Category: Event Coverage

MUMBAI: Advertiser apathy and crippling music royalties are eating away at the FM radio indstry in the country, that‘s registering fast growth and is poised to grow even bigger in the coming months with the increasing penetration of mobile phones.

Industry players, who converged at the “Radio Rocks” session on the second day at Frames 2008 were unanimous in their opinion that while radio is increasingly emerging as a sexy medium that captures more attention than TV, it is still perceived as a passive medium by the advertiser.

Radio Mirchi CEO Prashant Panday in fact averred that the industry has grown at a rate of 55 to 60 per cent over last year, a figure much higher than the PwC report that estimates radio growth at 24 per cent.

“Radio is a sexy urban medium that one consumes on a daily basis, and people spend more time on radio than on TV,” he pointed out.

Advertisers however are not looking at radio as a medium that can deliver on a local basis, with separate creatives for separate markets, he rued. Red FM COO Abraham Thomas agreed, saying that operational efficiency still drives radio revenues although “radio has moved beyond radio.”

“Radio rocks because radio is simple to access and use, and 49 per cent of listeners have radio on their mobile phones,” Abraham said. While out of home listening will grow faster in the coming months, content creation too has changed to adapt itself to various media like television and mobile, said Abraham.

Concurred Tata Teleservices VAS and Enterprise Market planning president Pankaj Sethi, ” ‘Not at home‘ opportunities will grow. 50 to 60 per cent of handsets today are already FM enabled”.

“85 per cent of radio listeners are still at home”, Sethi said, adding that the patterns of radio listenership will change when the nature of content changes with the advent of genres like news and sports and different formats, allowing radio to monetise content and claim its share of the Rs 70 billion VAS market in the country.

However, radio stations will continue to be unviable till the issue of music royalties is settled, Panday said. “125 of the 200 odd stations currently operational in the country are financially unviable due to the crippling royalties charged by ‘monopolistic patterns followed by the music industry‘”, he added.

“If radio spreads, the music industry will do better. You download songs when you hear it on radio first,” he pointed out.

Radio Today Broadcasting COO Anil Srivatsa, one of the few players who plays differentiated content on radio, stressed that the medium needs to raise its own respectability, if it has to be taken seriously by the advertising and media planning community.

MUMBAI: It has been a landmark year for the media and entertainment sector. A spate of 45 private equity deals have dotted the landscape in 2007 while one company has raised money through an initial public offering.

“It signals the coming of age of not only the media sector but also the companies. Indian promoters have taken their outfits to a scale where even Walt Disney and Time Warner have gone ahead to do equity deals with them,” said ICICI Securities SVP Ravi Sardana.

The market cap of the media companies has touched $15 billion. “The media and entertainment sector, which is at Rs 500 billion, is expected to double in the next 4-5 years. This is something which is exciting investors,” said Sardana while addressing a session at Ficci-Frames 2008 on “Raising Capital: Showbiz attracts the moolah.”

The business has also become scalable with the opening up of multiple platforms. “There are lots of markets in India which are still under penetrated. Media companies can expand their business by entering into new geographies,” Sardana said.

The missing segments in the piece are movie companies, animation and new platforms like IPTV. The sector also needs to consolidate and make structural changes for making it more attractive for equity capital infusion, Sardana said.

The challenges are shortage of talent and scaling up. “In India largest production houses do less than four movies a year. In Hollywood, the big six studios account for 90 per cent of the US and Canada box office,” said Sardana.

MUMBAI: With the explosion of multiplexes, Indian filmmakers are increasingly putting importance on the performance of a film in the first weekend. The days of the Silver and Golden jubilee are long gone.

While a strong star cast and a well-armed publicity machinery play a big role, filmmakers must also be honest with audiences and to themselves when they market and distribute their films.

This was one of the points made during a session on “Opening Weekend: How To Get The Audience In?” The speakers were Eros Multimedia COO Jyoti Deshpande, Specialtreats CEO Colin Burrows, film critic Komal Nahata, P9 CEO Naveen Shah and filmmaker Kunal Kohli.

Nahata made several points about what film distributors should keep in mind. One of these is that they should be honest while marketing and distributing their films. Having cameos of huge stars in big flicks and keeping that under wraps works the best for a project. Examples of this would be Aishwarya Rai in Mohabbtein and Salman Khan in Kuch Kuch Hota Hain.

He highlighted the lack of new talent in the industry. Along with that, Nahata added that a hit pair may not necessarily guarantee a sure-shot success story. For instance, Hrithik Roshan-Aishwarya Rai starrer Jodhaa Akhbar did not garner a good opening weekend.

As far as the smaller, independent films are concerned, it is very important that they offer novelty in terms of content and presentation. In addition, hit music makes a great package.

Deshpande stressed the scientific way of achieving the desired opening weekend. She notes that unlike the US, in India the DVD market is not big enough to help a film that has done poorly in theatres. So relying on the opening weekend helps mitigate risks. She also addressed the new trend of individual producers hopping to big distributors, and the entry of corporates changing the scenario for existing production houses.

But is the opening weekend the be-all and end-all? Kohli answered in the negative saying that a good film can survive a slow start. He offered the examples of Munnabhai MBBS, which had absolutely no marketing gimmicks lined up, but did very well.

He also offered examples of Chak De which did well beyond just the opening weekend. Intelligent marketing can help a film that does not have big stars. He gave the example of Hum Tum where the distributor did tie ups with MTV, Sony for the show Jassi as well as cartons in The Times of India.

Another way of marketing a movie today, rightly pointed out by Navin Shah, CEO, P9, is merchandising. The best example of the same would be 2007‘s Om Shanti Om which tied up with Shoppers Stop. And if that doesn‘t work for the production house, myriad television channels are waiting to cash in on big stars to augment their TRPs. And in return, the forthcoming film gets huge mileage.

However, lastly what does a small-budget project do in situation like this? The solution offered by Kohli is market it the big way and pitch it against a big-budget film. Loins of Punjab and Mithya are the perfect instances of the same.

MUMBAI: Content is King and distribution is God. A cliché to some but that was what came out as the main concern of broadcasters in the session “Redefining Television Content: Shifting Patterns.”

Tam media CEO LV Krishnan threw open the session with a question, “How many hours of fresh content were telecast on TV in 2007?” The answer: Somewhere between 30,000 to 35,000.

According to Krishnan, the genres that saw tremendous growth were Kids, Hindi news channels, Hindi GEC and music channel. Content has seen a vast change, and was the engine that drove the industry both in terms of revenues and costs.

“Viewers have become very experimentative in nature and this sudden surge in the audience movement has led to new channel launches. The space is getting fragmented and average time spend by the viewers has gone down as well,” said Krishnan.

Speaking about his recently launched Hindi GEC 9X, INX Group chairman Peter Mukerjea said, “The core TG for 9X are married females, not the absolute 4+ age group provided by Tam. In the GEC front, we require a deeper segmentation of TG to reflect numbers. Finding demographic segments is the need of the hour.”

Surprisingly, the new emerging trends in content were not discussed. The focus of the discussions was digitisation of content and better revenue streams across different platforms.

A major chunk of revenues goes into managing distribution and that leaves the broadcasters with less to exploit content for other platforms. Alva Brothers director Sunil Lulla said, “It is important to establish content but the most important thing is distribution. Viewers should be aware of your brand. Enough is offered for free in this country. Now if the viewers want the content to be delivered on their mobile or through internet, they will have to pay for it. A regulation is urgently required to get in radical change.”

MUMBAI: Reasonable men confronting unreasonable challenges. In the pursuit of more eyeballs – and by extension ad revenues – content of most Hindi news channels are increasingly driven by entertainment, sports and cinema stories.

Agreeing that the face of TV news in India is changing, TV Today Network CEO G Krishnan says, “Hard news co-exists with tabloid coverage. Fun seems to be the only currency for stickiness.”

At the session “Is News Entertainment: changing face of television,” news broadcasters said that there is an overlap of commerce and journalism among news channels. News channels are heavily dependent on ad revenue as subscription revenue is very low.

The ad revenue size of Hindi news channel is Rs 6 billion while that of English news channel is only Rs 2 billion, NDTV India executive editor Sanjay Ahirwal points out.

Sahara Samay MD Rajeev Bajaj argued that in the last five to six years, there has been a paradigm shift of news content. It is the viewers‘ taste that matters. News content is driven by stories which affect the viewers. Therefore, a story on Khali and Rakhi Sawant is as important.

Said Bajaj, “With increasing aspirations, viewers‘ choice of content is changing.”

Sounding a cautionary note, senior journalist Satinder Bindra warned that the trend of news broadcasters increasing the number of entertainment stories on their networks would lead to questions about their credibility. “Once credibility is lost it can never be retrieved,” Bindra said.

“Almost all the news channels carry the same story with an ‘exclusive‘ tag. The news consumer feel betrayed. The news channel then lose credibility,” Bindra says.

MUMBAI: While the government has decided to up the foreign direct investment cap on distribution platforms like DTH (direct-to-home) and HITS (Headend-In-The-Sky) to 74 per cent, the cable TV sector will have to stay content with its current limit of 49 per cent.

The government‘s logic: there are too many cable operators and it doesn‘t want foreign investors to gobble them up.

Replying to a query by Indiantelevision.com, information & broadcasting secretary Asha Swarup said, “There are 70,000 cable operators spread across the country. We don‘t want to lift the FDI cap on cable at this stage. Besides, even with 49 per cent being allowed, foreign investors are not exercising this limit to the full.”

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), however, wants the cable TV sector to consolidate as a step up to attract investments. Digitalisation, the sector regulator feels, will pave the path to consolidation in the sector.

In order to push digitalisation, the government will come out with the HITS policy in a month‘s time. “We have looked at the Trai recommendations and are largely in agreement with it. We are looking at C-band for HITS,” said Swarup.

The government will also come out with the IPTV policy. “We should have it by April-end,” said Swarup.

On the content front, Swarup urged the industry to look at increasing the amount of children‘s content available. “Our children should not only have access to Tom and Jerry and Pogo,” she said.

Swarup said it is a welcome sign that the broadcasters and advertisers are setting up a national TV ratings system. The government has been concerned with how TRPs are arrived at for sometime now, she explained.

On the price freeze issue, Swarup said that broadcasters should take this up with Trai.

MUMBAI: In order to give a lift to the film industry, the government is taking several measures. It will set aside Rs 200 million to encourage documentary filmmakers. It will also revive NFDC by offering financial support.

“We are enhancing the capital base of NFDC. We are going to the Cabinet on this,” said information and broadcasting secretary Asha Swarup while not stating how much of fund infusion is going to be made.

The government is setting up an animation institute in Pune. “We have land in Pune and it will take three years to set it up. We are looking at other players coming in,” Swarup said.

The government will also have tie-ups with ITIs, clearly indicating that the animation industry has growth potential and needs infrastructure support. Swarup said that it is important for the government to take a role in HRD in the animation and visual effects industries.

Speaking at the inaugural session of Ficci-Frames 2008 here today, Swarup also said that the government is also setting up a National Museum of Moving Image in Mumbai. The investment towards this will be Rs 600 million. “We will have it by the end of this year,” she added.

Swarup also raised the concern of piracy but said that the proposed optical disc legislation that was drafted by Ficci is creating a regime of inspectors that is not in accordance with
liberalisation.

“To fight this menace, the supply side has to be regulated. Releasing films on multiple delivery platforms will help fight this menace. Digital release will also counter piracy,” said Swarup.

The government has also initiated talks with state governments to see if they can come up with their own laws to fight piracy. “Tamil Nadu has a Goonda Act which is effective in tackling piracy,” Swarup said.

Noted filmmaker and chairman of the Ficci entertainment committee Yash Chopra also raised the piracy issue which is pinching the industry of billions of rupees. He said that the main challenge for the film industry is to conquer more territories.

“Our films are growing in popularity in countries like China, Japan and Russia. So distribution channels have to be strengthened,” Chopra added.