Before the economic downturn, Bennett, Coleman & Co Ltd, which publishes The Times of India was thinking of starting another general newspaper: internal discussions centred around launching a brand new product or a national edition of The Times of India. The idea was to flank Bennett’s flagship paper. However, the financial crisis put the venture on the back-burner. Sources in the media house say that the plans have not been shelved though. Rumours of a possible “national” edition of the newspaper resurface off and on.

While Bennett may still be figuring out its business plans, Jagran Prakashan Ltd that prints the Hindi daily Dainik Jagran has gone ahead and launched its Rashtriya Sanskaran or National edition. The product, launched two months ago, is meant for the premium customer (read decision-makers).

Dainik Jagran’s Rashtriya Sanskaran looks classy — it is printed on better quality newsprint, is well-laid out and is full of news stories and in-depth coverage of national and international events. The paper is priced at Rs 3. A reader who is now hooked to the paper says that what he appreciates most is negligible advertising and abundant news in the daily.

Talk to Sanjay Gupta, one of the promoters of the publishing group and CEO of Dainik Jagran, and you realise that the lack of advertising is not entirely intentional. The paper is, indeed, very choosey and accepts only premium category advertisers. Mercedes, high-end Nokia phone and Samsung products have used the paper for some of their campaigns. However, he says that the paper has more news than ads as the market has been acting tough.

Gupta feels that once the market looks up, more advertisers will consider the paper which prints 20,000 copies for Delhi and NCR region. “We don’t plan to carry ads from sundry brands at low prices,” he says.

Clearly, Jagran is playing the perception game in targeting the premium advertisers and premium customer. However, its business model remains advertising-driven. The question is, could Jagran (or any other newspaper brand) make its newspaper advertising-free and sell it at a premium, much like the pay-TV channels abroad?

Surely, there will be enough readers who are interested in reading news and analysis without being distracted by advertising.  (In fact some Hindi newspaper readers spoken to were kicked with fewer ads in Jagran.) Of course the newspaper will then have be price at between Rs 15 and Rs 20. Or, may be more depending on the circulation of the paper.  “Dawn” in Pakistan, costs upwards of Rs 30 a day. On the weekends, it doubles its cover price. Needless to say, the readers in Pakistan have supported the paper in spite of the price.

Dawn probably cracked the high cover-price business model since print media in Pakistan is heavily dependent on government ads and Dawn’s anti-government stand may not be helping matters. It’s difficult to say if the Dawn model will work in India. And if the intense competition in the Indian market will ever allow the newspaper publishers to take the risk with their flagship products. (By the way, last week ToI dropped its cover price in Jaipur from Rs 2.50 to Rs 1.90 on weekdays!) The experiment could probably be tried on a new product. While India’s traditional newspaper market may be very price sensitive, an advertising sales expert observes that a newspaper without ads may be less appealing. After all, even advertisement is news.

Did Times Global Broadcasting make a strategic mistake by not investing in the Direct-to-Home (DTH) platforms for distributing its business channel ET NOW? Should it have been on Tata Sky? (To be fair, ET NOW is available on Bharti’s DTH platform which has signed up about a million subscribers.)

This is not a free campaign for Tata Sky, but the issue of ET NOW’s distribution (or lack of it) is currently being discussed among television industry professionals. Let’s look at it this way: Tata Sky, viewed as a premium brand, is used\seen by consumers who matter (read the top-end customers including company heads and media planners who take a call on advertising spends). To be sure, the platform has 3.7 million customers. Of these, 70 per cent are in the SEC A category. It is fair to assume that an English language business channel would target that community. Interestingly, in case of business channels, the viewer is also the advertiser.

So would it have made more sense for ET NOW to have launched on Tata Sky first rather than spend crores of rupees (estimates oscillate between Rs 60 and Rs 90 crore) on India’s cable TV networks? After all, beaming the channel via Tata Sky would have been cheaper (any where between Rs 5 crore and Rs 8 crore a year) and it would have been seen in the right circles.
Today the channel is suffering from poor distribution, and, therefore, low viewership, even though Times Global CEO Chintamani Rao claims that the channel is widely available in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and the entire state of Gujarat. However, TAM data for television viewership of English business news channels between July 5 and July 11 do not back that claim. ET NOW’s share among English business news channels was the lowest at 6 per cent which was less than UTVi’s 9 per cent, NDTV Profit’s 14 per cent and CNBC TV18’s mammoth 72 per cent during that week.

There could be many reasons why ET NOW is not on Tata Sky. May be Tata Sky has asked for too much money as carriage fee. Or, as somebody at the DTH company said the other day, it genuinely does not have enough bandwidth to accommodate so many channels. And that it needs to be “fussy” and “choosy” about the new channels it wants to add. They have to make good business sense.

A broadcast industry expert in Mumbai, who is upset about not being able to watch ET NOW at home, however, feels that it could ET NOW’s deliberate strategy: it probably wanted to make the channel popular by taking the cable network route first and generate consumer demand which would then force the DTH companies to accept the channel for free. Of course, in a private conversation Times Global’s Rao said there is no deliberate strategy in not being on most of the DTH platforms including Tata Sky. “These are operational issues and negotiations with the DTH players are on,” he said.

It is probably then a case of who blinks first.

For the last few months, the spotlight has been on India’s top three Hindi general entertainment channels Star Plus, Colors and Zee playing musical chairs for the number one slot. Colors was the leader last week only to be overthrown by Star Plus in Week 28. In its pre-occupation with the intriguing leadership battle, the media industry seems to have ignored the one player which has quietly inched its way up the GRP charts. NDTV Imagine, which toppled Sony some time back to settle down as the number four player in the Hindi GEC category, has improved its viewership further in the last couple of weeks thanks to “item girl” Rakhi Sawant’s reality show Rakhi Ka Swyamvar.

Rakhi Ka Swyamvar – where she is supposed to choose her life-partner — opened with a TRP of 3 plus which is creditable in today’s fragmented cable and satellite TV market. And even though its popularity dipped subsequently, the show still managed an average weekly TRP of 2.3, according to TAM’s latest data. The channel executives are clearly not complaining. The buzz that Rakhi’s show created, drew new viewers to NDTV Imagine, boosting its reach by 20 per cent. Reach, in television viewership measurement jargon, is the percentage of people of a particular universe (in this case the Hindi Speaking Market) who have viewed the channel for at least a minute.

This additional reach (which is now 48 per cent and still low compared to 64 per cent for Colors and 60 per cent for Star Plus) will benefit its other shows, the channel executives feel.

The good news is that other than reality TV, the channel’s fiction shows like Bandini and Jyoti are also working. It usually augurs well for a Hindi GEC when its fiction starts delivering since nearly 70 per cent of the total TV content in the genre is fiction followed by non-fiction or reality shows and films. Its top two shows Bandini and Jyoti are also delivering an average TRP or 2. In the last five months, the channel has built its GRP from 70 to 126 now. The target is to touch 200 in the next few months, according to a senior NDTV Imagine executive.

It may be an ambitious target, but with another new show called Meera to be launched soon followed by a couple of fresh soaps, the channel is ready to give a spirited fight. And once it grabs the eyeballs, advertisers will follow. Sudha Natarajan, who is the COO of the Lintas Media Group, says that big advertisers look for reach but since they find it expensive to buy all three top channels, they spend on the top two and flank it with the number four or five player.

What’s probably also propping up the channel’s morale is the fact that NBC Universal’s team is currently in India taking an operational review of NDTV Imagine and NDTV Networks in which it had picked a 26 per cent stake for $ 150 million. The buzz is that instead of pulling out of the deal, as it was rumoured earlier, it is ready to back the venture whole-heartedly. And, may even increase its stake.

When Hindi news channel India TV was slammed for one of its reports by the News Broadcasting Standards Disputes Redressal Authority last week, the channel was simultaneously running an apology on its website for another story that it had aired some time ago. While the Authority fined India TV for an interview of a US policy analyst (Farhana Ali) that was picked from Reuters and dubbed in Hindi giving the impression that it was given to the channel, the web apology concerned the use of a photograph of a popular Bohra community leader. “India TV wants to clarify that the use of photograph of His Holiness Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin was not intentional and that he has no connection with the dreaded terrorist Baitullah,” says the apology on India TV’s website. 

The gaffes — and India TV is not the sole offender — certainly strengthen the case for content regulation in the broadcasting industry. However, the question is whether Self Regulation would work or does the industry need a statutory regulatory body like Ofcom in the UK or Federal Communications Commission in the US? 

Ofcom is a statutory corporation which reports to the Parliament annually. It regulates the UK’s communications industries across television, radio, telecommunications and wireless services. Among other things, it ensures optimal use of the spectrum. Its other concerns include: “Maintaining plurality in the provision of broadcasting” and “Applying adequate protection for audiences against offensive or harmful material.” Ofcom has a board with a chairman and executive and non-executive members. The board meets at least once a month. Ofcom’s Regulatory Principles state that Ofcom “will always seek the least intrusive regulatory mechanisms to achieve its policy objectives.” 

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), on the other hand, is an independent US government agency established by the Communications Act of 1934. The FCC is directed by five commissioners appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate for 5-year terms.

However, several channel heads dismiss the relevance of either Ofcom or FCC-like bodies for India. In India, autonomy for such organisations will only be on paper. Even Prasar Bharti is supposed to be autonomous, remarked the CEO of a news network. Little surprise then, that news channel owners are keen that their Self-regulation mechanism works. The code is on the website and it is followed, they insist. In fact, an India TV executive said that it was following the code when it forwarded the Farhana Ali complaint on its own to the Redressal Authority. 

Since India’s private television industry is still young, channels are likely to make mistakes. But they will learn from them. However, it is high time that channels start accepting responsibility for the content they air – there should be strict guidelines on the use of pictures, especially, the ones that are lifted from the Internet and morphed to suit their needs. 

While opinion on whether the Redressal Authority’s Order is harsh or not may be divided, the fact remains that India TV’s withdrawal from NBA hasn’t been a gentle response either. If taken in the right spirit, the judgment could only probably lead to cleaner content.

TV Today, the owner of Hindi and English news channels such as Aaj Tak, Dilli Aaj Tak, Tez and Headlines Today had identified four to five regional languages in which it had planned to launch news channels. At least two news channels were supposed to have been launched by April–May this year. That’s history now. The company is staying away from any new projects. Likewise, the Network 18 group (of CNBC, Awaaz, CNN-IBN and IBN7 fame) had promised a host of regional news channels – the plans are now on the backburner. NDTV, too, launched its city-specific news and current affairs channel Metro Nation in Delhi one year ago in the hope of following it up with similar channels in Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bangalore. Today, it is scouting around for a partner\investor to save its only metro channel from the brink of closure.
Broadcaster after broadcaster is shelving its expansion plans into the regional markets which seemed attractive for their higher TV viewership and advertising growth rate than national media. Television industry sources say that several news broadcasting companies have cancelled their “purchase orders” for equipment required to set up new channels.
But the dark clouds hovering over the recession-hit news television industry have a silver lining. Bringing cheer to the sector is the prospective launch of at least two major news channels aimed at the regional markets. After missing several deadlines, Sakshi TV is finally on its way to hit the airwaves in Andhra Pradesh on February 21.  To be launched by the Andhra CM’s son Y S Jagan Reddy who also started a newspaper last year under the same brand name, the channel will take on existing Telugu news channels like TV9 and Eenadu, among others.
An end-to-end High-definition TV channel, at 26, Sakshi will have the highest number of “OB” vans among all news channels – regional or national.  The Kotharis of Rajasthan Patrika In Jaipur are also giving finishing touches to the building being erected for their television venture. And if a television broadcasting consultant is to be believed, despite the economic slowdown and overcrowding of the news TV space, the interest in the sector hasn’t waned. He is still getting “serious” queries from industrialists in MP, Rajasthan and West Bengal keen to set up TV stations.
The reason is simple. The power and the influence that a news business is supposed to wield can now be bought – the small-scale, regional business model, that is — for as low as Rs 15 crore with a monthly operating cost of between Rs 55 lakh and Rs 75 lakh a month. To know if these projects took off or not, watch this space.