Executive Dossier

“Audiences will make time for Govinda’s show” : Rekha Nigam-Sony programming head

Published

25 years ago

February 6, 2001

Friday the 26th! The first episode of Sony Entertainment Television‘s long awaited gameshow "Jeeto Chappar Phaad Ke" (JCPK) will go on air and the clock is furiously ticking away. JCPK, which marks film star host Govinda‘s television debut, will be telecast three days a week (Friday through to Sunday) targeting weekend watchers. There‘s a hive of activity at Sony‘s corporate offices in Mumbai‘s western suburb of Andheri. After all a lot is riding on a show which Sony hopes will set the stage for the channel to make a play for the number one position currently held by Star Television. And at the centre of it all is Rekha Nigam, senior vice-president, programming and production. She‘s here, there and everywhere trying make sure that all is perfect for D-Day. Indiantelevision.com managed to get her at a free moment for a chat on what JCPK and the show‘s one man laugh riot Govinda have to offer.

"Audiences will make time to stay glued to Jeeto Chappar Phaad Ke"

How has Govinda come across as a host? And how has his interaction with the audience been?

He‘s very down to earth and totally transparent which is reflected in his relationship with the audience. I‘m sure this will come across quite clearly in the shows themselves. He‘s also very uninhibited in his interaction with the public, which was a problem for us as far as the security detail was concerned. In fact in Film City (in the western Mumbai suburb of Goregaon where the shootings were held) he was quite happy to sit in a chair outside instead of in the enclosure set out for him. We had our work cut out keeping the crowds at bay.

So how has it been working with Govinda?

It‘s been quite amazing all in all. You never know what to expect with him and his spontaneity and sheer energy is to be seen to be believed. He‘s a brilliant mimic so there‘s never been a dull moment when he‘s around.

What of his Late Latif ways? There are all these reports of how his chronic inability to keep to schedules is causing havoc with your budgets.

I‘d like to state here that there‘s been too much made of this issue. Govinda has his own rythm of working and he has given enough of his time to the show. If the point is that he came late on the sets it should also be noted that at times he was willing to work way into the night to a point where we were all pooped out but he was charged up enough to continue. He has only once held up a shoot and that was due to very valid personal reasons, which need not be discussed here.

So have you managed to keep to your budgets or not? See, when we take on someone like Govinda we know what the score is so all these problems as you call it are factored in. If we were to sign a contract with someone like Amitabh Bachchan we would approach the whole thing differently. Everybody has different ways of working. One has to be clued into it and handle it accordingly.

What about dates? The top actors are often accused of committing to too many projects thereby sending schedules for a toss.

Govinda committed a full month of shootings for JCPK, which was something that had clearly been established at the time of signing him on. From mid-December to mid-January, JCPK was the only project he was involved with and we canned 15 episodes in that period.

When have you scheduled the next set of shoots?

They will be from the 12th to 26th of February.

The show was supposed to go on air on 5 January if I‘m not mistaken. Why the 20-day delay?

That is incorrect. The only other date we had discussed was 12 January. But we finally settled for 26 January (India‘s Republic Day) as the most opportune.

Speaking of budgets, the show is said to cost Sony Rs 700 million a year. What kind of TRPs (television rating points) will you need on an average to make it all worth your while?

Don‘t ask me about TRPs and such. My brief was to make a great show, which the public will love and I think I have done that.

Okay, I‘ll rephrase that. What sort of TRPs do you think will make your advertisers happy?

They‘re already happy. (Sony has five sponsors – Electrolux, Coca Cola, Godrej, Hindustan Lever, Proctor & Gamble and Videocon – lined up at present who have paid between Rs 250,000 to Rs 275,000 for every 10 seconds of air time)

Let‘s move on. You have slotted JCPK in the weekend slot, which seems a good strategy in that you avoid a head-to-head with Kaun Banega Crorepati (Star TV‘s blockbuster gameshow which has set the benchmark for the genre in India). Have you any contingency for increasing the screening span if the show takes off as you hope?

I can‘t say that it is completely ruled out because you can never be totally certain in this business. But JCPK has been conceptualised and designed as a weekend viewing programme and that‘s how we‘re looking at it.

Star TV and Zee are certainly not going to be sitting back while you JCPK readies for take-off. We can expect a whole slew of blockbuster films from their stables, which might just take the sheen of your show. Your own weekend movie slots have been moved up to the 9:00 pm slot. Have you thought of working other programmes around JCPK to strengthen its position?

Nothing of the sort. We believe in the show and expect it to survive on its own merits. We have no plans to build programming around JCPK as some kind of buffer against whatever our rivals may come up with.

The distinct advantage that Kaun Banega Crorepati had was in the timing. It allowed most office goers time to get back home with the whole family together. The weekends are much more difficult to pin down as far as audiences go. People go out, see movies, whatever. What do you have to say for that?

As I said JCPK is a great show and we believe the audiences will make the time to stay glued.

Talking of great shows. The team behind it certainly couldn‘t be better. You have Nitin Desai who‘s designed the sets, quizmaster Derek O‘Brien, dance choreographer Ganesh Acharya, music by Leslie Lewis and Ajay Kapoor in the director‘s chair and of course yourself. With such a great set of creative minds involved, the expectations are sky-high. It‘s gonna be a long drop down if you guys should fail to bring them in.

I guess the buck will have to stop with me on that score. We‘ve given it our best shot. Now it‘s for the audience to decide.

Looking ahead. The Balaji Films-produced Kusum is the next big project on your plate. Will it adhere to the blueprint successfully standardised with the super success of the film Hum Aapke Hain Kaun? Stories built around upper middle class, upper caste Hindu extended families and their internal politics.

I don‘t know what you critics have against Hum Aapke Hain Kaun? That a film released way back in 1994 can still have such an impact says something. Anyway, coming to Kusum, as the name implies the story revolves around and is about one woman. It will of course have the sub-plots involving the characters linked to her story.

When will it go on air?

I can‘t give you an exact date on that one. (Ekta Kapoor, the producer of Kusum, has said in an interview to the Times of India that she‘s looking at a March release)

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Executive Dossier

Game on, fame on as Good Game hunts India’s first global gaming star

Published

1 month ago

January 27, 2026

indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: Game faces on, pressure high India’s gaming ambitions are levelling up. Good Game, billed as the world’s first as-live global gaming reality show, has officially launched in India with a bold mission: to crown the country’s first Global Gaming Superstar.

Blending esports with mainstream entertainment, the show brings together competitive gaming, creativity and on-camera performance in a format that tests more than just joystick skills. Contestants will be judged on gameplay, screen presence and their ability to perform under pressure, reflecting how gaming has evolved from pastime to profession and pop culture currency.

Fronting the show are three high-profile ambassadors: actor and entrepreneur Samantha Ruth Prabhu, Indian cricket star Rishabh Pant, and gaming creator Ujjwal Chaurasia. The winner will take home Rs 1 crore ($100,000) among the largest prize pools for any Indian reality show along with the chance to represent India on a global stage.

Backed by a planned annual investment of up to Rs 100 crore, Good Game is also courting brand partners, promising a minimum reach of 500 million among India’s core youth audience. The creators position the show as a bridge between entertainment and interactive culture, offering long-format content, community engagement and commercial scale.

Auditions are now open to Indian citizens aged 18 and above, inviting amateur and professional gamers, creators and performers alike. Shortlisted candidates will be called for in-person auditions in Mumbai on 14 and 15 February, and in Delhi on 28 February and 1 March 2026.

With big money, big names and even bigger ambition, Good Game signals a shift in how India views gaming not just as play, but as performance, profession and prime-time spectacle.

Digital

SpotDraft hires new CMO and CFO to fuel global push for its AI contract platform

Published

3 months ago

December 3, 2025

indiantelevision.com Team

INDIA: SpotDraft has strengthened its senior ranks as it gears up for faster global expansion, naming Alon Waks as chief marketing officer and Amit Sharma as chief financial officer. The appointments follow the firm’s $54 million Series B round earlier this year and mark a push to scale across the Americas, EMEA and India.

The AI-powered contract-lifecycle-management platform has posted 100 per cent year-on-year growth in customer acquisition, counting Apollo.io, IPSY, Mixpanel, Oyster and Panasonic among its global clients. The firm processes more than one million contracts annually, with volumes up 173 per cent and nearly 50,000 monthly active users.

Waks, a veteran of Kustomer, Bizzabo, CreatorIQ, LivePerson and ZoomInfo, will steer global marketing and category positioning as legal teams adopt AI-driven tools. Sharma, who has led finance across scaling tech firms since 2016, will guide financial strategy, investor relations and market expansion.

Both hires aim to sharpen SpotDraft’s bid for a larger slice of the fast-growing legal-tech market, expected to exceed $63 billion by 2032. Co-founder and chief executive Shashank Bijapur said the company is focused on scaling go-to-market operations in the Americas, deepening leadership in EMEA, and accelerating AI capabilities for general counsels and legal-operations leaders.

Clients report shorter deal cycles and better alignment between legal and business teams. “What used to take weeks now happens in days,” said Abnormal Security senior legal operations manager Susan Koenig. DeepL head of legal operations André Barrow, said SpotDraft has helped reframe legal “from a cost centre to a generator of revenue”.

Executive Dossier

Outdoor Ads Get Smarter as LOC8 Shifts OOH from Visibility to Attention

Published

3 months ago

November 28, 2025

indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: Out-of-home ads were once the wallflowers of marketing seen by everyone, noticed by few. But in an age where attention has become the world’s most fought-over currency, even billboards are getting a brain upgrade. Enter LOC8, OSMO’s AI-powered attention engine, quietly reshaping the old OOH playbook by measuring not just who could have looked at an ad, but who actually did. The shift is subtle but seismic: impressions are out, impact is in and data, not gut instinct, is calling the shots.

In a landscape where marketers question every rupee spent outdoors, LOC8 is turning lampposts, flyovers and traffic islands into precision-mapped attention laboratories. By crunching dwell time, visibility zones, perceptual size and real-world obstructions, the platform is dragging OOH into a future where creativity meets computer vision and where the best ideas aren’t just eye-catching, but eye-measured. From automotive facelifts to FMCG novelty and real estate trust-building, the message is clear, outdoor has stopped shouting and started listening. Indian Television Dot Com explores more about it in an Interview interview with OSMO co-founder Nipun Arora.

On how OSMO is shifting outdoor advertising from a visibility-led medium to an attention-led one through LOC8.

Traditional OOH has long been measured by visibility and impressions i.e how many people could see an ad. OSMO, through its proprietary AI platform LOC8, is shifting that narrative more towards likelihood of being noticed. Using computer vision and machine learning, LOC8 analyzes real-world video data to measure visibility zones, obstructions, dwell time and perceptual size; bringing precision to how attention is quantified outdoors. It moves the focus from mere impressions to quality of impressions, making OOH a data-verified, attention-led medium comparable to digital in accountability.

On how marketers can use LOC8’s dwell-time, visibility and perception insights to craft more effective, emotionally resonant OOH campaigns.

LOC8 helps brands understand how people truly experience outdoor media how long they look, from what distance, and under what conditions. By quantifying dwell time, visibility duration, and perceptual size; marketers can plan campaigns that align with real human viewing behavior. This empowers creative and strategy teams to design emotionally resonant storytelling where messaging, visual hierarchy and placement are optimized for how people actually notice and process OOH creatives.

About what LOC8 has revealed through campaigns like Renault Triber and Namaste India on how categories such as auto, FMCG and real estate use attention metrics to drive outcomes.

Each category uses attention data differently but all share one common goal: to convert outdoor visibility into measurable engagement.

• Automotive | Renault Triber

For the new Renault Triber facelift, bold creative met data-led planning through LOC8. By analyzing on-ground video data, LOC8 measured real audience attention across placements factoring in visibility zones, obstructions, traffic speed and perceptual size. This enabled Renault to identify corridors that delivered maximum reach, saliency and engagement, optimizing media efficiency and ROI.

• FMCG | Namaste India

In OOH, innovation is the hook and assets are the bait. But bait often hides the hook. With Loc8’s attention metrics, we ensured the bait wasn’t a hurdle, rather it became the perfect stage for innovation to deliver its full impact! The insight proved that creative novelty, when validated by attention data, drives deeper engagement and measurable brand lift.

• Real Estate

For luxury and real estate campaigns targeting HNI/UHNI audiences, attention patterns differ especially between front and rear passengers, who are often the core audience segment for premium sites. LOC8’s ability to distinguish rear vs. front visibility plays a critical role here. It helps identify sites that offer longer viewing windows and stronger perceptual dominance from the rear seat where decision-makers are most likely seated making it a key differentiator for premium and trust-led categories. Together, these insights prove that auto optimizes for impact, FMCG for recall, and real estate for trust visibility showing how attention metrics adapt to category goals while ensuring measurable outcomes.

On how attention analytics will shape the future of brand storytelling and media planning as OOH becomes more digitised and data-driven.

As outdoor digitizes, attention analytics will inform not just where to advertise but how stories are told in public spaces. This evolution transforms OOH from a static broadcast channel into a dynamic attention ecosystem, where creativity is optimized through evidence-based insight.

On how LOC8’s data-led framework helps marketers quantify OOH impact and make outdoor a more accountable, ROI-driven medium.

LOC8 bridges the gap between intuition and evidence. By quantifying metrics like visibility duration, attention opportunity index, and visual saliency rank, it allows brands to benchmark site performance and justify investment. This data-led approach brings transparency, comparability and ROI measurement to a medium historically driven by perception.

On how OSMO ensures AI and computer vision enhance creativity rather than reduce it to numbers.

OSMO believes that technology should enhance creativity, not overshadow it. LOC8’s attention models reveal what naturally draws the human eye helping creative teams refine design cues, contrast, and visual hierarchy for greater impact. By merging art and science, LOC8 empowers creativity with intelligence.

About the creative best practices and design cues LOC8 has uncovered regarding what truly captures consumer attention outdoors.

LOC8’s visual cognition analysis has surfaced clear patterns across campaigns:

• High contrast and minimal messaging outperform cluttered designs.

• Motion cues draw significantly longer dwell times.

• The first two seconds are critical, creatives must establish focus instantly.

• Contextual alignment between the creative and its environment increases attention by over 30%.

These learnings offer a scientific foundation for creative effectiveness helping brands design OOH that’s visually magnetic and emotionally memorable.

On how attention metrics will integrate into omnichannel planning where OOH, digital and social work together for unified brand impact.

Attention can become the unifying KPI across OOH, digital and social to creates seamless storytelling continuity, where outdoor triggers digital engagement. The future of omnichannel planning lies in attention-led integration ensuring that campaigns don’t just reach audiences everywhere but truly capture and hold their focus.