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Tag: Paritosh Joshi

  • Good news must be paid for because it costs a whole lot to produce. You cannot crowd-source the truly significant story or editorial, notes Paritosh Joshi in Media Matrix

    Paritosh Joshi: Does readership have a future?

    By Paritosh Joshi

     

    A few months back, I had the opportunity of hearing Mr N Ram of The Hindu speaking at an industry conference on the future of newspaper readership. His erudition and scholarship are legendary, his command of the language second to none and his rich baritone makes the experience an auditory delight. However, the central conceit of that day’s oration was anything but pleasant. In no uncertain terms, Mr Ram spelt out the impending annihilation of the print medium, not in the West, about which we have all heard, but right here in India. Interestingly enough, in the months that have passed since, I don’t seem to remember seeing a single repudiation of this bleak forecast.

     

    Right then, two words. Theodore Levitt.

     

    Let me cast my mind back a bit over the going-on-50 years I have spent on this planet. It is conventional wisdom, and an oft-repeated criticism of the younger generation, that nobody reads anything anymore. The comparison, always, is to the literate past when “everyone” read. Let me be clear. This whole notion is a great big ballyhoo. Reading, back in those days, necessarily meant one of the following, extremely short, list: (1) books (2) periodicals, including newspapers and (3) personal writings such as school work and letters: written or received. Reading and writing were not pervasive activities. Yes there were obsessive readers; I was one; but they represented a minority- a persecuted minority I might add being seen as bookworm wimps- compared to the red-blooded lads who spent every spare moment mercilessly kicking a ball, and as frequently each other, on the nearest available dusty lot. Kids did not wake up only to check overnight Facebook, Twitter and BBM messages and posts on their mobile devices. They did not surf for lyrics of the latest song by Lamb of God or August burns red. They did not go to bed after writing their blogspot or tumblr post for the evening.

     

    Messenger apps, social media, classwork, homework, leisure, amusement, resentment, sorrow, anger- there isn’t a personal emotion, engagement or venue where a 21st century denizen is able to function without reading or writing something. The Web does not talk to its users; I mean it can and does, but it is primarily enabled for people who can write and read. This must be understood: Web users better be literate at least in terms of basic reading and writing before they can get any substantial value out of it. Here’s an assertion. More people do more reading and writing (nearly incessantly in fact) in 2012, as compared to any previous period of known human history.

     

    Brings us to the daily or periodical print publication.

     

    Who needs newspapers and magazines any more? We have the social media to tell us exactly what is happening anywhere on the planet in real time, right? We heard about the Anna Hazare arrest and detention at Tihar, fire in the Bangalore skyscraper, the Fukushima Tsunami, the Black Wednesday market collapse; heck, <name random news event here>, long before even the TV news broadcasters had cottoned on to it. Yes, but that was the first, mostly unverified and unverifiable heads-up on the story vis-à-vis the detail and insight that we now have.

     

    Where did the insight come from? We waited until a few hours later when our trustworthy daily or periodical carried a fact-checked and properly edited version of the story.

     

    Mr Murdoch Senior, not the gentleman at the heart of all manner of brouhaha, the other one, says it simply and well. Good news must be paid for because it costs a whole lot to produce. You cannot crowd-source the truly significant story. Nor can you crowd-source incisive editorial commentary. And it does not matter how or where a consumer will choose to consume it. Mr Murdoch has backed word by action, putting first the Wall Street Journal, then the Times of London and then a whole sheaf of other Newscorp publications behind pay-walls. More and more people are paying. What is more, even publications that were the most vocal critics of the move: New York Times comes to mind, have themselves succumbed to the same gambit. Of course, the pay wall is by no means the only way to make online content pay for itself but it becomes a great example of how indispensable quality journalism is to Joe Public, even if it cost a few coins.

     

    The newspaper is not about paper; it is about news. The first is the physicality of a product. The second is the consumer benefit. It is fair to say that paper will continue to disappear from the newspaper. But news quite definitely will not.

     

    Theodore Levitt called the confusion MARKETING MYOPIA.

     

    Paritosh Joshi was until recently CEO, Star CJ. He has been a marketer, a mediaperson and a key officebearer on industry bodies. He can reached via the comments board below or his Twitter handle @paritoshZero.

     

  • 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

     

  • A new weekly column by Paritosh Joshi, until recently CEO, Star CJ. Given his varied experience in the media and industry bodies, Mr Joshi will analyse issues concerning the business of media, measurement and research

    Media Matrix: Valuing Audience – Part II

    By Paritosh Joshi

     

    Remember the 5 weepies that you were forced to watch because of your spouse? The maverick British automobile journalist? The irritatingly intrusive news editor? If you do, we met last week. And even if you don’t, I’m going to try and make this week’s 870 words stand on their own feet.

     

    We signed off last week wondering about whether audience quality, and not just quantity, could be measured objectively. And whether current systems of audience measurement pay enough attention to measuring audience quality. The questions were tainted by an assertion that “In the relentless focus on audience volume as the prime metric, we have lost sight of audience quality”.

     

    Why does audience quantity take precedence over any other measure, particularly in a market such asIndia?

    • Almost every product category has low penetration, or in more technical terms, low Category Development Index
    • Marketers’ primary priority is to reach the widest audience to build awareness about their product/category to stimulate demand
    • When width becomes paramount it is easy to see why quantity always wins over quality

     

    The arrival of satellite television inIndiain the early 1990s was the first intimation of accelerating media proliferation. An unregulated regulatory environment in its early years and limitless viewer demand for exciting, entertaining content fuelled a torrent of channels, and indeed genre innovation which continues unabated over two decades on. Coupled with rising incomes in a domestic consumption fuelled economy and steadily growing literacy, India also saw simultaneous growth in the print media and, with the advent of better telecommunications in the last decade, the ‘new’ or digital media. Making systematic and reasoned choices in this era of abundance was no longer the simple exercise that media planning used to be in the stone age of media scarcity that preceded it.

     

    Enter- the media agency of record.

     

    The challenge for advertisers was just this: how to reach the largest audience at the least cost. Inevitably, the agency’s singular task was to stitch up defined audiences across multiple vehicles at the lowest CPT (cost per thousand) or CPRP (cost per rating point). Conversely, advertising sales personnel at all media outlets were under pressure to offer packages that were compared relentlessly on cost almost to the exclusion of everything. The age of quantity had arrived.

     

    We will leave the hurly-burly of the media market for a moment and look at how audiences are actually measured and how these measurements are consolidated into reports.

     

    Television measurement involves peoplemeters; devices connected to domestic TV sets that keep track of who watched what, when. These peoplemeters, once installed in a home, track TV consumption around the clock, through the week, across months and years. These days, most have inbuilt communication apparatus that enables them to transmit their observation record to a central server without human intervention. The central facility now consolidates thousands of individual viewer readings into audience ratings, again with little human intervention. Ratings report second by second ebbs and flows in audience aggregates. Cross sections – by second, minute, hour of any other time interval become more important than how a particular individual, or household, or even demographic, spent a day interacting with TV.

     

    Other media, most prominently print, are measured by large scale media surveys like the Indian Readership Survey or IRS. Thousands of households are contacted across the country to map print, TV, radio, digital and other media consumption along with detailed information on usage of a wide range of consumables, durables and assets (such as personal transport). Here too, the system is geared to deliver cross sections of readership, listenership and so on, rather than examining how an individual, household or defined demographic consumes across media and product categories.

     

    In days of yore when data tabulation, summarization and analysis was done manually, examining and interpreting research information, whether for  TV or any other media, on a ‘longitudinal’ rather than ‘cross-sectional’ was practically impossible. While individual cases might be studied, purely for anecdotal value, there was no practical way of subjecting, large parts of, or the entire sample itself, to cross-sectional study.

     

    WithMoore’s Law having given us exponentially growing computing horsepower and data warehousing, this impediment no longer exists. Imagine an individual’s TV consumption across a week. From spiritual or yoga type programs in the early morning, through news and business during the day to action, drama, music, talk and comedy in the evening night, she has a wide range of content on her plate. And when you start looking at her ‘TV timeline’, and start comparing and contrasting it with the thousands of others, you will find others that are rather similar, somewhat similar or rather dissimilar to hers. Simple, least squares type, approaches can scan across timelines to find patterns of behaviour.

     

    In much the same way, the entire mix of product and media consumption of individuals or households, rather than cross sectional tallies, can also be run on respondent level data in studies like the IRS.

     

    Shifting attention from cross sections to longitudes or timelines – of moving from a cross-sectional view of audiences to actually understanding how they behave and what they consume across time and place is the difference between understanding audiences as quantitative aggregates or behavioural phenomena.

    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 is a weekly column by Paritosh Joshi, that started last Thursday. Given his varied experience in the media and industry bodies, Mr Joshi, until recently CEO, Star CJ, will analyse issues concerning the business of media, measurement and research.

    Media Matrix by Paritosh Joshi: Valuing audiences

    By Paritosh Joshi

     

    Media advertising has been priced based upon audiences that it reaches for a very long time. Audit Bureaux of Circulation were set up in Western Europe and North America by the early years of the 20th Century and even India’s own ABC has a hoary past, dating back to the 1930s.

     

    However, circulation audits only revealed the number of ‘revenue’ copies i.e. sold copies of a particular publication. This was not a particularly good guide to how many actually read it. Specialist publications may have sizable circulation but very few readers. Conversely, a general interest publication may appeal to many people and be shared around extensively.

     

    This was a serious deficiency. Market Research was a rapidly evolving discipline that offered a solution: readership surveys. Initially starting out as proprietary studies of individual publications, it soon became clear that for widespread use, they would need to be conducted at the industry level. Such studies, run by a ‘syndicate’ of clients have since been referred to as Syndicated Research.

     

    It was evident, even at the dawn of the age of measurement, that it was not enough to have a single number that represented the sum total of all readers. At the crudest, you would have to segregate males from females, children and teenagers from youth and adults. You would also want to discriminate on income-high, middle and low and by geography: rural or urban, state, district and town. These ‘demographic’ variables used to identify ‘segments’ have since become a staple of audience targeting.

     

    Brands and products would make specific media choices based upon the volume of a particular audience segment they delivered. Typically, the price of reaching a thousand individuals with a specific sized insertion became the basis of comparing a medium’s ‘efficiency’. This measure, variously called CPT (Cost per Thousand), CPM (Cost per Mille- mille being Latin for thousand) or simply the Mille Rate became the universal yardstick for evaluating the print media.

     

    Television began to grow in significance, first in theUnited Statesthen inEurope, after the end of World War II. Broadcast over the airwaves, television offered no ‘paid sale’ opportunity. Funding television could only be done two ways. Public broadcasting systems would be funded by the government exchequer and private broadcasters would have to earn revenue from advertising insertions. The pre-existing analogy of the Print media made it clear that television needed an audience measurement system. It was also recognized that viewers showed greater volatility than readers appeared to do, thus necessitating a much higher frequency of measuring the habit.

     

    A solution was found in asking randomly chosen viewers in a ‘panel’ to maintain a viewing diary. Diaries were collected weekly and collated to determine the ebbs and flows of viewership. Since the panel was relatively stable in composition and size, viewership was reported as a relative measure – the rating point. A rating point equals 1 per cent of the total audience. A show watched by every person on the panel would have 100 rating points. Since panels were constructed to mirror the overall population- being a representative random sample – the relative measure could be used to estimate the broader behaviour of the population. Inevitably extending the cost efficiency analogy from Print, it was only a matter of time before the cost of reaching 1 rating point began to be compared across shows. CPRP – cost per rating point – was born.

     

    And that is pretty much where the art and science of valuing audiences has rested, for over half a century.

     

    Now think for a moment about how you consume different media. There’s that television show well past your normal bedtime that compels you to stay awake until midnight – on a Tuesday. That automobile magazine with a big feature by a maverick British journalist that you spend a small fortune on every fortnight. And those news shows run by the world’s most intrusive interviewer that irritate the hell out of you but you watch with an almost masochistic regularity every night at 9. On the other hand, there are those 5 newspapers that are barely glanced at on your office desk, the daily weepies that you are forced to deal with as your spouse devours them every weekday or the fashion magazines that somehow land up in the bathroom stack. Surely there must be a difference in how they are evaluated by a media planner who somehow knows of your media habits? There should be. There aren’t.

     

    In the relentless focus on audience volume as the prime metric, we have lost sight of audience quality. Is it possible to objectively evaluate quality? Do current audience measurement systems pay adequate attention to measuring it? We will deal with these issues in Part II, next week.

     

    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

     

  • Introducing a new weekly column by Paritosh Joshi, until recently CEO, Star CJ. Given his varied experience in the media, as a marketer and on industry bodies, Mr Joshi will analyse issues concerning the business of media and marketing. And more!

    Introducing: Media Matrix, a new weekly column by Paritosh Joshi

    By Paritosh Joshi

     

    A young man who currently works in one of the Big Three television networks dropped by for some career advice last week. After graduating from business school, he has spent almost five years at the job, the first two in Ad Sales and the next three in Marketing. He feels like he is beginning to stagnate and has raised the issue with his boss. Boss suggested that he move back into Ad Sales.

     

    What would you advise him?

     

    If he planned to be in the broadcast industry for the long haul, say the next decade, I suggested that he stay in Marketing. If it was just the next two or three however, he was likely better off shifting back to Ad Sales.

     

    Seems cryptic? Hang on, we should soon see why.

     

    Marketing’s role at most Indian broadcasters only comes in when all aspects of the channel, show or event have already been finalized. All that remains is to build awareness of the impending launch to try and ensure the quickest possible pace of sampling among viewers. Talented creative agency is called in and briefed. Wit, emotion, action and drama are poured in and out pops a striking, often award winning, campaign. All that remains to be done is splashing out a large sum on a media plan and the job is done.

     

    If you learned your Marketing at one of the putative Universities of the discipline, P&G or Unilever or one of the beverage majors for instance, you would expect to lead, not follow the process and centre every decision at each stage on the consumer. It would probably offend you to be treated merely as a deliverer of advertising and media campaigns. Given the circumstances, you would want to shift closer to either the Content or the Ad Sales side of the business, where the action really was.

     

    Things are going to start changing. As soon as July 1, 2012 actually.

     

    For as long as we’ve had C&S TV inIndia, going on 20 years now, the biggest impediment in its expansion has been limited bandwidth due to analog delivery. With capacity of less than 70 channels delivered at indifferent resolution and scratchy audio, the biggest challenge before a channel is to get distribution at whatever cost. Once this hurdle has been negotiated, it enters a relatively limited range of options available in any given genre. The rest depends on casting as wide a content net as possible. Almost every channel tries to be all things to all viewers.

     

    Mandatory digitization arrives in the big metros on July 1. In a fell swoop, channel choice is set to grow three-fold or more. Costs of distribution should fall rather sharply, removing a significant entry barrier and opening doors for many more content providers. Inevitably, the days of every channel wanting to be ‘One size fits all’ must give way to specific consumer needs driving product design. International channels already show this precision in proposition and content. Comedy Central makes no bones about what it stands for and will stay close to the promise. Fox has a whole portfolio of well-designed channels that identify and then single mindedly go after a tightly defined benefit.

     

    And make no mistake. This is the direction where all of Indian television is headed; the era of the Marketing-led broadcasting business.

     

    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