ITV

Tag: ABP News

  • Stage set for News TV Summit and NT Awards on 25 March

    Stage set for News TV Summit and NT Awards on 25 March

    MUMBAI: A large part of the Indian news television fraternity is expected to be huddled in New Delhi’s Taj Palace Hotel come 25 March. The occasion: the sixth Indiantelevision.com News Television Summit which is expected to commence at 11 am and which will be followed by Indiantelevision.com’s NT Awards in the evening.

     

    “Getting out of the Squeeze – Learning to live in a digitised India” is the theme of this year’s summit. A keynote opening address by Ministry of Information & Broadcasting Secretary Uday Kumar Varma has been lined up and will be followed by three panel discussions covering the business and regulatory framework in a digitising India, innovative use of technology in the news broadcast space and the emerging trends in prime time news and the importance of TV news anchors.

     

    The News Television Summit 2013 is endorsed by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting and is supported by ABP News and ABP Majha. The NT Awards are presented by LR Active Oil while Saakshi TV, TV9, CNBC TV18, CNBC Awaaz, and Aaj Tak have also pitched in as partners.

     

    “The news TV industry has been grappling with an uber-competitive environment with limited revenue streams in almost every language segment,” says Indiantelevision.com Group CEO and Editor-in-Chief Anil Wanvari. “DAS and DTH can potentially help specific segments of the news TV industry generate new revenue streams in terms of subscription and premium niche news channels in the medium to long term. Of course the transition will throw up its own challenges.”

        
    Amongst those slated to attend and speak include: MIB Joint-Secretary Supriya Sahu, ABP News India CEO Ashok Venkatramani, BAG Media Network chairperson Anuradha Prasad, DEN CEO S.N. Sharma, Puthiya Thalaimurai TV news director S. Srinivasan, Legal expert Anish Dayal, India TV advisor Paritosh Joshi, Castle Media Director Vynsley Fernandes, Ericsson content and media head Supriyo Mookherjee, Quantel Q-Tube expert Chrisophe Messe, NDTV CTO Dinesh Singh, Cellcast Asia founder & CEO Pankaj Thakar, BBC Global News COO India Preet Dhupar, NDTV Group Editor Barkha Dutt, CNN-IBN host and veteran newscaster and analyst Karan Thapar, Bloomberg India Editor Vivek Law, Headlines Today Managing Editor Rahul Kanwal, DD’s Sanjeev Srivastava and finally India News Editor-in-Chief Deepak Chaurasia.

     

    The conference is to be followed by Indiantelevision.com’s The NT Awards, which received more than 1,000 entries for 43 categories from 45 TV news channels operating in English, Hindi, Telugu and Marathi. More than 110 jury members from news TV practitioners to print and magazine journalists to costume designers to marketers to agency professionals to former police officials to entrepreneurs helped judge the entries over two weeks of judging in Mumbai, Hyderabad and Delhi. Ernst & Young had the responsibility of being the official tabulator of the jury results.

     

    Information & Broadcasting minister Manish Tewari has consented to be the chief guest for The NT Awards. CEOs of media companies and TV channels, Editors, Reporters, Technicians, Celebrities and Sportsmen are expected to attend the function, which is being anchored by TV anchor and political satirist Cyrus Broacha and TV actor Kavita Kaushik.

     

    The print partners include Cable Quest, Satellite@Internet India, and Aavishkar Dish Antenna while Tellychakkar.com and Radioandmusic.com are online partners. The event has been executed and produced by Indiantelevision.com’s ITV 2.0 Productions.

  • Traditional media has to change ways of communicating with people

    MUMBAI: The All India Management Association (AIMA) two-day 3rd World Marketing Congress highlighted the need for a fundamental change in marketing in the age of digital media and empowerment of the consumer.

    ABP News CEO Ashok Venkatramani said, “As world of marketing is changing rapidly every day, traditional media has to change ways of communicating with people and have to go where the audience is going rather than where media wants to take them”.

    The theme of the congress was “Marketing Myopia 2.0”. On the second and the final day of the event, the eminent speakers shared their insights on many urgent marketing issues, including big data and analytics, future relevance of the traditional media, the role of NGOs in marketing social causes and the relevance of advertising agencies in the new era.

    Talking on the relevance of traditional media in the current scenario, . Microsoft India CMO Shefalika Saxena said,” Traditional media is not at all losing relevance. Media is only media and not new or old, which is constantly changing and evolving. It’s not about newspapers or television or any other media but it’s how one uses that media to engage with the customers to sell or to market a product.”

    Speaking about the importance of analytics in marketing, Clifford Patrao, Director and Leader, Strategy & Transformation-Global Business Services, India/South Asia, IBM India, said: “Analytics are for enriching customers experience and to make product branding more user friendly. We are seeing an era where data is empowering marketing and marketers.”

    During the two-day event the participants also discussed the new age consumers, extending product life cycles, defining business based on customers and not products, using Internet to gain competitive advantage and the rising importance of earned media.

    On the first day of the congress, the Congress Chairman & Chairman & R K Swamy BBDO MD Srinivasan K Swamy emphasised the challenges faced by the marketers in this age of digital media and consumers changing behaviour.

    Making a presentation on the occasion, AIMA president D Shivakumar had highlighted the fundamental change in marketing, denoting the era to brand experience rather than of product branding. He also stressed that marketers could no longer treat the digital media as a niche.

    The highlight of the event was the presentation of the AIMA’s R K Swamy High Performance Brand of the year Award, which was bagged by Apollo Tyres this year. Rajesh Dahiya, National Head, Sales & Marketing, Apollo Tyres received the award.

    The Congress was conducted in an experience-sharing, interactive mode, encouraging high level of participation by the delegates. The event format included presentations and experiences by some of the most renowned names of the marketing world.

    The Congress attracted more than 350 participants. The Congress afforded the delegates an opportunity to learn from the experts and share branding experience and insights with their peers.

  • Zee TV is the most trusted Hindi GEC brand

    BENGALURU: Zee TV, despite a slide in its ranking, was ahead of all Hindi GECs in the third edition of The Brand Trust Report India Study 2013, a study of India‘s most trusted brands by the Trust Research Advisory (TRA).

    Zee TV fell six notches to 231 from last year’s 225. Star Plus saw a huge gain in ranking at 287 from 584 last year, but was still behind Zee TV.

    Tata Sky (DTH) moved up 156 places to rank 51 from last year’s ranking of 207. DISH TV (DTH) was ranked within the top 500 for the first time in 2013 with a ranking of 180.

    In entertainment, the most trusted brands are PVR (Cinema-Display) and Eros (Cinema-Other). The Times of India followed by DNA leads the Media – Print category.

    TRA says it expanded the scope of its study to 16 cities for the 2013 report with more than 13,000 hours of fieldwork which resulted in 3 million data points and 19,000 unique brands of which about 1,100 brands across 211 categories find mention.

    The top two contenders for Media-TV are Aaj Tak and ABP News (Hindi). Aaj Tak moved up 47 places to 121 in 2013 from 168 in 2012. ABP News (Hindi) entered the 500 most trusted brands list at 214. NDTV saw a fall of 41 places to 221 as compared to last year’s rank of 180. Discovery too saw a steep fall of 73 places to 278 as compared to last year’s 205 rank.

    For last year’s edition, TRA claims a readership of around 10,000 from about 400 copies of the 1000 copies published, each priced at Rs 10,000. This year TRA expects a readership of around 25,000, with the number of copies to be published undecided as of now. The price for the 2013 report has been enhanced by 40 percent to Rs 14,000 each. The target audience for the report is the brands who use the report in various ways, including improving upon the 61 attributes divided across 10 brand behaviors, the foundation of which lies on three fundamental layers of trust says TRA.

  • MCCS appoints Gautam Sharma as national sales head

    MUMBAI: Media Content and Communications Services India (MCCS), which runs ABP News, ABP Majha and ABP Ananda, has appointed Gautam Sharma as its national sales head.

    In his new role, Sharma will be responsible for driving revenues of all the three channels.

    Sharma joins MCCS from India TV where he was working as SVP – Sales. He spent over a year at India TV and was responsible for heading all India revenue of India TV which included airtime sales revenue, events and special properties.

    This is Sharma‘s second stint with MCCS. He earlier worked with the company for four years (December 2006- November 2010) as assistant vice president.

    Prior to joining MCCS in 2006, he had also worked with TV Today, Star India and Planman Media.

  • Star, ABP announce divorce; Star News to be ABP News

    Star, ABP announce divorce; Star News to be ABP News

    MUMBAI: Star and Ananda Bazar Patrika (ABP) Group said Monday they were parting ways, allowing the Rupert Murdoch-controlled company to retreat from the news business in India to focus on entertainment.

    Star’s decision comes in the wake of the current regulatory environment and structural issues ailing the news genre in India. The government caps foreign direct investment at 26 per cent in TV news, making it less attractive for foreign investments to pour into a sector that is hit hard by slow revenue growth, high carriage and staff costs and an abundance of players.

    The discontinuation in phases will complete within 2-4 months. Indiantelevision.com had earlier reported that Star would exit the TV news business in India and would split from ABP within three months, finally selling its 26 per cent stake.

    With the divorce, the eight-year affiliation with the ‘Star’ brand has come to an end. Media Content and Communications (MCCS), the company that owns and operates the news channels, said Monday that after the split, Hindi news channel Star News would be named ABP News, Bengali news channel Star Ananda would become ABP Ananda and the Marathi news channel Star Majha would be called ABP Majha.

    Says MCCS chief executive officer Ashok Venkatramani, “Star and ABP have decided to discontinue the Brand Agreement where Star News has lent the brand to MCCS. Right now Star continues to be a shareholder in MCCS.”

    ABP, whose core business is news, will continue to “promote and establish” its own brands in the broadcast news space through its subsidiary company – MCCS.

    Media buyers have expressed concern about the shedding of the ‘Star’ brand. “Hindi news channel Star News could be hit the hardest as ‘Star’ is a strong brand with its popular entertainment channels having a tremendous impact in the Hindi heartland. There may not be any impact in West Bengal where ABP is a stronger news brand, with its overwhelming print presence. There will be a need to promote the new branding, though all of us know that ABP has a credible equity in the news arena,” says the head of a media buying outfit on condition of anonymity.

    Agrees Lintas Media Group head of planning-Mumbai Dhirendra Singh. “The change in the brand may take some time to sink in. Considering the competitive environment in Hindi news genre, media planners /buyers would like the channel to stabilise first and then invest on it.”

    Crest COO Karthik Lakshminarayan believes that the challenge for ABP would be to maintain its ratings. “As far as the channel maintains its content quality and ratings, I do not see any reason for advertisers to shy away from the channel,” he says.