Tag: Shailesh Kapoor

By Shailesh Kapoor

 

In more than 30 years of active television viewing, no content has fascinated and captivated me more than live election results coverage. It’s the biggest reality show ever, unfolding in real time, with aftermath that can last for years, if not decades. One such reality show will play out this Sunday. And then there will be an even bigger one some time in the summer of 2014.

 

In the good old Doordarshan days, General Election results were four-day long affairs, interspersed by Manoj Kumar films. When the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) were introduced in 1999, it meant that four days of excitement would crash into about four hours. Initially, I detested the EVMs for doing this to me. But over time, I have grown to love this new rapid-fire, T20 format of election results.

 

Election results coverage is now all about thinking on your feet. As new data flows into the system in real time, it is impossible to rehearse this coverage out. From shifting between politicians and experts on one hand and between various states on the other, the anchor of such a show can find his plate too full for his own liking. Hosting live election coverage has to be the most challenging camera-facing job on TV today. The post-analysis leading upto government formation, which may last anything from one day to upto two weeks, is the more familiar news part, albeit nail-biting at times.

 

Much as I enjoy it immensely, I have two pet peeves related to live election coverage that I hope are addressed soon. The first one is about the use of technology. There is just too much focus on portraying the technology as the hero of the coverage. Many channels run promos of their election results shows highlighting how their touchscreen-based technology or their graphics software are the best in the business.

 

I fail to see the point. Good technology, unless it is a technology program we are talking of, should always be invisible. It is meant to seamlessly enhance the viewing experience, than become the star in the room. Live sports do it so well. Perhaps, they get more practice. And with so much talk about ‘high-end’ technology in live results coverage, if you still can’t ensure basics like your cameramen are not visible all over the show, you haven’t done your technical rehearsals right!

 

My second pet peeve is more psephology-led in nature. With 63 years of elections history behind us, out of which about two decades have involved active use of computers, one would have expected news brands to have created some concrete metrics and indices to capture insights in a more structure and predictive form. This has not happened, and as a result, rarely are learnings from past elections used to analyze current results, except an odd anecdotal comment by an expert, which is often biased to lead to a pre-decided conclusion in his mind anyway.

 

Psephology is a science before it’s an art. Yet, it unfolds on our television more like the latter, with wordsmithery being its primary form of execution, instead of any robust data-led indicators. In fact, such indicators, and not technology, can become true differentiators of a news channel’s election results coverage.

 

But these are only minor irritants in what is the most enthralling television content for me. Come Sunday, and I shall be all eyes and ears from 7 am onwards.

 

Shailesh Kapoor is founder and CEO of media insights firm Ormax Media. He spent nine years in the television industry before turning entrepreneur. The views expressed here are his own. He can be reached at his Twitter handle @shaileshkapoor

 

 

By Shailesh Kapoor

 

You would normally not associate positive emotions with the word ‘noise’. It’s generally assumed and accepted that noise is bad. In context of television too, the media has propagated this notion for a while now. But there is very little real evidence to accept this belief. In fact, there is telling evidence to the contrary.

 

For many of us, the first association with noise on Indian television would be Arnab Goswami. His rival channels even start their bulletins (the 10pm news on NDTV, for example) with the line ‘where you get news, not noise’. Yet, the high viewership of Arnab’s show speaks for itself. In the noise and the cacophony lies a sense of power the viewer feels. When you see the privileged political class being put in the docks and spoken to like they are criminals (words like hypocrite and hooligan are routinely used by Arnab to describe his guests), you feel empowered by proxy. And that would be impossible without the noise.

 

Gauhar Khan is by far the most popular contestant on Bigg Boss 7 (Source: Ormax Characters India Loves). But she’s not someone who will die wondering. She’s out there, raising her voice, which gets rather shrill at times, at the slightest excuse. But like Arnab, her ‘noise’ comes from her conviction. And conviction is an unequivocal sign of strength.

 

One of the top-rated shows on television for the last five years is what you would classically label ‘a loud comedy’. Yet, Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah, with all its executional hyperbole, continues to enthrall audiences, especially in Western India. I haven’t seen anyone who even remotely resembles the serial’s female lead Daya in mannerisms and talking style. A relatively moderate husband (Jethalal) provides a good contrast and the couple has been the most popular ‘jodi’ Indian television for a while now.

 

There are many other examples across genres where one can sense that the mellow and the soothing is finding it hard to seek attention, while the noisy and the high-pitch manages to get viewership and media talk. One of the biggest successes of this year, Comedy Nights With Kapil, is a fairly loud show itself, even though it incredibly manages to keep its aesthetics consistently in place despite the noise. And the consistent performance of slapstick comedies and dubbed South action films on Hindi movie channels further propels the noise-works theory.

 

Sometime earlier this year, I made the mental shift to accept that on Indian television, ‘noise’ and ‘loud’ are not undesirable, negative terms. Here, the viewer equivalent of what the US audiences will call ‘noise’ is ‘over’ (as in, “bahut over dikhaya hai”). ‘Over’ stands for over-acting or screenplay exaggeration. But ‘noise’, when not ‘over’, is perfectly desirable.

 

In several discussions within the industry on this topic in recent years, the most interesting reason on why this should be the case goes as follows. There are more than 100 channels on an average consumer’s TV today. Even though she may watch only 8-10 of them regularly, the idea of multiple channels is still intimidating to the Indian audiences. So, the ‘surfing experience’ is still a stressful one, whereby the viewer is trying to come to terms with the plethora of choice available to her, often not knowing where to stop. With the number of channels on a perpetual increase, this intimidation is not going away anytime soon.

 

In this context, in a ‘surfing’ scenario, a channel gets only about 5-10 seconds window to ‘attract’ the undecided viewer. This is where ‘noise’ comes in. It’s like a sales pitch or the good old Aussie art of ‘spruiking’, whereby you sell through showmanship of speech.

 

There may be other reasons too, but ‘noise’ is in for sure. Let the drum rolls begin!

 

Shailesh Kapoor is founder and CEO of media insights firm Ormax Media. He spent nine years in the television industry before turning entrepreneur. The views expressed here are his own. He can be reached at his Twitter handle @shaileshkapoor

 

By Shailesh Kapoor

 

The recently concluded India-West Indies Test series, better known as Sachin Tendulkar’s farewell series, recorded some of the highest ratings for Test cricket in recent times. The second day (when Tendulkar came into bat in the morning in what many hoped will be a century effort in his final Test innings) and the third morning leading upto his farewell speech, rated at par with regular ODIs, a rare occurrence over the last two decades.

 

What interested me more about the ratings was the Hindi to English viewership ratio, which ranged from 2 to 6, on various days. Some of this variation is explained by which channels Star Sports may be pushing on the last mile, and the fact that for the second Test, they had two channels showing the English feed vis-à-vis one showing the Hindi feed, which is when the ratio dropped.

 

The fluctuation of ratio apart, all indicators tell us conclusively that Hindi sports broadcast is the future in the non-South markets in India. That’s what the viewers will increasingly shift to, and that’s what the broadcasters and MSOs will push with greater confidence in the months to come.

 

Hindi commentary attempts are not new to Indian cricket, but the Star Cricket campaign last year (Jo baat Hindi mein who kisi aur mein nahin) was the first serious communication attempt in this direction.

 

It can be argued that the language doesn’t matter in cricket. But that’s far from the truth. High language comprehension can enhance viewing experience and get irregular and light viewers to watch more. These are a large section of viewers who watch only India World Cup matches or select parts of exciting ODIs and T20s. Getting them to watch more matches for more time is the only real growth opportunity in cricket viewership today, and there can’t be a better growth injection for this than Hindi commentary.

 

The criticism on the quality of commentary in Hindi has existed for decades now. But it has been primarily fuelled by Doordarshan and All India Radio commentary. Some unintentionally comic moments notwithstanding, Star Sports’ Hindi commentary this season has been well above the mark, both in terms of the choice of panel and the execution. The ‘elite’ audience who compare the two languages don’t really count. It’s more like The Big Bang Theory audience commenting on Balika Vadhu.

 

If you are an ‘intersection viewer’ like me, who understands both languages equally comfortably, there is a good chance that you will still prefer English commentary. My two main reasons for this choice are the comfort level built with English commentary over three decades, and my preference for international commentators versus the Indian ones. The latter has nothing to do with language. Our lead commentators are generally not as articulate and opinionated as their counterparts in Australia and England.

 

But most viewers are not intersection viewers. Comprehension of English ranges from nil to poor to barely-there in most households in India. Then there is the additional issue with foreign accents. We are perhaps the only country to subtitle all English entertainment content on TV in English itself!

 

For this section of audiences, the Hindi broadcast is a lifeline. It has taken some time to come, but come it has. As time passes and generations change, the habit (my first reason above) will die too, and we will see the Hindi broadcast gain even more momentum.

 

IPL too introduced Hindi commentary this year. They should be encouraged with the Star Sports performance and invest more in it in the coming year, with a stronger panel and better reach and marketing. IPL, in many ways, is the defining cricket tournament on television today, and it has the ability to set and fuel trends.

 

So, well done, Star Sports. It would have been even better if you put your Hindi feed on Star Sports 1 and English feed on Star Sports 3, than the other way round. Would have been a nice, symbolic gesture!

 

Shailesh Kapoor is founder and CEO of media insights firm Ormax Media. He spent nine years in the television industry before turning entrepreneur. The views expressed here are his own. He can be reached at his Twitter handle @shaileshkapoor

 

By Shailesh Kapoor

 

“What is the one thing about this role that interested you so much that you applied for it?”

 

Over a decade now, having met more than a hundred ‘candidates’ (I prefer the expression ‘potential team members’, but it is a mouthful) for various positions, first in the television industry and now at Ormax Media, I have found this to be the one question that does half the job.

 

Many candidates speak about the company’s credentials in their answers, in which case, being a true researcher now, I reiterate the “you” in the question. After all, why would a company’s credentials interest you, unless there was something in it for you?

 

Some young people use the “growth and learning” plank for an answer. Most times, I am disappointed with their understanding, let alone articulation, of these two words. Both growth and learning are deeply proactive as concepts. To say that you will learn a lot in the company makes it seems like the company is some kind of an incubator with the responsible of ‘hatching’ you. The truth is, the company doesn’t even know at the interview stage if you are a good egg or a bad egg. The interview is about that itself!

 

But the word that features the most in the answers, across younger and more seasoned candidates, is the P-word: Passion. “Because I have a passion for television…”, “Because media industry fascinates me…”, “Because I love research…”

 

Let’s focus on the ‘passion for television’ for now, though you can replace the word with ‘films’ or ‘media’, and still read on. I have taken great pains in some of the interviews to understand what candidates actually mean when they say it.

 

The first level of detail often given is: ‘I watch a lot of TV’. Television is a household thing. Everyone watches it, in varying degrees. So, “I watch a lot of TV” makes you no better suited for the job than a 33-year old mother-of-two in Indore!

 

When I probe further, many are at a loss explaining their ‘passion’ as a mental thought. All they can explain is behaviour. I watch TV, I read about TV, I discuss TV, etc. If behaviour was all-important, half of Mumbai will be passionate about local trains.

 

Here is a little passion-test I have developed over time, which goes beyond behaviour and evaluates the mindset. It will more applicable to ‘non-creative’ roles or to first-timers in the industry:

 

1. Watching vs. consuming television: Everyone watches TV, but the truly passionate ones ‘consume’ it, at an overall category level. They build their thoughts based on what they watch, discuss them, have a view on them. An easy way to judge this by asking the candidate what her favorite show on television is, and what makes her like it. A ‘watcher’ will talk like a housewife. A ‘consumer’ will talk from inside the watcher’s mind.

2. Watching breaks and promos: If you surf channels the moment a break starts, your passion for television is highly questionable. Being passionate about an industry includes being passionate about all aspects of it. The most fascinating things happen on TV channels in breaks. Those who are truly passionate have noticed them and can intelligently speak about them.

3. Deciphering trends: A seasoned guy with a passion for TV will speak the language of trends in an interview. He will instinctively and effortlessly compare the program or channel being discussed to past successes or failures, some of them dating back to more than two decades.

 

Passion is instinctive. You can’t prepare for it. And you don’t have to work hard to communicate it. If you are truly passionate, it reflects in your identity.

 

Back in 1997, when I was graduating out of IIT Delhi, an anecdote about one of our seniors was doing the rounds. He had taken up a course on Corrosion Engineering as an elective. It was a post-graduate course and very few B. Tech. students opted for it. He had probably taken it because the faculty was “cool” and it seemed like an easy course to pass. In the first lecture, the professor asked him why he took a course as eclectic as this. His reply, and I kid you not, is a part of the folklore: “Since my childhood, I was always interested in rust and corrosion.”

 

It was an intentionally irreverent answer. But when candidates try to pass the same ‘interest’ as genuine in interviews, it doesn’t fly.

 

Shailesh Kapoor is founder and CEO of media insights firm Ormax Media. He spent nine years in the television industry before turning entrepreneur. The views expressed here are his own. He can be reached at his Twitter handle @shaileshkapoor

 

By Shailesh Kapoor

 

2013 is drawing to a close soon. In what would have otherwise been a fairly regular year for content on Hindi GECs, “innovation” has come in the form of a genre that has taken the front seat like never before – Period Dramas.

 

Life OK’s Mahadev emerged as a success story in 2012 – and continues to be so – propelling other channels to give more attention to the mythological and historical genres. Zee TV’s Jodha-Akbar has met with phenomenal success. Sony’s Maharana Pratap is the top weekday show on the channel. Star Plus’ Mahabharat was the biggest weekday launch on Hindi GECs in three years.

 

With half a dozen launches, most of which have met with success, is it safe to call period dramas a “trend” that has emerged in the Hindi GEC category in 2013? May be not.

 

It is important to distinguish a trend from just a serendipitous occurrence. It is important to distinguish the symptom from the real cause. And that’s my attempt in the rest of this piece.

 

Think of it. Why would period dramas suddenly come of age in India? There has been absolutely nothing of note that has happened in our society or nation in the last decade to suggest that our love for historical and mythological content would show this dramatic surge. There is no subtext here. In fact, in many ways, a young and evolving India watching period content is counter-intuitive, if not inexplicable.

 

The reason for the emergence of this quasi trend is very direct – fatigue. I wrote about this a few weeks back, that viewer fatigue is fast building up in the category. The sameness of content, coupled with slow pace and dragging perceptions, have meant that the overall category satisfaction index of the genre is at an all-time low since 2009. Cynicism and disillusionment are prime emotions that many core viewers are associating with weekday fiction on GECs.

 

Of course there are exceptions like Diya Aur Baati Hum and Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah. But a handful of shows can’t compensate for the negative imagery created by more than 30 programmes collectively.

 

As a result, we are in a phase when anything unique will stand out and get its more-than-fair share of attention, as long as it passes the basic relevance cut. Jodha-Akbar does that the best, by focusing on a love story, making it come across like a contemporary story with only the setting being ‘period’.

 

The question to really ask is: Has there been any other launch in the last year or so that has passed the ‘unique yet relevant’ filter? You will find it tough to isolate even one program outside the period drama genre that fits the answer here.

 

Hence, the rise of the period dramas is more a ‘default’ phenomenon, symptomizing dissatisfaction, than emerging as a true, stand-alone need gap.

 

If GECs mistake this to be a trend, they may be tempted to find more concepts in this genre. Two things will invariably happen then. One, the genre will lose its uniqueness if 3-4 more such shows launch, and this will shake the foundation of why it’s working to begin with. Two, in the effort to follow a ‘trend’, channels may pick up concepts that are not entirely ‘relevant’ in the first place.

 

The need is to look elsewhere. Surely, in a country as diverse and culturally rich as ours, there can’t be a dearth of unique cum relevant stories that lend themselves well to weekday fiction content.

 

The real emerging trend is ‘fatigue’. Period dramas are the red herring everyone should be wary of. You have been cautioned!

 

Shailesh Kapoor is founder and CEO of media insights firm Ormax Media. He spent nine years in the television industry before turning entrepreneur. The views expressed here are his own. He can be reached at his Twitter handle @shaileshkapoor

 

By Shailesh Kapoor

 

If you were on social media, especially Twitter last weekend, you would have surely encountered glowing reviews about the Indian version of ’24’. The show, that went on-air last Friday, received predominant positive feedback from Twitter, as well as from the television and film industry, including competitors of the channel airing it. The feedback was on the same lines in the corporate community too.

 

For most of these stakeholders, ’24’ brings in the hope that our television will change for the better, and become relevant to them personally. When I tweeted the following last Saturday, I was hoping to be proven wrong: “Our ratings system will never capture #24India’s real impact. Anything that’s skewed towards upper strata tends to be under-reported in TAM.”

 

Alas, it was not to be. ’24’ opened to tepid “audience” response, scoring below the 2-TVR mark in its opening week. Evidently, the audience that enjoys Diya Aur Baati Hum and Jodha-Akbar every night decided to stay away.

 

But are they the only “audience”? As any brand manager of a semi-premium or premium brand would want to know: Are these really the audiences who buy my products? I just picked up today’s The Times Of India (Mumbai) for a quick check: 7 out of the 13 prominent ads in the paper are either luxury brands or brands clearly targeted at an evolving mindset that’s doing more things that watching the same serial every night for the last four years.

 

No wonder that 5 out of these 7 don’t use TV at all for their advertising. Because the measurement metric just doesn’t factor the reality of their target audience –socially mobile, affluent and evolving consumers who are increasingly going to craft the marketing future in India. Let’s call them “Evolving” for the purpose of this piece, only for brevity.

 

Are the Elite being measured by TAM? In 2007, TAM made an attempt to set up an ‘elite panel’, perhaps with a similar idea. Within months, the service had to be aborted because the differences between the main panel SEC A and the elite panel were not striking enough. But their definition of ‘Elite’ was based purely on affluence, not on attitudes and mindsets, which often concern brands more.

 

Since then, we have been in status quo mode. The following five “Evolving” segments are not being captured by the current ratings:

 

1. Senior industry professionals, e.g. CXOs and HODs

2. English-speaking audiences who often watch their “TV” on the Internet

3. Time-shifted viewers, who watch DVR recordings

4. HD feed viewers

5. Upmarket housing areas so posh that they are not research-accessible

 

Crude estimates will suggest that these five will add upto at least 50 million viewers. But if they represent 6% of India’s TV population, they represent at least 15-20% of India’s spending power. But there is no data, none at all, that captures their viewership. No wonder then that many advertisers have chosen to stay off television and taken the print way instead.

 

We routinely conduct studies for premium brands that sponsor TV programmes, to understand whether the association helped them achieve their marketing objectives. Often, the general brief is: “We have the ratings, but we always knew they will be low on TAM. We want to know whether it actually worked for us in our TG or not.” That “our TG” is not being captured by TAM is an obvious inference to be drawn here.

 

BARC has been speaking about coming up with a ratings system that’s future-ready. If they have to indeed achieve that, they will need to address this elusive “Evolving” audience. Otherwise, we will just have more sample size of the same type of audience being reported.

 

For me, ’24’ is the best Indian television has offered on the fiction front in a long time. Today, I feel like a voter who is ignored by the local politician because he does not belong to the caste that controls the vote bank. Or like a resident of the village in Akshay Kumar’s Joker, whose inhabitants realize their village just doesn’t exist on India’s map.

 

There are many like me who will like to be “measured”. And the implications of measuring “us” are not just commercial, but social too. Today, television is the lead medium in India in terms of its influence on young minds of the country. The programming we churn out will decide the nature of this influence. And something as technical as measurement comes in the way of this process, it will be nothing short of tragic.

 

Shailesh Kapoor is founder and CEO of media insights firm Ormax Media. He spent nine years in the television industry before turning entrepreneur. The views expressed here are his own. He can be reached at his Twitter handle @shaileshkapoor

 

By Shailesh Kapoor

 

Two weeks ago, Grand Masti, an adult comedy packed with double entendre jokes (the kind where there you get only the “second meaning”), opened to phenomenal box-office, registering Rs 400 million on its first weekend. This huge opening made Grand Masti the fourth highest Bollywood opener of 2013, ahead of several A-list starrers.

 

There was little doubt that Grand Masti will open well, but I was personally caught off-guard by the degree of its wellness. Evidently, a population of youth came out in big numbers to watch “sexy jokes”. It’s safe to say that many of them are not even regular moviegoers: The idea of watching verbal porn got them to the theatres as an exception.

 

Three days after Grand Masti released, Star Plus launched Mahabharat at 8.30pm. The show has opened to very good ratings, with the first week’s average of 3.1 TVR making it in the first instance of any fiction launch crossing the 3-TVR mark in its first week since (at least) 2011.

 

It’s well-known that TV viewing is largely a family affair in India, and the youth are involved, actively or passively, too. I’m, thus, intrigued by a 19-year something young boy from somewhere in Chandigarh or Indore, who watches Grand Masti on Friday with his bunch of college friends, laughing his heart out at every joke, and then joins his parents to watch Mahabharat on Monday. And probably enjoys that too!

 

Several media observers and social commentators will label this behaviour as hypocritical. It’s been argued for ages that there is a cultural hypocrisy in India, where we, the second most populous country in the world, can’t just get ourselves to talk about sex comfortably. In turn, it leads to a sexually suppressed population, especially the teenagers and the youth, an audience Grand Masti instantly caters to.

 

But there’s more to it than just the sexual suppression. The more we study the youth, the more we realize that there home v/s outside separation is a well thought-out one. It has been created by their generation as a legitimate method of functioning in a society where family values are still paramount. And it goes beyond just sexual expression.

 

For example, more than 80% Indian youth who smoke would hide it from their parents. The number is equally high for those who consume alcohol. And I suspect the number doesn’t change much even when you enter your late 20s and the 30s. Parents, after all, shall always remain parents.

 

From the appropriateness of language to dressing to habits, everything has a home-version and an outside-version (or friends-version). The former is designed to run the institution of family smoothly (and not grudgingly so, at all) and the latter to have some legitimate fun at the right age.

 

Now one would expect that as these youngsters grow up and became parents, this dichotomy would perish, as they will be more “open-minded” and “approachable” as parents. No, it won’t. Because it’s not about approachability anyway. It’s about the voluntary adoption of family values, when in a family context. It’s an inbuilt mechanism that triggers off at the right situation, like it does when they are with their family even today. And it will trigger off in its full glory when they get married themselves.

 

Most of the television success stories (fiction) over the last decade have been created around the importance of the institution of family in India. When Grand Masti is telecast on TV, it will be censored beyond recognition, and then rate poorly. But even if they allowed it to be telecast uncensored, it would have rated poorly anyway. Because the big television rule remains: When at home, do as the home-members do!

 

Shailesh Kapoor is founder and CEO of media insights firm Ormax Media. He spent nine years in the television industry before turning entrepreneur. The views expressed here are his own. He can be reached at his Twitter handle @shaileshkapoor