ITV

Tag: Australasia

  • ‘Over one third of BBC’s revenue comes from Asia’ : Sunita Rajan – BBC Worldwide VP- advertising sales, Asia and Australasia

    ‘Over one third of BBC’s revenue comes from Asia’ : Sunita Rajan – BBC Worldwide VP- advertising sales, Asia and Australasia

    BBC is expanding in the media space in India with not just new channel launches but also in the arena of FM radio and TV production.

    Among the recent launches are BBC Entertainment and Cbeebies. BBC World which was for years a free-to-air news channel, has gone pay to open up subscription revenues.

    BBC has also taken a minority stake in Mid Day Multimedia’s private FM station Radio One.

    And to expand its footprint in India, BBC has recently set up a production centre in Mumbai to tap the rapidly growing TV content market.

    In an interview with Indiantelevision’s Nasrin Sultana, Sunita Rajan, BBC Worldwide VP – advertising sales, Asia and Australasia, talks of BBC’s growth plans for this market.

    Excerpts:

    How is BBC giving the Asian region a push with its content, marketing and ad sales strategy?
    We have a strong presence in the Asia Pacific region. As far as the editorial position goes, our news bureaus are spread widely all over. We have Asia centric programming like Asia Business Report, Asia This Week and news features for Asians. We recently launched an Asia specific show – World News Today presented by Nik Gowing. All the shows are produced in London but our target is Asian audiences.

     

    Our India specific show India Business Report was favoured so much that we had to bring it back on air. But we are an international news channel. So our competition is not the local news channels of any country.

    Asia has been a strong revenue driver for BBC. How much does India contribute as a percentage to BBC’s total ad sales kitty?
    Over one third of the revenue comes from Asia. We do not break it down market by market. So I won’t be able to tell you about the Indian market alone. We have six beams of ad slots and rates across the globe. So an ad rate can be similar for India as well as in Latin America or South Asia. We kind of dice and slice it all across the globe.

    But the good thing is a good amount of ad sales comes from the Asia Pacific region. In recent times, we have seen a huge interest from our Indian clients to reach out to the Asia Pacific markets. At the moment, we are carrying campaigns by Indian clients targeted at the international audience.

    With this trend, how has BBC evolved an ad sales strategy?
    After some amount of internal research we found that there is a common trend among our audiences across countries. One commonality is that they are internationalists. Internationalists are those who are concerned about international news and have an international lifestyle. Keeping this in mind, we launched the “Internationalists campaign.” The campaign is nothing but telling “this is what our audience looks like”. What we did was we picked and chose the basic commonality of all the internationalists, which we identified.

    What is the basic idea behind the ‘Internationalists campaign’?
    Reaffirming and re-auditing that our audience are affluent. It is to give us a profile of our audience. We are focusing on this – through our content as well as on the advertising front. We are talking about Indians who are ‘internationalist’ in their attitude. We also did the Global Indian survey to find out who are affluent, who work in MNCs, who travel abroad, who use foreign products, and who are interested in the stock market.

    What is BBC’s audience profile in India?
    Affluent Indians living in the top 20 cities form the BBC audience profile. They are reflected in the ‘Internationalist’ campaign. The Indian audience or the ‘Internationalist’ is identical to any other Internationalist living in Tokyo, Korea or USA.
    ‘Affluent Indians living in top 20 cities form BBC’s audience profile’

    Who are your major advertisers in India?
    We have 90 brands advertising coming from India on our channel. They are from various categories – financial institutions, IT and auto. Blue chip companies like Nokia and Samsung are strong advertisers on our channel.

    Since BBC has also launched a GEC, how are you tapping advertisers beyond the traditional news genre?
    GEC definitely has a different profile of advertisers. FMCG companies are an important breed of advertisers who back GECs. We are looking at tapping such companies.

    What are the marketing and advertising plans for the kids channel Cbeebies?
    Cbeebies is for pre-schoolers. No kids channel in India has such a target group. Cbeebies is very popular in other markets where we have launched. BBC’s Teletubbies is a most liked brand. We are looking for advertisers for our kids channel.

    Cbeebies is still restricted to a DTH footprint. How are you getting into carriage deals with the cable networks?
    Right now we are available on the TataSky DTH platform. But we are in talks for distribution deals across cable networks.

    How do you tap advertisers for Radio One where you are an equity partner with Mid-Day Multimedia?
    Though BBC has a stake in Radio One, we do not handle the advertising at all.

    BBC recently launched BBC Knowledge in Singapore. When are you bringing it to India?
    We launched BBC Knowledge in August on the IPTV platform. The channel showcases some of the best features and documentaries. We have 3000 hours of content in our archives. We are soon to launch BBC Knowledge in other markets too.

    How is the recently launched commercial venture BBC.com faring?
    BBC.com is our commercial venture to offer advertising on BBC’s international online service for users outside the UK. The current site has been very successful in attracting international traffic. Currently, it has more than 40 million unique users per month from outside the UK who mainly access the news pages.

  • HARDtalk celebrates tenth anniversary

    MUMBAI: BBC World’s flagship current affairs interview programme HARDtalk , will celebrate its tenth anniversary this week and will air repeat telecasts of interviews of some people who have made history.

    Known for its interviews with politicians and newsmakers from around the world, the special anniversary episodes will put the spotlight on Dr Naji Sabri and Sir Jeremy Greenstock on 16 April, Meles Zenawi on 17 April and Romeo Dallaire on 18 April.

    Presenter Stephen Sackur says, “I’ve met many world leaders who have enormous respect for HARDtalk, and I can think of no bigger programme with which to be involved. I’ve had pretty much the best job in the BBC as a foreign correspondent, and the only way of topping that was through HARDtalk, putting tough questions to the people who shape our world.”

    Stephen took over from former presenter Tim Sebastian in January 2005. Tim presented HARDtalk since it began in March 1997 and recorded more than 1500 editions.

    Tim adds, “It was an enormous privilege to be in a position to ask leading questions and to travel the world trying to get answers. We left some bruised political egos in our wake, and some important feathers ruffled.”

    HARDtalk is broadcast on BBC World daily from Monday to Thursday, with five showings per day in Europe, the Americas and Africa and three in Asia, Australasia and the Middle East. The programme has gained an international reputation for asking tough questions of global leaders, political figures, the military, campaigners and representatives of the world’s leading organisations. HARDtalk is edited by Carey Clark.

  • ICC sets 7 Nov for audio-visual rights tenders submission

    ICC sets 7 Nov for audio-visual rights tenders submission

    MUMBAI: The International Cricket Council (ICC) has announced the availability of its Invitation to Tender (ITT) document for audio-visual rights for ICC Events from late 2007 to 2015.

    This is the latest step in the process of exploiting its rights for the eight-year period and follows a series of meetings between the ICC and interested broadcasters and agencies over the past month.

    Those broadcasters and agencies wishing to pursue an interest and receive the ITT can do so by applying to the ICC through email.

    Once they have done that they will be sent a confidentiality letter. When they sign that letter and pay a fee to the ICC they will receive the tender documentation. The deadline for submission of tenders is 7 November 2006.

    ICC CEO Malcolm Speed said, “This is the latest stage of the process to sell the ICC’s commercial and broadcast rights and it is a hugely significant and exciting time for cricket.
    “We have already been gratified and encouraged by the meetings we have held with many interested parties and those meetings have indicated to us that the level of interest in these rights is extremely high.

    “The sale of our rights gives us the opportunity to place cricket on a sound financial footing for the next eight years and, by doing that, it will provide all our Members with the chance to both sustain and grow the game. Yhroughout this whole process we have only one aim in mind – securing the best deal for cricket”.

    Included in the eight-year period under discussion are 18 ICC tournaments with two World Cups, in Asia (2011) and Australasia (2015), and a minimum of three ICC Champions Trophy tournaments.

    Also included are the first two ICC Twenty20 World Championships, in South Africa (2007) and England (2009), the latter taking place in the ICC’s centenary year.

    And there are Cricket World Cup Qualifiers, four ICC U/19 Cricket World Cups, and, for the first time, the Women’s Cricket World Cup, with two tournaments scheduled for 2009 (Australia) and 2013 (India) in the eight-year timeframe.

    Meanwhile the BBC’s head of sport, Roger Mosey has said it would bid for live English cricket rights in 2010 when the ECB’s existing deal with pay-broadcaster BSkyB expires. He said that cricket should follow the model used for football, where rights are sold in packages, allowing several broadcasters to share the rights for live games and highlights.

    He has been quoted in media reports saying that a multi-platform model with BSkyB having live Premiership games; the BBC showing Match of the Day and live FA Cup games; ITV and BSkyB sharing the Champions League worked well.

    Further details and updates of the sales process will be announced by the ICC in due course.