Place: J W Marriott, Mumbai ..Day 2....TV.NXT 2011.
Shruti felt that TV watching has further fragmented and second TV in a household may not be the call of the times. She added along with Monica that in India we have probably missed the time for that second TV home. May be the Indians have leapfrogged directly to new platforms and the young Indians are consuming these platforms.
Farshad talked about the other screens at home apart from TV, which are helping the households to consume content differently. He added that India is a young country and the new generation is adapting more and more new media platforms, hence the need for the second TV in its present avatar may be redundant.
After a sumptuous breakfast the panel discussion entitled “Tyranny of the single TV home” began. It was anchored by Vanita Kohli Khandekar, the speakers were Ravi Rao (Mindshare Fulcrum), Shruti Bajpai (HBO-Asia), Seema Mohapatra ( BBC Advertising), Monica Tata (Turner International India) and Farshad Family (The Nielsen Company).
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| L To R: Vanita Kohli Khandekar, the speakers were Ravi Rao (Mindshare Fulcrum), Shruti Bajpai (HBO-Asia), Seema Mohapatra ( BBC Advertising), Monica Tata (Turner International India) and Farshad Family (The Nielsen Company). |
Monica felt that the word “Tyranny” in the topic title was too harsh. She explained that as per the dictionary “tyranny” means, cruel and arbitrary use of authority, which is not correct. As per Monica it is not tyranny, it is more of a challenge from the point of view of the Indian family with single TV homes. She said buying one more TV is not an option for them, maybe these single TV homes would like to buy something else instead of a second TV. Moreover single TV viewing binds the family she added.
Seema was not sure as to what kind of people will have a second TV in their homes. She felt that in India, there are more social reasons to have a second TV. Seema was also of the opinion that in future TV buying will go down as more and more are choosing other platforms to view content. In US, from 99% TV homes it has come down to 95 to 96 % TV homes because of other media platforms. In a nutshell, channel viewing behaviour of a consumer has changed and is changing.
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| Shruti And Seema..Empowering Media |
Farshad talked about the other screens at home apart from TV, which are helping the households to consume content differently. He added that India is a young country and the new generation is adapting more and more new media platforms, hence the need for the second TV in its present avatar may be redundant.
Ravi felt that multiple TV homes increases the viewership of niche channels, which in turn leads to fragmentation of the society.
From 11:30 to 12 noon the topic was “Thought Leadership – An Aggregators Guide to TV and New Media”. the participants were Anil Arjun and James Hannafin of Reliance Media Works. The ppt provided by the experts was more of a PR exercise for Reliance.
I skipped the panel discussion on “Consolidation in Distribution – a force for good.”
Post lunch Paritosh Joshi (Star CJ Home Shopping) took the centre stage as anchor for the panel discussion –The future of television. For a change the panellists in this discussion were vibrant. The speakers were Sunil Lulla (Times TV Network), Tarun Katiyal (Reliance Broadcast Network), Devendra Parulekar (Ernst & Young), Ashok Venkatramani (MCCS India) and Raman Kalra (IBM Global Business Services).
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| Paritosh Joshi (Star CJ Home Shopping) Sunil Lulla (Times TV Network), Tarun Katiyal (Reliance Broadcast Network), Devendra Parulekar (Ernst & Young), Ashok Venkatramani (MCCS India) and Raman Kalra (IBM Global Business Services). |
Pratish asssured the audience that they would not get the chance to drowse off, after that heavy lunch as “this is a loud panel”. The entire discussion was based on the question “what will be the future of TV 10 years down the line?” Raman felt that TV will continue to inform and entertain, how content is aggregated generated, distributed and consumed will change.
Tarun said “there will not be large mass consumption of TV as time spent viewing is reducing day by day. A lot of content creation will also change with the changing technology.
Ashok made it clear that content companies in future will continue to deliver the content agnostic of the platform.
Sunil Lulla said that 40 % homes in India don’t have a TV because they don’t have a home. However he felt that 10 yrs hence these 40 % people who cannot watch TV today, may be watching porn because of the easy availability of various media platforms, as technology will cater to their needs.
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| The lunch break... |
Devenrda said that capability of uni casting or multicasting the content will be the future of broadcast.
After the coffee break, the audience were waiting to hear the man whose name is synonymous with advertising in India. Sam Balsara. The topic was “Is air time in India overpriced.” Sam’s opening remarks were “your point of view and answer should not necessarily be based on fact, ultimately it’s your perception of things that make you understand them.” He then presented the advertisers point of view, wherein
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| The Coffee Break... |
· The ratings of the channel were dropping sharply
· Clutter increasing dramatically
· Advertisers unable to make an impact on TV in the present situation
He then gave the example of Cinthol Lime from the house of Godrej, one commercial spot on 4 slots on Mahabharat on Sunday in a month’s time picked up 5.3% of the market share. 18 yrs hence the same agency launches its product with a thousand different spots on a daily basis but the market share doesn’t move more than 1 %.
· Today the cost of reaching the Indian customer is very high compared to his buying potential and his per capita income.
· Poor accountability on account of broadcasters, no assurance of audiences and not even carrying committed inventory.
The real issue, Sam felt was, that the Indian market is still small and not adequately growing.
Media Owner point of view:-
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| Mukesh Sharma (Doordarshan) and Sam Balsara on the same platform |
· Dramatic increase in TV owning households (more than 100 million C/S homes)
· CPT v/s CPRP (what basis were TV inventory sold) simple argument is, when print is sold on CPT, then why is TV sold on CPRP basis.
· Advertisers taking advantage of media owners’ vulnerability.
· Advertisers do not seem t be recognising the important role of media owner or brand building which delivers lasting value to the advertisers.
· Indian TV rates among the lowest in the world.
· Clutters level not so high.
· Channel production costs are hitting the roof.
· Carriage fee and production costs rising dramatically.
The real Issue:- the advertising market in India is just too small and advertiser and agencies are not doing enough to help it grow. It is about 27,000 crore out of which 10,000 crore is TV market. China at US$ 40 billion is 8 times ahead of us in terms of volume.
Coming back to the advertisers point of view, Sam felt that TV is definitely cheaper than most of the other media, but the effectiveness of TV has dropped sharply, so this should be a concern for broadcasters, as the advertisers can always opt for digital media.
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| Engrossed Sam's Audience |
Sam also gave the example of upward cycle and downward cycle. He said that channels fail to recognise that ads are an intermediate product and not a consumption product. He gave the example of upward cycle wherein the programme Rajni on Doordarshan, with just 10 episodes delivered to Godrej, what the company couldn’t achieve through KBC. This was a downward cycle.
The last session of the day was the panel discussion on “Advertising innovation- missing in action”. The anchor was Prashant Pandey of Radio Mirchi, and the speakers were, Rohit Gupta (Multiscreen Media), Raj Naik (Colours), Puneetha Armugam(Madison Media India), Baskar S (Amagi) and Bijay Subramaniam (Disney India Media solutions).
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| Prashant Pandey of Radio Mirchi, and the speakers were, Rohit Gupta (Multiscreen Media), Raj Naik (Colours), Puneetha Armugam(Madison Media India), Baskar S (Amagi) and Bijay Subramaniam (Disney India Media solutions). |
There is nothing much to report in this panel discussion, Sam’s presentation was the icing of the conference and truly worth reporting.
