MxMIndia

Tag: TV TRAIL

  • Appointment viewership is the acid test for any programme, says Shailesh Kapoor in his weekly column, TV Trail

    Shailesh Kapoor: Is Appointment Viewing a myth?

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    It’s a much-used and much-abused term in the television business. Appointment Viewership. Indeed, appointment viewing is the Holy Grail for the television business. It’s the acid test of a good programme or channel – Does it have the ability to get eyeballs by appointment? In simple terms, does it have the ability to make its audiences incorporate the program (or channel) into their daily or weekly schedule, in a way that it becomes a fixture for them?

     

    Appointment, as a dictionary word, suggests the same: ‘A meeting set for a particular time and place.’ How complex can it get, after all?

     

    Yet, the degree to which the concept of ‘appointment’ viewership is misunderstood in the television industry can be baffling. I discovered it about three years ago when a research revealed that a programme on a niche channel had very high appointment viewership. The client (who happened to be competition to the said programme) argued how that was possible, given the 0.7-rating of the program. I gave them an example of a 2.5-rating programme on a leading GEC that was being watched almost entirely in breaks and without any semblance of appointment viewing. How the debate went thereon is another story altogether.

     

    But that’s the lack of understanding I speak of. Appointment viewership is associated with high ratings, while lack of appointment is associated spontaneously with low ratings. Many media experts believe that our myopic view of the ratings system leads our television business into operating in the short-term. And this is yet another symptom of the same.

     

    As we have dived deep into the appointment-viewing concept over the last two years, many discoveries have happened over time. Only about a dozen Hindi GEC programme have a significant (20%+) base of appointment viewers. Others are watched for various reasons, none of which have any direct connection to the concept of ‘appointment’. Reasons such as:

     

    • My mother watches it, so I watch it too.
    • It’s the most watchable of all the programs on TV at that time, so I end up watching it.
    • I finish the chores and am free before dinner time, so I watch this program. (The ‘timing suits me’ reason)
    • It’s a good ‘time pass’ programme to watch.

     

    The ratings system doesn’t distinguish such types of viewing from appointment viewing. Back in 2010, a top-rated programme on a GEC was in an extremely vulnerable position. Research after research, viewers would trash it, saying that they are hating how the programme has moved from being a classic to a bore. The signals were clear. The viewing behaviour had moved from appointment to casual to cold & passive. But there was no strong competition to take the audience away. And hence, the ratings maintained themselves by and large, helped by sporadic high points in the story.

     

    The channel remained in denial on the programme for almost six months, questioning research design instead. And then, a competition channel launched a worthy show, and the much-touted show sank to less than one-third of its rating within three months, only to die an impending death over the next six months.

     

    But there are other examples too, where shows or channels run on a small but dedicated viewer base for months, even years. Music channels have certain time bands that manage this, by creating content affinity by showcasing music that a particular segment (e.g. retro music fans) may want to watch. News channels too rely on marquee anchors to create an appointment viewer base. Far and few in between they may be, but such properties serve their channels and advertisers very well over time.

     

    The confusing element in appointment viewing comes from lack of clarity in measurement. Appointment viewing should be defined as the percentage of a programme’s viewership that comes from its core, appointment-viewing base. Because this is the viewership that’s safe, secure and future-proof. The rest is all transient, or simply a matter of chance. Instead, it is often argued that a bigger audience size implies more appointment viewership.

     

    Only about 20 channels in India have even one programme that has a 20%+ appointment viewing base. Others are all creatures of destiny, at the mercy of the viewer, and at the mercy of events in the viewer’s life that the channel has absolutely no control over.

     

    I have maintained for a while that executive producers should be measured on appointment viewing proportions, and not rating points. It will be fairer on them, and on the business. But for that, we need to shed some of our obsession with the weekly ratings.

     

    Easier said than done?

     

    Shailesh Kapoor is founder and CEO of media & entertainment research and consulting firm Ormax Media. He spent nine years in the television industry before turning entrepreneur. He can be reached at his Twitter handle @shaileshkapoor

     

  • In India, food television remains peripheral, almost inconsequential. Food channels and food shows are one of the several genres that fall into a huge bucket called "niche television", says Shailesh Kapoor in his weekly column, TV Trail

    Shailesh Kapoor: India’s Unwritten Food Story

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    Some eat to live, some live to eat. But everyone loves food. A good meal at the end of a long, hard day can make it all seem worth it. From wedding banquets to celebrations to business deals, food is always around to make its presence felt. Except on Indian television!

     

    A few years ago, ahead of the launch of his channel, leading chef Sanjeev Kapoor had mentioned to us on why he thought a food channel should be in the top 5 channels in India, if not better. He quoted several examples from across the world, of food shows and channels that have surpassed the best of the drama series and reality shows to become the most popular shows in their countries.

     

    Recently, I read this on the Wiki page of MasterChef Australia: The finale of the first season of the show surpassed the previous high for a non-sporting event in Australia since 2001, beating Australian Idol’s 2004 finale. It is currently the fourth highest rated program in Australia ever. It was also the most watched TV show in Australia in 2009.

     

    Food television has made its mark at the global stage, especially when the content has lived up to the standards set by mainstream television. In India, though, food television remains peripheral, almost inconsequential. Food channels and food shows are one of the several genres that fall into a huge bucket called “niche television”. They only get audience big enough to barely keep them going. Not too many of us will notice if they stopped being there on television altogether from tomorrow morning.

     

    We have a fairly strongly food culture as a nation. Our food has managed to make its mark around the world (often in versions that Indians will abhor and disown). Indian food has the variety, the spunk and the uniqueness that makes it stand out. Why, then, does it not work on our own television?

     

    Some argue that our broadcasters haven’t given the genre a fair chance yet. Star Plus came out with two seasons of MasterChef India. They met with moderate success. The second season was eminently watchable and got good audience response. But when you compare its performance to mainstream non-fiction like Dance India Dance, it begins to look “niche” anyway. A third season has not been announced yet. After all, there may not be much room for “niche” content on the prime time of the leading GEC of the country.

     

    In my opinion, there are three complexities that make food television a daunting programming genre in India. The first one is our cultural diversity itself. While our rich food heritage should be a positive, it creates a divide as well. You can’t get an average Indian to appreciate food beyond what he or she enjoys eating. Try selling the idea of good Gujarati food to a Punjabi, and you are almost certain to run into a cultural wall. We may be food-loving, but we are not a food-appreciating nation.

     

    This lack of appreciation creates a challenge for food programmers. How do you create content that pleases a Maharashtrian, a Tamilian, a Punjabi and a Bengali equally? There is no lowest common denominator to address here. The segments are mutually exclusive!

     

    The second challenge comes in the form of the aversion to non-vegetarian food in our mass audiences. A large (estimated 40%+) section of India’s population is vegetarian. Even KFC has started an oxymoronic vegetarian menu in this country. Non-vegetarian food is a taboo for many, and hence, a television show that captures any form of meat being cooked or shown (like in the food travel shows a la The Foodie) loses half its audience base instantly. The research response to such shows can often be: “Usmein non-veg dikhaate hain, yeh hamare culture mein nahin hai.”

     

    Having programming purely on vegetarian food is not a solution either. For one, the top chefs don’t like the idea. It defeats the entire purpose of showcasing variety and spreading food awareness. Also, the sizeable non-vegetarian population wants to see chicken and lamb being cooked to perfection on screen. No compromises there either. Yet another case of two mutually-exclusive, hard-to-please audience segments.

     

    But the third reason is the most interesting one. It is rooted in the socio-cultural reality of our country. A reality that dictates that women in our country spend a large amount of their daily time in the kitchen, preparing three meals and the in-between courses for their families, all alone, without any real help. Remember, we are talking of kitchens that are essentially devoid of equipment that saves manual work or time. It’s a grind, literally.

     

    As a result, most Indian women begin to dislike (“hate” may be too strong a word) cooking very early in their lives. They take great pride in their food, because a well-cooked dish at the in-laws is a triumphant moment. But that’s a triumph that’s more to do with the delicate nature of the saas-bahu relationship, and less to do with food.

     

    After exhausting herself in an unfriendly kitchen, the woman doesn’t want to see a glamourised kitchen with fancy ingredients on the TV screen. That’s a world she will never inhabit. A world she is not even remotely familiar with. A world she envies to the extent that she looks down upon it.

     

    Now, how will this change? Social-cultural reality does not change. It only evolves, bit by bit, at its own pace. The challenge for broadcasters in India is to adapt their food content to the realities of the Indian woman. The chefs in plush five-stars may do well with a visit to an average middle-class family kitchen in Kolhapur or Kanpur. That’s the reality of food in India. That has to be the starting point of truly mass food television in this country. It can be glamourised and made aspirational, but only to the point of not being irrelevant.

     

    Food can never be a “niche” genre on television. Anywhere. It is more central to our lives than almost everything else besides relationships. Any country whose television treats food as “niche” has an opportunity waiting to be tapped, however challenging the opportunity may be.

     

    Some food for thought there?

     

    Shailesh Kapoor is founder and CEO of media & entertainment research and consulting firm Ormax Media. He spent nine years in the television industry before turning entrepreneur. He can be reached at his Twitter handle @shaileshkapoor

     

     

  • If the market is getting younger, why are marketers succeeding with 'older' shows like Ramayan and Mahadev, asks Shailesh Kapoor in his weekly column, TV Trail

    Shailesh Kapoor: Myth-or-logical?!

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    We hear it all the time. That India is getting younger. That we should think of the 13-24 years segment as “screenagers”, not as teenagers or youth. That Facebook is bigger than Star Plus, Zee TV, Sony or Colors for them today. That they would rather watch edgy fiction content on Channel V than (what some believe are) afternoon soaps masquerading as prime time entertainment on television.

     

    Our marketers are obsessed with the young generation. Arguably, they have their reasons. “Consumption” is being increasingly fuelled by the youth, making them the low-hanging fruit for several product categories.

     

    But when it comes to television, there’s another story we need to know. A story that’s in sharp contrast to the oft-stereotyped tale of the screen-agnostic, gadget-happy youth. It’s the story of religious and mythological programmes continuing to succeed like never before. A story that may appear to be counter-intuitive to the young Indian theory, but is actually firmly grounded in the reality of our fascinating country.

     

    Over the last two weeks, the newest GEC on the block, Life OK, has scaled new heights, riding on the popularity of its flagship show Devon Ke Dev Mahadev. The recent ‘shaadi’ track, where Mahadev and Parvati get married, has been a runaway success. Mahadev now features in the top 7 Hindi GEC characters on popularity in our monthly research ‘Characters India Loves’, ahead of iconic characters like Akshara and Archana.

     

    Last Sunday, Zee TV launched the third television adaptation of Ramayan, with a simulcast on Doordarshan. The second adaptation provided a creditable launch pad to NDTV Imagine in January 2008. Sceptics argued that it worked because it came 20 years after the original Doordarshan version. However, that theory has been disproved with the encouraging response to the Zee TV show.

     

    To their credit, both Mahadev and Ramayan are well-produced programmes that manage to engage and entertain. But that’s not enough to explain their wide acceptance, especially in the wake of the young India theory. But there’s another reason indeed.

     

    We conducted a nation-wide study recently to understand the profile of the ‘remote controller’ in single TV households in India. The results were anything but ‘young’. In weekday prime time, the median age of the ‘remote controller’ is… hold your breath… 35 years, with almost 70 percent of them being women. So, from 7-11pm on Monday to Friday, when a large amount of advertiser money is being spent, a 35-year old housewife is the bull’s eye answer to “who decides what plays on TV”.

     

    On weekends, the median age gets a bit younger, but is still 25 years, with a near-equal male-female ratio. Technically, even this audience is outside the stereotypical definition of “youth”. After all, a large section of urban Indian audience (70%+) is already married at the age of 25.

     

    Can you see the chicken-and-egg question here? Do “youth” prefer Facebook and co. to television because they have no control over the remote, or do they lack control over the remote because they have voluntarily given it up? Complex as the explanation may be for this medium, I can safely say that the former is more accurate than the latter. In the way our family viewing patterns have emerged over the last two decades, the all-important remote control has acquired an ownership configuration completely divergent from what the young India theory should suggest. And these viewing patterns are unlikely to change in a hurry, till the multi-TV phenomenon begins to become a significant factor in India.

     

    That brings me back to mythology. It’s content made for the 35+ females segment. These are mothers whose kids are on the verge of entering their teenage. Reinforcement of religion, culture and values is of paramount importance, to both her own self and for her child. NDTV Imagine promoted Ramayan as “Ek Achhi Aadat”. Zee TV is promoting it as “Jeevan Ka Aadhaar”. Both messages aptly reflect the mindset of a 35+ woman who is battling generation gap and upbringing issues around her children. She loves to watch the “mythos”, and also hopes that her child watches along. Sometimes willingly, sometimes grudgingly.

     

    When Ekta Kapoor tried to push the envelope with Mahabharat, the audience rejected her idea of glamorizing sacred material instantly. But give it to them within their values framework, and there’s nothing more potent than good mythology on the small screen.

     

    So, for all the talk of being a young country, the pre-liberalization generation still decides what gets watched on TV. But then, we have always been a dichotomous country. One where Rakhi Sawant and Mahadev can get married with equal fanfare and razzmatazz.

     

    Shailesh Kapoor is founder and CEO of media & entertainment research and consulting firm Ormax Media. He spent nine years in the television industry before turning entrepreneur. He can be reached at his Twitter handle @shaileshkapoor

     

     

     

  • Introducing a new weekly column by Shailesh Kapoor, co-founder and CEO of Ormax Media. Mr Kapoor will write on the business (and craft) of television content

    New weekly column by Shailesh Kapoor: Primetime Fiction – Reasons for Seasons?

    By Shailesh Kapoor

     

    Of all my client interactions, I enjoy the ones with foreign clients (often from head offices of their Indian companies) the most. There’s a specific reason for it. The amazement and the child-like inquisitiveness with which they react to research based on mass Indian audiences is so gratifying. Our primetime fiction content is beyond the realms of their comprehension, let alone appreciation. I was once asked: “So are you telling me that every single show that comes on weekdays primetime in India is a family drama?” My attempt to explain that ‘family drama’ is an overarching box with about 7-8 genres within it lasted only a few seconds.

     

    However, one of the more relevant and genuinely thought-provoking questions I’ve been asked by broadcasters from outside India is: “Why don’t you have seasons in fiction shows in India? Why does everything go on and on and on?”

     

    We know the stereotypical responses to this, don’t we? Three most common answers will be:

     

    1. Indian audiences don’t know the concept of seasons. It is a foreign thing.

    2. Only one out of four fiction shows actually succeeds, so why give it a season’s break and run the risk of not getting the audiences back.

    3. It’s a drastic idea and we are not in a position to experiment right now.

     

    All these responses are based on a natural tendency to exercise risk aversion. But neither the (ex) television executive nor the researcher in me approves of any of these answers. In fact, I have a robust argument here to prove why a seasonal approach to daily fiction will be a runaway success in India.

     

    Primetime fiction in India is based on the premise of the audience, particularly women, being addicted (and I choose the word carefully) to watching the life of certain ordinary, people-like-us characters unfold in a dramatic, extraordinary manner. All the enduring success stories in the last 12 years have come from this central thought, which our foreign friends simplistically and erroneously classify as “family drama”.

     

    Then why do serials begin to lose audiences? It is popular knowledge that shelf life of serials today is significantly lesser than what is was before 2008. Most successful serials peak within one year, and are well past their prime by the end of their second year. Very few like Balika Vadhu manage to complete four years of a successful run, not withstanding the hiccups on the way. Is addiction so ephemeral?

     

    Serials lose audiences because there is an equally powerful force that counters ‘addiction’. I call it ‘extension’. If you have had the privilege (no other word describes the experience) of attending qualitative research on serials with housewives as the target audience, you will be familiar with two phrases: “Pehle achha tha, aajkal chewing (pronounced ‘chingum’) ki tarah kheench rahe hain” and “Story ko round-round ghuma rahe hain.”

     

    Almost every serial becomes a victim of this ‘extension’ once it completes about 100 episodes. It becomes the proverbial chewing gum, or the vicious circle in which it has trapped itself. Only to come out momentarily before being trapped again.

     

    Even before 2008, serials had extension issues. But at that time, options were far and few. The number of GECs were lesser, the number of TV channels even more so. The consumer was not spoilt for choices. She accepted extension as a part of her TV life. Today, she is exercising her choice and actively rejecting extension. Because she has another serial in the same slot, waiting with a sizeable dose of addiction that is currently free of extension.

     

    We all know why extension happens. Daily serial production, with 260 episodes a year, is a breathless, never-ending assembly line. There is no time to take a break, because there are no episodes in the bank. Anecdotes of content being recorded on the evening of the telecast are so common; no one bats an eyelid when you narrate them, except the foreign friends of course.

     

    It is humanly impossible to ideate at this fervent pace round the year. Even the smartest, most creative brains will operate at sub-optimal levels when consistently pushed against ridiculous timelines. And when that happens, extension, often unknowingly, is their best friend.

     

    My estimate is that about 70% of an executive producer’s time (both at the production house as well as the channel) is spent on operational running of his/ her programmes. Only 30% is spent on ideation and creativity, which incidentally form the bedrock of the job profile.

     

    Now imagine a scenario where a top-rated show comes in seasons – One season a year of about 4-6 months. But the team on the show works round the year to make this happen. Instantly, the extension issues will be solved. There will be scripts in the kitty and episodes in the bank. There will be time to breathe, to ideate and to execute with full strength. There will be no need to stretch the chewing gum or go on a merry-go-round trip.

     

    What about addiction? For me, that’s the best part of it. Seasonal breaks can fuel addiction like nothing else can. Internationally, this has been proven beyond doubt. Common-sensically, if you take away what she is addicted to, she will yearn for it even more. And when she gets it back, she will see it with fresh eyes, with even more excitement than before. As long as the addiction center (read lead character) is unchanged, this will always work.

     

    What’s the flipside? Only one. A seasonal approach requires a higher investment to make it deliver to its full potential, because you need to commit to a team on the show for the entire year, amortized over only about 100-130 episodes, instead of 260. But compare this incremental cost to the investment that’s sunk in a serial that fails, and you know that this is a non-issue.

     

    Is someone likely to try this anytime soon? I will not bet on it for 2013 at least. Our GECs are more cautious and less experimental today, than they were a few years ago. The seasons idea may be too bold to buy into currently, given the musical chairs battle for the top four spots that they are currently engaged in.

     

    But at some stage, the future should be more seasonal. Hopefully.

     

    Shailesh Kapoor is founder and CEO of media & entertainment research and consulting firm Ormax Media. He spent nine years in the television industry before turning entrepreneur. He can be reached at his Twitter handle @shaileshkapoor