent, having collected against the invoice, would retain 15 percent as advertising commission and pay 85 percent to the newspaper.

     

    You might think that this “commission agent for advertising” arrangement belongs to some prehistoric period and that would be wrong. As late as the 1990s, many major newspaper groups, at least in India, did not have an in-house, advertising sales team.

     

    When media choices were few and advertising targeted local audiences, this arrangement worked commendably well. As brands began to grow across broader swathes of the market, audiences could no longer be covered by a single publication and agencies had to assemble plans involving multiple outlets or platforms.

     

    This is the world of marketing that we all know well. Multiple media options, brands and audiences that must be mutually matched to deliver optimal results for all the constituencies in an efficient, and effective, manner. Clients, who ultimately must pay the bills, took the agencies toward compensation systems driven more and more by actual in-market brand performance and less and less by standard commissions. The standard commission supposedly earned by agencies on media spends was seen as a large discount available as a right to advertisers who wasted no time in ignoring it completely and paying agencies just enough against media bills to actually settle up the media owners’ 85 percent, leaving little or nothing by way of commission. It was not exactly a state secret but – and this is surely not something that media owners should be proud of – they turned a nelson’s eye to a value destroying transaction happening beneath their very noses.

     

    The process is now complete. Agencies, which splintered into creative and media specialist entities over a decade ago, earn the bulk of their income from fees and incentives and almost nothing from media commission. And yet, the commission doesn’t stop.

     

    Time we gave it a decent burial.

     

    Paritosh Joshi has been a marketer, a mediaperson and a key officebearer on industry bodies. He is developing an independent media advisory practice. He can reached via his Twitter handle @paritoshZero

     

  • In his role as a strategist for India TV, Mr Joshi primarily will be responsible for optimizing and leading the revenue function of the existing businesses, and business development for the forthcoming ventures for the company

    India TV signs up Paritosh Joshi as strategist

    By A Correspondent

     

    In a yet another aggressive move, India TV has announced the appointment of Paritosh Joshi as a strategist.

     

    Until April 2012 Mr Joshi was the CEO, STAR CJ Network India, a STAR Group and CJO Shopping of South Korea’s Joint Venture.

     

    In his role as a strategist for India TV, Mr Joshi primarily will be responsible for optimizing and leading the revenue function of the existing businesses, and business development for the forthcoming ventures for the company.

     

    Apart from working with the Management at the Strategic level, as a mentor Joshi will also actively connect &engage India TV’s business teams including Sales, New Media and Brand.

     

    Announcing his appointment, Ritu Dhawan, MD & CEO, India TV, said, “Immensely experienced, Paritosh will be a tremendous resource in formulating the strategy for our new, ready to roll business plans. While we look forward to his contribution in taking independent news service to the next level, we feel delighted in welcoming Paritosh on the team. With his outstanding record, we are confident that he will be making most significant contributions in increasing our lead over competition as the most profitable media company.”

     

    Commenting on the assignment Mr Joshi observed, “I have had the pleasure of knowing Mr Rajat Sharma as a senior industry colleague and fellow IBF Board member for the last 6 years and we have had many lively conversations on the television business. It is from such a conversation earlier this year that the idea of this engagement began. It is a privilege to be invited to participate in this exciting journey and I look forward to a stimulating, inspiring assignment.”

     

  • Recent years have seen the Indian Broadcasting Foundation learn to pull together and several baby steps have been taken in this new spirit of bonhomie

    Paritosh Joshi: An ‘Upfront’ season for India

    By Paritosh Joshi

     

    For seven years, I had the proud privilege of working for News Corporation. Now, while the visible face of any media company is the content that readers, viewers and listeners consume every day, the invisible aspect which converts all these consumers into revenue is every bit as important to their success and sustainability. You might win Pulitzers and Emmys faster than you can build cabinets to show them off in and yet go ti..(oops), belly up. Conversely, you may ignore those pyrrhic victories and go after what matters to the shareholders: a sensible return on their capital. Before you turn the ferocity of your righteous indignation upon me, reminding me of the social responsibilities that the Media bear, let me reassure you that we are of a mind. However, even for the successful performance of its magisterial role as the Fourth Estate, the Media first must be solvent. Friends again?

     

    Back to that Newscorp theme. In 2008, I decided to figure out how ‘Upfront markets’ actually function and to watch and learn, secured an invitation from the Fox Cable cousins in their lofty Manhattan perch at 1211, Avenue of the Americas. American television businesses work on an annual creative cycle that kicks off, right after the slow summer, in September. Content teams are ready with their lineups for the year to follow and advertising sales teams prepare to take their shiny new inventories to market. The exercise is conducted with much pomp and ceremony. Client and Media Agency grandees from across the country assemble for a week of hectic negotiation, and even more hectic partying, in the Big Apple. Fox, ABC, CBS, NBC and all the lesser siblings pull out all stops to showcase new offerings. And before the Upfront week is over, anywhere up to two-thirds of the available inventory for the next 12 months will have been sold, leaving the balance for ‘Scatter’ and ‘Make good’ requirements.

     

    How does a major network like Fox approach the exercise?

     

    Strategy teams collate the preceding year’s sales data to stack clients up by volume and value. The analysis teases out only the spends on Upfront buys and arranges all client accounts in diminishing order based on Yield (based on CPT). The stack is now broken up into quintiles. This is when things get really interesting. Accounts in the top quintile must be applauded for being staunch allies. Conversely, accounts in the bottom quintile must suffer penalty for being, well, cheapskates. This is easily done. When the ad sales team goes into a negotiation meeting with top quintile clients, it is armed with the authority to pass on discounts to them that will enable them to enjoy CPTs below what they paid in the previous year. These are typically medium sized clients with not much negotiating muscle but their analyses would have told them how they were shafted in the previous year. They will hold out for some relief, and will be well pleased when the broadcaster finally ‘yields’ and gives them a good deal. At the opposite end, the bottom quintile clients, usually the country’s biggest advertisers counting big FMCG, giant retail and mega auto among them, will be hit with a demand to raise CPTs at least to the fourth quintile or else get locked out of any Upfront deal. This will lead to noisy kicking and screaming frequently involving the Media AOR behemoths but, to use Bibi Netanyahu’s memorable phrase, it is a Red Line.

     

    By consistently sticking to this approach, the big four have steadily grown revenues in the high single digits, and sometimes even better, right through a period when network television in the US has actually seen shrinking audiences as it conceded more and more ground to cable.

     

    In the meanwhile, here in India, we add 1 Crore, yes, 10 Million new television homes year, or over 40 million new viewers in the C&S 4+ audience. And yet, an off-the-record chat with any network CEO in India will reveal flat or even declining CPRP, much less CPT (which we don’t compute anyway). Always, the explanation is the same- plaintive bleating about competitive intensity and how it is ruthlessly exploited by the extortionate M’s who shall not be named, to squeeze their prices down ’til there’s nothing left to speak of.

     

    Why does this ‘Upfront’ approach work in the US and not in India?

     

    Upfronts are not a divinely ordained ritual. Some clear thinking and creative minds in the American television industry came up with them as a way of securing the basic economics of the participants, one year at a time, and then persuaded all their peers to join. From time to time, someone will have second thoughts about whether it serves their individual interest best to be a part of this herd behaviour, and inevitably there are stragglers. Eventually, the long-term wisdom of staying together wins out and they return to this watering hole.

     

    In India, in stark contrast, the television industry has been defined more by rifts, suspicion and even open hostility. Broadcasters have been prepared to spite one another’s faces by cutting off their own noses. However, recent years have seen the apex body, Indian Broadcasting Foundation, learn to pull together and several baby steps have been taken in this new spirit of bonhomie. Witness, for example, the News and General Entertainment Content Self-Regulation bodies. Or a shared commitment to realizing the Broadcast Audience Research Council for overseeing future television audience measurement.

     

    The Upfront process offers big benefits:

    1. Broadcasters write in enough revenue to defray, broadly speaking, all variable costs for the year (and if they are doing very well, fixed costs as well). Scatter revenues will become the jam, the bread & butter having already been secured.

     

    2. Clients have to take decisions within a very tight timeframe. The ability to string out a negotiation endlessly until a broadcaster’s spirit is broken is summarily taken away.

     

    a. Big clients with large media inventory appetites cannot risk everything on buying Scatter as there may simply not be enough left on the table. Also, whatever is left will likely be offered in a seller’s market scenario.

    b. Clients get the opportunity to see how good the quality of the advice their Media AOR offers really is. A well chosen buy – sponsorships come to mind – will yield benefits like gangbusters and demonstrate the agency’s chops.

    c. Clients get to do ‘Comparison Shopping’. All the wares are at one place and one time.

     

    3. Broadcasters’ creative and sales teams are challenged to convert their glib talk into concrete action in a pressure cooker environment.

     

    Actually, I could riff on.

     

    The only question is: Will the broadcast industry man up?

     

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

     

  • American TV executives know that the shelf life and ability to travel of a show make a huge difference to its economics, notes Paritosh Joshi in 'Media Matrix'.

    Paritosh Joshi: We watch their CSI but do they watch our {insert name of randomly chosen Indian TV show}?

    By Paritosh Joshi

     

    Look at the infinite appetite the entire world shows for syndicating American content. Hollywood cinema kick started what has often been derisively labled Cocacolonization well nigh a century back. The flickering images of American silent films left millions around the planet dumbfounded with amazement from the very beginning of the 20th century. Decades later, as my generation was growing up with India’s limited TV choice in the 70s and 80s, we shared the world’s sentiment in acknowledging ‘I love Lucy‘ and still later, kids in the late 80s proudly held up toy plastic swords as they defended imaginary CastleGrayskulls shouting “I HAVE THE POWER” while ‘He Man and the Masters of the Universe‘ played on the box before them.

     

    Now while we have fair nostalgia about ‘Hum Log’ and the Sutradhar cameo that the venerable Ashok Kumar signed each episode off with, does anyone seriously believe that somewhere in some remote corner of the planet, a Creole family is settling down to watch the dipsomaniac Basesar Ram and anguished Bhagwanti go through their schmaltzy half an hour a day?

     

    This is not a rhetorical question but a very serious one. American TV executives know that the shelf life and ability to travel of a show make a huge difference to its economics. Indeed, that syndication is where the real money is. What do they do, guided by this simple but crucial insight? Are their any other TV markets that have learnt this lesson? Can we?

     

    Super size me

    These three weeks spent in various parts of the US was a reminder of the American obsession with BIG. It isn’t hard to see why. No matter where you travel into that country from, you will have been accustomed to life and landscape on a smaller scale than the immensity that is America. Grow up there and you have bigness hardwired into your DNA. American content producers have always erred on the side of big is beautiful, never mind Mr Schumacher. Think of the characters that the American content industry has immortalized. Tarzan, bringing to mind the massively muscled Johnny Weissmuller, showed a path that led fairly directly to a massively muscled Christian Bale as the Dark Knight over seven decades later. At the other end of the scale, only the American mind could super-size a rodent into a lovable character of animation and comic books. I mean if that hero of Steamboat Willie that we all grew up loving was real, we would have to imagine an animal about 4 feet tall. More Mickey Capybara, less Mickey Mouse.

     

    Now try if you will, to find a Jagya or Arnav or Om Agarwal, to fill those really big shoes.

     

    Too Big to Fail

    American creative minds wrap themselves around scales of production that would leave everyone else gasping for breath. A TV series such as Prison Break will have a 3 or 4 million dollar budget per episode. Let me put that into context for you. A big primetime fiction show on a Hindi GEC probably costs no more than Rs. 25 lakh, ~40 thousand dollars, or about 1% of that. Even the fantastically expensive versions of KBC probably cost no more than Rs. 2-3 crores per episode, ~ 0.7 million dollars, and the bulk of that goes to the star anchoring the show. Prison Break has no stars. Bulk of the cost is resides in the production values. And it is those production values exactly: sets, stunts, action sequences, special effects, CGI, cameras on giant jimmyjibs and airborne on helicopters; that the world can’t get enough of. Look at a more recent example of the American gift for razzmatazz. Did you see the Republican National Convention? Or the Democratic one? You were scarcely alone. Yes, those were not merely political rallies but designed to be global television extravaganzas attracting a billion strong audience.

     

    Here’s looking at you, kid

    Contrast the trials and tribulations of the apocryphal joint family that provides the stock in trade of an Indian daily soap with those faced by the protagonist of, say, Burn Notice, that has now gone six seasons with Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) and just four or five other significant characters. Not only does this give the content makers the opportunity to etch out strong and credible characterisations, it ensures that audiences build enduring relationships and loyalties for them. Now while you might remember Prerna, Anurag and Komolika from Kasauti Zindagi Kay (sic!), can you name any of the 50 others who played big parts over its 1400 episodes?

     

    There is, however, a crucial ‘condition precedent’ that enables this to happen. A fiction idea won’t fly unless the story arc can be firmly anchored around a protagonist of epic proportions. Hey, they have complete theories on how to achieve this!

     

    Seasonal not perennial

    American television has a wonderful deciduousness to it. At the end of 13 weeks, more or less, the show sheds its leaves and comes back renewed and efflorescent a year later. Everyone gets a break. The actors go away to other roles. The directors pursue different projects. And the audience is free to build up its appetite for characters it misses on the screen until, when it is about to drift from ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ to ‘out of sight, out of mind’, they are back to woo them again.

     

    There’s a common thread that runs through doing TV the American way. The Hispanics in the beautiful city I recently visited have a term for it.

     

    They call it Cojones.

     

    p.s. Sorry for the missed episode last week, not that anyone missed it.

     

    Paritosh Joshi was until recently CEO, Star CJ. He has been a marketer, a mediaperson and on the Board/committees of various industry bodies. He can reached via his Twitter handle @paritoshZero

     

     

  • By Invitation: Peter Mukerjea, Jaisurya Das, Sundeep Nagpal, Deepa Gahlot, Paritosh Joshi, Shailesh Kapoor & Sorbojeet Chatterjee

    Our galaxy of weekly and other regular columnists and contributors to write and/or reminisce:

     

    Peter Mukerjea: Where have the last 12 months gone?

    With MxM, I was happy that it was a real honest-to-God startup. The honesty with which I was approached was quite endearing but it is what I really liked and was moved by.

    http://www.mxmindia.com/?p=30684

     

    Jaisurya Das: Way to go…

    ‘Dear MxM’ – our little column has connected with students, professionals and media aspirants week after week.

    http://www.mxmindia.com/?p=30675

     

    Sundeep Nagpal: Striking that delicate balance

    The composure with which MxM has gone about its business in the last one year has only been a reminder that in the ultimate analysis, the aspect that matters most in any race is how it’s run!

    http://www.mxmindia.com/?p=30693

     

    Deepa Gahlot: Critiquing the critics

    Reviewing The Reviews gave me a chance to examine a cross-section of critical responses to a film and see if there was any consensus.

    http://www.mxmindia.com/?p=30672

     

    Paritosh Joshi: From the far side

    The start-up has revealed the opportunity that lay at the ‘x’ roads of ‘m’edia and ‘m’arketing. ‘Obvious’, did I hear someone say? Great ideas always are, in retrospect.

    http://www.mxmindia.com/?p=30677

     

    Shailesh Kapoor: An interesting, satisfying challenge

    There are many things to write about, but with most broadcasters as clients, one needs to strike a fine balance. With time, I may upset a few people. But stating facts the way they are should remain paramount.

    http://www.mxmindia.com/?p=30688

     

    Sorbojeet Chatterjee: Emerging super successful

    I sincerely hope this weekly quiz is doing its bit of spreading some useful media ‘gyaan’ (and increasing the page views of Google!).

    http://www.mxmindia.com/?p=30682

     

  • The start-up has revealed the opportunity that lay at the 'x' roads of 'm'edia and 'm'arketing. 'Obvious', did I hear someone say? Great ideas always are, in retrospect.

    Paritosh Joshi: From the far side

    By Paritosh Joshi

     

    Estimadofelizcumpleunaño de edad!

     

    A.k.a. Happy Birthday, dear One Year Old! In Spanish, that is.

     

    Don’t blame me. I’m in a town built around a Mission established by the Blessed Junípero Serra, the Spanish Missionary who brought Christianity to Las Californiasyadayadayada. So, Dateline: San Francisco.

     

    And though I may be on the far side of the planet, this morning my mind is on MxMIndia’s achieving the important landmark; the first birthday.

     

    Pradyuman and everyone else at MxMIndia may have been considered rather brassy for their decision to launch yet another media-focused website when they did it last year. Competitors aplenty had marched in and staked out territory years before so what, precisely, was this arriviste doing?

     

    The start-up has revealed the opportunity that lay at the ‘x’ roads of ‘m’edia and ‘m’arketing. ‘Obvious’, did I hear someone say? Great ideas always are, in retrospect.

    Time those existential questions went away, thank you. The dreaded Year 1 has been navigated without harm to life and limb. The start-up has revealed the opportunity that lay at the ‘x’ roads of ‘m’edia and ‘m’arketing. ‘Obvious’, did I hear someone say? Great ideas always are, in retrospect.

     

    My own column was simultaneously something that took a long while getting to and something that happened nearly overnight. Pradyuman first put the thought of a weekly piece into my head just weeks into launching mxmindia, probably October last year. And then in late April ’12 when I announced my intention to leave the corporate world, he was on to it faster than greased lightning. Even the name (Media Matrix) was figured out in a frenzied late night exchange of emails and phone calls.

     

    And now I’ve been at it for over four months.

     

    What can I say? Keeps me honest and committed to this wonderful thing called writing, I suppose.

     

    Enhorabuena, Senor Pradyuman!*

     

    *Congratulations Mr Pradyuman!

     

    Paritosh Joshi, until earlier this year CEO of Star CJ, is now Strategic Advisor with Ormax Media and is actively associated with both the MRUC and IBF. Mr Joshi writes ‘Media Matrix’ every Thursday.

     

  • Remember the days when Doordarshan would provide signals without an intermediary? As many 30 million homes still watch TV that way, note Paritosh Joshi

    Paritosh Joshi | Digitization’s best kept secret

    By Paritosh Joshi

     

    The entire Television industry: Equipment makers, Broadcasters, Distribution Platform Operators like DTH Players or MSOs; and finally, the end consumer, are all on the verge of extreme anxiety. The government, having notified the “THE TELECOMMUNICATION (BROADCASTING AND CABLE SERVICES) INTERCONNECTION (DIGITAL ADDRESSABLE CABLE TELEVISION SYSTEMS) REGULATIONS, 2012”, is on pins and needles wondering whether full compliance is possible on time and hoping it won’t have another embarrassment on its hands.

     

    The analogue sunset for our big cities, while it has been pushed back, is imminent and even if it gets another postponement, it will have to be completed soon.

     

    What were the technologies that were considered by lawmakers when legislating digitization? A cursory reading of the ponderously named regulations will reveal that all options involve an intermediary “cable operator” defined as a “person who provides cable service through a cable television network or otherwise controls or is responsible for the management and operation of a cable television network”.

     

    Given that we have all but forgotten an era when a broadcaster (Doordarshan) provided its signals sans intermediary to consumers that they could pluck right off the air, it is scarcely surprising; but a good 30 million homes still receive their TV unintermediated. Remember the antenna?  (Evidently, none of those 30 million are reading this piece).

     

    And here’s another little factoid. As much as 44% of all TV consumption in the US is still from broadcast TV. We in India have apparently forgotten that terrestrial broadcast still represents the quickest and least expensive path to digitization.

     

    There are many reasons why terrestrial broadcast TV is ideal for India:

     

    • It is, by and large, FTA. Obviously you can run an encrypted channel as easily on broadcast as on satellite but in the main, broadcast TV works on advertising or public subsidy supported models.
    • It ends the tyranny of the intermediary and of all manner of anti-competitive piggybacking models.
    • It advances the cause of plurality of choice. So far we have only understood this in the context of programming but it is as legitimately an issue for platform plurality and choice as well. Remember that the MIB misses no opportunity to remind us about how important these virtues are.
    • It directly posits competition to the cable & satellite industry. (That doesn’t even need any elaboration, does it?)
    • It reasserts the citizens’ right over the broadcast spectrum, which is by definition a public resource.
    • It creates a new ‘spectrum auction’ style revenue source for the exchequer.
    • It enables the decentralization of TV. Terrestrial broadcast is line-of-sight. While a substantial portion of the content may be re-broadcast from shared, national channels, it opens huge possibilities for a new creative, and commercial, tier- local TV.

     

    So why has the private broadcast industry remained strangely silent on this issue?

     

    Let us remind ourselves that the metros are only the first milestones on the digitisation journey and a whole country must follow over the following years.

     

    Paritosh Joshi was until recently CEO, Star CJ. He has been a marketer, a mediaperson and on the Board/committees of various industry bodies. He can reached via his Twitter handle @paritoshZero

     

  • The Media Research Users' Council has awarded the coveted contract for the research work for the Indian Readership Survey to The Nielsen Company on the recommendation of the Readership Studies Council of India (RSCI)

    Nielsen bags research contract for IRS

    By A Correspondent

     

    It’s now official. The Nielsen Company has been awarded the coveted contract for the research work for the Indian Readership Survey. On a recommendation of  the Readership Studies Council of India (RSCI), the Media Research Users’ Council has decided in principle to award the contract for the IRS to Nielsen. The formal award of contract will follow a process of legal due diligence.

     

    The decision was arrived at after a comprehensive nine month process that began in November 2011, with the formation of the RSCI by its sponsors, the MRUC (Media Research Users’ Council), and ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulation). The RSCI was mandated by the industry to oversee the conduct of a unified Indian Readership Study (IRS), billed as the world’s largest continuous readership study.

     

    The process involved the active participation of 20 senior representatives of advertisers, agencies and publishers who served on the RSCI Managing Committee,  as well some of the sub committees formed to vet every aspect of the submissions – from technical superiority to fieldwork integrity, research cost, organization strength and stability. Another 24 senior industry professionals contributed to the technical deliberations, under the chairmanship of the Technical Committee, Paritosh Joshi.

     

    “Proposals were received from the most hallowed names in the Media Measurement universe and the quality of submissions was uniformly high. The knowledge and skill on display drew upon the very finest professional capability available globally,” said Mr Joshi. “Developing an RFP award recommendation was an unusually challenging task. The Nielsen Company proposal, that has won the approval of the Council, was exceptional in its methodological rigour, comprehensiveness and future readiness. The design recommendation and resources committed to the project should enable the Indian Readership Survey to reassert its position of preeminence in Indian media measurement,”

     

    “Our objective through the process was two fold – One, to achieve the construct of a study that would be the gold standard all over the world in readership measurement. And two, to involve all industry stakeholders in the decision making process with a spirit of collaboration and teamwork,” said Lynn de Souza, Chairman of the RSCI.  The months and years ahead will present several challenges as we introduce a first ever data capture system – the Dual Screen CAPI (Computer Aided Personal Interview) – a system that will reduce interview time, respondent fatigue and confusion, and interviewer bias of any kind.

     

    “The MRUC’s belief in the  innovative techniques and technology proposed for the forthcoming Indian Readership Survey will certainly transform market research in India, improving quality and the effectiveness of gathering and applying consumer insights for businesses and marketers. Nielsen is honoured to have been chosen as its partner in this landmark study that will no doubt shape all future research across India.” said Prashant Singh, MD – Media, Nielsen India.

     

    Ms de Souza commended the work put in by industry seniors in the selection process. “I am overwhelmed by the seriousness and commitment of the many industry seniors who gave freely of their time on weekends, and holidays as well, to help the RSCI arrive at a decision. Thank you would not be enough. Ravi Kiran, our marketing Chairman, was also very helpful in enabling us to identify new revenue sources given that the new IRS will be captured, stored, disseminated and analysed digitally.”

     

  • Paritosh Joshi waxes eloquent about the joys of Hulu.com, and why India needs one. Soon

    Paritosh Joshi: Say Hello to Hulu

    By Paritosh Joshi

     

    This fortnight, your humble correspondent is in the US, starting with the beautiful city of San Francisco. However, his responsibilities to mxmindia.com are never far from his mind so he will take a pause in his schedule to tell you about a creature of great wonder and delight that enchants the natives here while remaining tantalizingly out of reach for most other parts of the world.

     

    You are reading this on a computer or other electronic device (ok, some Luddite actually printed out a copy on dead trees but it still started off on a device). Said device is connected, ie it has access to the internet (or as the incomparable Dubya once called it, “The Internets”  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKTH6f1JfX8) – and as the clip that came up when you clicked on the link demonstrates, your device can deal confidently with voice and video too. Let’s be honest; all that FBing and tweeting you do inevitably has you clicking on video links with fair frequency; so you are scarcely a stranger to internet video.

     

    You are also no stranger to the grim truth that almost all the content on all the C&S channels that you get on your Dish, T-Sky, Hathway or whatever, is being routinely pirated and can be watched, off schedule or VOD if you will, online.

     

    There’s a simple rule related with criminal behaviour. Do what the crook does, but do it better than the crook does and people will even pay a small premium to get it the legit way. Al Capone could only run speakeasies until booze was illicit. The Netherlands (where Cannabis use is broadly legal) ranks 9th in its usage. Even Canada is ahead. Simple point. Do the same thing and do it above board and compliance generally should go up. (Who remembers India’s Income Tax regime in the 70s with near 100% marginal tax rates and the highest incidence of tax evasion probably on the planet?)

     

    Which is what Hulu is to online television content.

     

    You can get a full fix of what it is by checking out the Wikipedia entry but the basic idea is simple. Top American networks, NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, Nickelodeon and several others have pooled their content into an advertising supported, high quality streaming service that simultaneously does justice to the consumer’s expectation of quality and the content owners’ expectation of fair compensation for intellectual property.

     

    What is most delightful about even the free tier of Hulu is the thoughtful Permission Marketing that it practices from the very landing page. A lot of content can be viewed by a simple registration and you also have the option of trying Hulu Plus for free. It wouldn’t foist it on you. Your call. This sensibility is visible at every stage. You choose a show to view, (I chose Jimmy Fallon learning the ‘Booty Tooch’ from Tyra Banks, don’t ask why) and even before clicking through, the mouse-over gives you a quick summary to help you decide if you want to go on. Next, you get advertising before the show starts. And it asks you if you find the advertising relevant. So the next time you are on Hulu again, the intelligent ad server engine will make better choices about advertising that actually make sense to you. Once you choose, the site will thank you for making the choice too! Inevitably these days, Hulu is keen to use your socmed (yes that is now a legit word) networks too. It asks you if you would like to post the video you just viewed to FB and Hulu giving you the option even here to opt out.

     

    I could go on but the short point is this. With bandwidth growing and streaming quality steadily improving as a result, we may well be at the point where an Indian ‘Hulu’ may be an idea whose time has come. Drive out piracy. Secure quality content for widest consumption. Get the advertising targeted to people who actually want it. What is not to like, eh?

     

    And in case you were wondering about Tyra… http://www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com/video/booty-tooch-with-tyra-banks-82112/1414177

     

    Paritosh Joshi was until recently CEO, Star CJ. He has been a marketer, a mediaperson and on the Board/committees of various industry bodies. He can reached via his Twitter handle @paritoshZero