The Long Lasting Eye On The Sky In 2005

Televisionpoint. com Special - Welcome 2006 | Rupak Priyank is a Reporter at Television Point
The main option that is being extensively, started precisely in 2005 is explored by DTH. Both Zee Telefilms and Doordarshan have kick-Started their own DTH services. Doordarshan's DTH service, called DD Direct, is providing 40 channels free of charge.

"Our DD Direct is a success story; all the subscriber has to do is make a one-time investment of Rs 3,000 while he gets a minimum of 40 channels free of cost. These include BBC World, Aaj Tak and NDTV," says Navin Kumar, the director general of Doordarshan.

Sunil Khanna, CEO, Dish TV, sounds equally optimistic. "We are expanding at the rate of adding one subscriber every ten seconds, We've been running DTH for two years now and we are already reaching four and half a million subscribers."

The biggest bottleneck to Dish TV's expansion plans, Khanna claims, has been that both Star and Sony have declined to provide content for this Zee platform. This despite the government's mandate that content from one platform cannot be denied to another platform. Khanna decries this trend. "We are running the distribution network Siticable and we also have our own Zee News channel. But this does not mean that we deny carriage to Aaj Tak or any of the other news channels." Three other companies, the Tata Star DTH venture, Reliance Sky Magic and the Sun TV, were also given the go-ahead by the government in May 2005 to Start DTH services. Vikram Kaushik, the CEO of Tata - Star DTH Service, says, "We are bullish about the Indian pay-TV market. We believe that by offering a wide choice of content and superior picture quality, we will be able to win over customers."

DD's Kumar believes that while DTH is expected to do well in rural and semirural India, which have not been cabled, it should also do well in urban sectors where several subscribers are fed up with the poor service being provided by cable operators.

Media analysts confirm this trend. Going by conservative estimates, DTH should get 10 percent to 15 percent of the 55 million cable homes, which works out to about 5 million to 7 million homes. These consumers can afford to buy a DTH service at a one-time cost of Rs 5,000 and then pay between Rs 200 and Rs 1,000 a month. With four companies getting into the act, these prices are likely to fall further.

Mukherjea believes that DTH is bound to threaten operators and when that happens they will be forced to Start selling set-top boxes. Statistics show that out of the 55 million cable homes, 35 million possess at least one mobile phone. In the first 12 months (after Tata - Star DTH Service is launched), Star expects to earn Rs 15 crore to Rs 20 crore from wireless. " Presently, Star is receiving 10,000 SMS messages a day; if we can get up to one million a day, we are in business," says Mukherjea.

The national broadcaster Doordarshan has to fight hard to retain its audience share. If the present television universe comprises 85 million homes, then 40 million of these owe their loyalty to the terrestrial, free-to-air channels delivered by Doordarshan. But with Star having launched Star Utsav, its first free-to-air service, last June, competition is snapping close to Doordarshan's heels.

Star's strategy is very clear. Star Utsav is its Trojan horse, launched to win over Doordarshan's audiences. How it plans to achieve that is the question. A large number of Doordarshan's viewers with black-and-white TV sets are upgrading to color TV. This will help bring many of them into the cable universe, and once they do that it is only a matter of time before they are co-opted into the pay-TV universe.

Harsh Rohatgi, who is in charge of the Star Utsav channel, pointed out, "Our aim is to expand pay-TV viewership, which is presently at around 30 million. We believe that once free-to-air viewers get familiar with our programs on Star Utsav, they will move over to pay. " Mukherjea confirms this trend. "We need to keep growing. It is easy to grow at the same pace as the market, but to be a winner, we need to grow faster. We've launched Star Utsav for the interiors and not for the metros."

With 25 cable and terrestrial channels telecast in different languages, Doordarshan has had to change its own production and marketing strategies. "The days of giving huge advances to our producers are over, We now follow the practice of our rival networks, such as Zee TV and Star Plus, whereby producers invest money in making a serial and the network pays them a fixed amount as telecast fees. " says Kumar. Nor are they depending on producers to sell free commercial time. Instead, Doordarshan has also set up its own marketing office that sells ad time for both in-house programs and those commissioned to outside producers. These changes ensured them revenues of more than Rs 500 crore last year. But Doordarshan officials admit that this figure has remained static for the last five years, whereas the profit margins of private broadcasters are on the rise.

Fierce competition is forcing broadcasters to come up with more and more innovative programming. Deepak Sehgal, who is in charge of programming for Star Plus, points out that this is not such a difficult task. "India is the largest producer of feature films in the world, We have always possessed the expertise, except now it is being transferred to the small screen." he says.

Sony and Star are each investing Rs 1 crore per day in producing original programming. Not to be left behind is Zee Telefilms. Ashish Kaul, the VP of corporate at Zee Telefilms, claims that Zee is "the largest aggregator of content in this part of the world, with over 50,000 hours of original programming across its 23 channels. This is being viewed in 120 countries where we have a combined viewership of 500 million." The last five years have seen major changes in programming, with audiences lapping up soaps, nonfiction, detective shows, thrillers, comedy and sports. "The next three to five years will witness the development of niche channels, regional news channels, dedicated sports channels, religious channels and exclusive weather channels," says Kaul.

Several content producers have launched their own services. UTV launched a kids' channel titled Hungama. Providing a range of programs, UTV also made an English-language program titled Bombay Talking for the English-language channel Zee Café. "This is the first of its kind," says Monisha Singh, the VP of television at UTV. Singh adds that National Geographic has asked UTV to produce a series titled Stuntmen of Bollywood. It is expected that Sun may launch the Tamil version of UTV's kids channel Hungama TV.

Another genre UTV specializes in is dramacomedy. "This is a phrase Singh has coined referring to the kinds of soaps that "leave viewers with a smile on their face and a tear in their eye. One such serial under this category being presently aired is Shanno Ki Shaadi," says Singh. The major wars, however, are being fought by 40 news channels that are taking the fight over eyeballs to a bitter high. With another 15 news channels ready to be launched, media analysts wonder whether the market can cope with such growth. Two years ago was a time for a big expansion, with the news market expanding from Rs 100 crore to Rs 350 crore. Things had begun to settle down and the channels had begun to break even when a fresh bout of fighting erupted. Recently, CNN-IBN was launched and Times Now is ready to roll.

The success of Crime File, Jurm, Sansani, Red Alert, Crime File and Dial 100 proved nothing succeeds like success. Never mind the criticism that sniffed that the shows were loud and over-the-top with sinister looking anchors who shout out 'balaatkaar' and 'blue film' at the drop of a hat. Point is: Crime shows churned TRPs for their respective channels. Top of the heap is Star News' Sansani, which started the trend and triggered off a whole genre of wannabes.

July's floods in Mumbai and the recent earthquake in Kashmir have served as the latest battleground over which these channels are warring. The floods, which devastated large parts of Mumbai, allowed channels an opportunity to provide a completely different kind of reporting. Star News's coverage of the floods saw it top the ratings among the news channels. Uday Shankar, CEO, Star News said, "Our disaster coverage possessed a human dimension. We were able to convey the trauma suffered by millions of individuals in India's financial capital. Even today, we concentrate on showing how disasters impact the man on the street."

Everyone is fighting to catch the attention of the average viewer. Some are doing it with a combination of sensationalism or sleaze. Others are doing it through entertainment and human-interest stories. 'Watchability' has become the key word, With one billion people to reach out to, broadcasters are slugging it out to capture the hearts and minds of their fellow Indians.