From the desk of Strategic Resources
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Volume: XVIV

January, 2009

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Media & Advertising Research Watch

AdEx Findings

9. 'Virgin Mobile', 'Lux Strawberry Cream' and 'Vodafone Customer Care' were the Top 3 new brands advertised on TV during 2008*.

Source: Indiantelevision

10. 'Food & Beverages' sector leads with 13 per cent share of overall TV ad volumes followed by 'Personal Care/Personal Hygiene' and 'Services' sector with 9 per cent and 6 per cent share respectively during 2008*.

Source: Indiantelevision

10. 'HUL' leads with 14 per cent share of overall FMCG sector advertising on TV followed by 'Reckitt Beckiser (India)' and 'ITC' with seven per cent and four per cent share respectively during 2008.

Source: Indiantelevision

12. Compared to 2007, average ads of FMCG sector aired per day on TV recorded a rise of 21 per cent during 2008.

Source: Indiantelevision

Television and Media

13. Dubai plays host to Gold Awards 2008 for Indian television – Dec 27

Global Village in Dubai came alive on December 20, 2008, with the who’s who of Indian television descending for the Gold Awards 2008. The event was organised by Vikas Kalantri and Pooja Ghai of White Leaf Entertainment. ‘Sapna Babul Ka Bidaai’ led the awards tally, bagging four Gold Awards, including ‘Best Show’. The awards function was anchored by TV actors Ali Asgar and Suresh Menon. The Awards function was peppered by the hilarious commentary of the two anchors and multi-cultural performance by local dancers along with the guests.

Source: Exchange4media

14. DTH industry goes niche in its expansion drive - December 29, 08

Salil Kapoor, COO, DishTV, elaborated, "DishTV addresses the needs of viewers living away from their native place and outside their language area by providing the depth and width of regional language content. The industry boasts of offering its viewers more choice of channels and content and assured telecast quality. It is also one of the few broadcasting services that can penetrate in even the most remote areas of the country. When it comes to revenue generations, the regional markets do represent a huge chunk of revenues for the sector, however, in some cases, it is equally distributed between metros and regional markets.

Source: Exchange4media

15. IPTV only for niche audience, but has a long way to go in India – Jan 20

After launching its DTH service in 2008, Bharti Airtel has now announced the launch of its Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) service, Airtel Digital TV Interactive. For instance, ordering pizzas and movie tickets from one's TV set, allowing the viewer to pause and rewind live TV as well as auto-record and store favourite programmes for seven days, and even claims a Movie on Demand service with 100 blockbuster titles, which allows access to any movie at any time. According to Anamika Mehta, COO, Lodestar Universal, "The adoption rate of IPTV services in India as of now will not be a rapid one, however, it will see a slow growth rate as IPTV is absolutely niche. It would be too early to expect huge numbers, however, it is a great product in terms of interactivity and features, and more supreme in technology.

Source: Exchange4media

16. Suspend the proposed curbs, news channels urge Prime Minister - January 14, 09

Alarmed at the Government's move to put curbs on live reporting of emergency situations and other restrictions on TV coverage by amending the existing rules, editors of leading news channels have written a letter to Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, urging him not to go ahead with the proposed measures. "The proposed measures to gag the electronic media have caused immense disquiet in the journalistic fraternity and amongst all those who believe in the freedom of expression," the editors said in their letter to Dr Singh. The letter further said, "As editors, we believe that the media is the watchdog to keep democracy and democratic principles alive.

Source: Exchange4media

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This tracker has been compiled from external sources and does not necessarily reflect the views of the company.
Links provided will take you to the full articles appended at the end of the file.

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Full Articles

13. Dubai plays host to Gold Awards 2008 for Indian television
December 27
Exchange4media

Global Village in Dubai came alive on December 20, 2008, with the who’s who of Indian television descending for the Gold Awards 2008. The event was organised by Vikas Kalantri and Pooja Ghai of White Leaf Entertainment. ‘Sapna Babul Ka Bidaai’ led the awards tally, bagging four Gold Awards, including ‘Best Show’.

The awards function was anchored by TV actors Ali Asgar and Suresh Menon. The Awards function was peppered by the hilarious commentary of the two anchors and multi-cultural performance by local dancers along with the guests. Both Asgar and Menon also gave away their own ‘Balti’ Awards.

The complete list of winners of the Gold Awards 2008:

1. Best Actor (Male) Shabbir Ahluwalia – Kayaamat
2. Best Actor (Female) Divyanka Tripathi – Dulhann
3. Best Supporting Actor (Male) – Alok Nath – Sapna Babul Ka Bidaai
4. Best Supporting Actor (Female)- Aroona Irani – Naagin
5. Best Actor Negative (Male) – Chetan Hansraj – Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki
6. Best Actor Negative (Female) – Sanjeeda Sheikh – Kayaamat
7. Gold Debut (Male) Kinshuk Mahajan – Sapna Babul Ka Bidaai
8. Gold Debut (Female) – Parul Chauhan – Sapna Babul Ka Bidaai
9. Best Comic Role (Male) – Deven Bhojani – Baa Bahoo Aur Baby
10. Best Comic Role (Female) – Suchita Trivedi – Baa Bahoo Aur Baby
11. Best Anchor – Abhigyan Prakash
12. Best Show – Sapna Babul Ka Bidaai
13. Best Comedy Show – Comedy Circus
14. Best Reality Show – Nach Baliye

14. DTH industry goes niche in its expansion drive
December 29
Exchange4media

Regional markets have been growing in importance and are increasingly being considered by all media – print, television, radio – for further expansion. For the direct-to-home (DTH) sector, regional has always been an attractive market. It is now taking a step forward and going niche – for instance, introducing western content for urban audiences and regional content for rural audiences.

DishTV had initially created a strong base in the regional markets and only later did it expand to the urban markets.

Salil Kapoor, COO, DishTV, elaborated, “DishTV addresses the needs of viewers living away from their native place and outside their language area by providing the depth and width of regional language content. This linguistic minority is able to view the programmes in their mother tongue and stay updated on the happenings in their native city or state. We look for a substantial chunk of revenues coming from regional markets in the coming time. Advertisers from sectors like FMCG, lifestyle, automobile, etc., have approached us and we are in consideration to partner with them for these markets.”

Sanjay Behl, Head - Brand and Marketing, Reliance Communications, said, “Regional markets have always been our primetime focus and we have different propositions for different regions. We also customise our advertising and value propositions according to that region.”
The industry boasts of offering its viewers more choice of channels and content and assured telecast quality. It is also one of the few broadcasting services that can penetrate in even the most remote areas of the country.

When it comes to revenue generations, the regional markets do represent a huge chunk of revenues for the sector, however, in some cases, it is equally distributed between metros and regional markets. But it is the larger towns or cities that help this industry to garner huge revenues.

15. IPTV only for niche audience, but has a long way to go in India
January 20
Exchange4media

After launching its DTH service in 2008, Bharti Airtel has now announced the launch of its Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) service, Airtel Digital TV Interactive. The service is already available in Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida, commencing the day of the launch (January 19, 2009). It is expected to be launched in other cities soon.

Airtel’s IPTV service offers interactivity, too. For instance, ordering pizzas and movie tickets from one’s TV set, allowing the viewer to pause and rewind live TV as well as auto-record and store favourite programmes for seven days, and even claims a Movie on Demand service with 100 blockbuster titles, which allows access to any movie at any time.

At present, state-owned MTNL and BSNL are the only ones providing IPTV services. Reliance Communications, too, is expected to launch its IPTV service soon.

But is the Indian market ready for this service? What are the opportunities and roadblocks? exchange4media finds out.

According to Anamika Mehta, COO, Lodestar Universal, “The adoption rate of IPTV services in India as of now will not be a rapid one, however, it will see a slow growth rate as IPTV is absolutely niche. One drawback is the low penetration of Internet in India. Interactive services do help in the popularity of a product, however, it depends on how much is the customer willing to adopt it, and that is a challenge.”

Chandradeep Mitra, President, Mudra Max, stated, “IPTV is more niche than DTH, and right now is in testing waters. It would be too early to expect huge numbers, however, it is a great product in terms of interactivity and features, and more supreme in technology. On paper, IPTV is a great product, while globally it has seen limited success, in India, the service has a long way to go.”

“For IPTV to do really well, the service needs to be good and the bandwidth issue needs to be addressed. In fact, the dark horse here I believe is digital cable, if only they put their act together, they can give worthwhile competition,” he pointed out.

So far, IPTV has failed to attract audiences. However, it is seen as an absolute niche market. Media planners believe that IPTV will take few years to come close to the DTH numbers, nevertheless it is far more superior and interactive compared to DTH services. The low broadband penetration acts as a drawback to the growth of this service.

Bharti Airtel Ltd, a group company of Bharti Enterprises, is one of Asia’s leading integrated telecom services providers with operations in India and Sri Lanka, and has an aggregate of over 88 million customers. Bharti Airtel has been voted as India’s most innovative company in a survey conducted by The Wall Street Journal.

16. Suspend the proposed curbs, news channels urge Prime Minister
January 14
Exchange4media

Alarmed at the Government’s move to put curbs on live reporting of emergency situations and other restrictions on TV coverage by amending the existing rules, editors of leading news channels have written a letter to Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, urging him not to go ahead with the proposed measures. They have called these measures ‘draconian’ and ‘historical blunder’.

The editors have also sought an urgent meeting with the Prime Minister to discuss the issue. Earlier, the broadcasters had a meeting with Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting, Anand Sharma.

Commenting on the issue, Ashutosh, Managing Editor, IBN7, said, “The Government added regulation is not acceptable. The amendment to the Cable Television Networks Rule, 1995, will curb the freedom of the press, which is our fundamental right. No commissioner can tell us the kind of footage we can use on our news channels. We are in complete favour of self regulation. In fact, the Government had been talking of self regulation all this while, so what happened now? We have already set guidelines under the leadership of retired Chief Justice of India, Justice Verma, who is Chairman of the National Broadcasters Association (NBA).”
“The proposed measures to gag the electronic media have caused immense disquiet in the journalistic fraternity and amongst all those who believe in the freedom of expression,” the editors said in their letter to Dr Singh.

The letter further said, “As editors, we believe that the media is the watchdog to keep democracy and democratic principles alive. If instruments of the state begin to regulate us, the damage to democracy and all stakeholders in democracy would be irreparable. It is all the more surprising that this is happening when you are directly holding charge of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.”

The letter stressed, “We are aware that our right to keep a vigil also brings with it a responsibility to function according to the highest standards of ethics and national interest. We firmly believe that in a democracy media needs self-regulation and not regulation. The electronic media fraternity has already made significant movement in this direction. In view of this, we urge you to immediately suspend the proposed measures.”

The editors urged in the letter, “We would like to personally meet and impress upon you the historical blunder that these measures would be. They would for all times taint this government as one that tried to impose draconian measures on media and forever remind us that the emergency is not yet a closed chapter in this country.”

The letter has been signed by Rajdeep Sardesai (IBN Network), Ajit Anjum (News 24), Arnab Goswani (Times Now), Ashutosh (IBN7), Barkha Dutt (NDTV 24x7), Deepak Chaurasia (Star News), Milind Khandekar (Star News), NK Singh (ETV), Pankaj Pachauri (NDTV India), QW Naqwi (Aaj Tak), Satish K Singh (Zee News), Shazi Zaman (Star News), Supriya Prasad (News 24), Vinay Tiwari (CNN-IBN), and Vinod Kapri (India TV).

The amendments to the Cable Television Networks Rule, 1995, would now include monitoring stories on sex, crimes, footage of narco-analysis admissions, among others.

According to the Act:

District Magistrates and Sub-divisional Magistrates, besides Commissioners of Police, will have the power to block live transmission by any channel and confiscate transmission equipment.

Visuals and footage will be provided through a nodal agency in any such situation deemed ‘nationally important’.

Officers will have the power to decide whether repeat telecast of a footage is necessary (and thereby in the national interest) or not.

They will also decided if any information is unauthenticated and should, therefore, be blocked.

Decisions regarding the nature of phone-in of reporters and victims or their interviews and if these disturb public order, will also rest with these officers. They will also decide if such phone-ins and interviews are against national interest.

The amendments have been proposed in the aftermath of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.
It may be recalled that in December 2008, NBA had agreed to their own set of six guidelines that include no live contact with militants or hostages, no mention of security operation details and no images of people killed. But as it seems security agencies and the Government are still not convinced that media groups will not overstep the line again.

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