Introduction

News is the communication of information on current events

which is presented by print, broadcast (TV, Radio), Internet, or word of
mouth to a third party or mass audience.

Television news refers to disseminating current events via the

medium of television. "News bulletins" or "newscasts" are
programs lasting from seconds to hours that provide updates on
world, national, regional or local news events. Television news is
very image-based, showing video of many of the events that are
reported. Television channels may provide news bulletins as part
of a regularly scheduled news program. Less often, television
shows may be interrupted or replaced by "news flashes" to
provide news updates on current events of great importance or
sudden events of great importance.

Television news channels are television specialty channels which

focus on presenting news content.
Hindi News Market has a clear dominance in the News Channel Genre
with more than 2/3rd of the market share.

However Hindi News genre is a crowded market with several players in

the play.

The English News genre has fewer players with NDTV 24x7 leading the
space with an equivalent competition from Times Now & CNN-IBN.

In the Business News Genre CNBC TV18 & CNBC Awaaz dominate with
others managing a little piece of the market.

Methodology

Research Problem
This work of research & compilation aims to define marketing mix of a
news channel & try to see how the future of news will be.

Research Design
My project is not a single research but a combination of several
researches & every research has had a logical & clinical approach in
the making. The researches have been largely Exploratory in nature.

Sources of Data
A. Magazines & Books
 Various articles of different advertising & media magazines have
been useful in the project. Industry views & trends were studied
through such articles from from different magazines. (See
bibliography). To understand marketing mix study Philip Kotler’s
Book was referred.

B. Internet

Internet sites provided with valuable data like class wise, genre wise
market shares, rankings, ratings etc. Such information is very useful
in drawing inferences & other research work. Internet also helped
source documents from agencies like TAM & TRAI.

C. Direct Observation

Direct observation of working of a News channel allowed me to

make an in-depth analysis of the Marketing mix. A synchronized
understanding of both B2B & B2C process of a News channel was
possible because of my stint at Star News. It also gave me access to
interview various Industry professionals & other privileged
information.

D. Viewer Survey

As I conducted the Viewer Survey it helped me discover various

opinions, preferences & test the general awareness of the viewers
with respect to News Media & especially TV News.

Designing Data Collection Forms

I interviewed the viewers residing mainly in the suburban areas of
Mumbai by Telephone & Face to face to fill out the Questionnaire
consisting 13 questions in 4 broad categories. The Questionnaire is
annexed in the schedule of annexure.
Determining Sampling Design & Sampling Size
I decided to take a sample survey & interviewed a sample size of 50. It
is a non-probability sampling. The Demographic segmentation is
mentioned on the first page of the Viewer Survey.

Processing & Analyzing the Data

After collection of data it was essential for me to present the data in
the correct form & after careful analyzing. Therefore, Usage of pie
charts & Stacked Bar Graphs is done in my project to make it easier &
appropriate to understand.

Preparing the Research Report

After collecting & analyzing data, final report was made consistent with
the objective of the research study.

The Product
Airtime
The American Heritage Dictionary defines airtime as the time during
which a radio or television station is broadcasting. Also called
airspace.

A TV channel like radio normally has a full 24 hrs of airtime in a day. A

decade ago news was just a half hour bulletin on a channel like Door
Darshan. Today news is provided 24 hrs a day on a dedicated channel
only for news.

A News channel while largely uses airtime for news programming, also
uses this airtime for short commercial breaks during programs. This
time used for commercial breaks is called Free Commercial Time
(FCT). Free means this time is free from program content and can be
sold to advertisers to advertise.

Hence news & other shows serve the people while Free Commercial
Time serves the advertisers. Thus a TV channel including News channel
are actually service providers and therefore provide two types of
services to:

1. Advertisers (B2B process):-

The channel sells Free Commercial Time (ad spots), Sponsorships, and
other advertising avenues to an advertiser to service his advertising
needs.

2. Viewers (B2C process):-

Providing news is the basic service that a news channel gives to its
viewers. Apart from news, news channels these days also broadcast
non news content like talk shows, educational programs, lifestyle
shows and spiritual programs and so on.
Illustration:

Service Service
provided to the provided to the
Advertisers Viewers
The reason it is called media is because it acts as a medium through
which information is broadcasted to the general population as well as
acts as a medium for the advertisers to communicate to their
prospective customers. Given that there are only 24 hours in a day, the
airtime is a limited resource with a channel & it needs to maintain a
fair balance between time allocated to programs & ads.
The Price

ADVERTISING
The pricing of Advertising is mainly market demand based &
always negotiable. The rating agency TAM through its impartial
research efforts awards TVR (Television Rating points) basis on which
is determined the reach of a channel and its shows. For e.g. prime time
& afternoon have more viewership pull than morning & evening. Hence
the best of the shows are placed around these times so that they keep
the viewers tuned in & the advertisers interested as they would be
charged a premium for such time bands or shows.

Revenue Stream for B2B Process

The price is not only determined by the no. of people it reaches

but an advertiser’s interest in the channel’s viewer demography. For
e.g. youth centric shows would attract a lot of youth centric
advertisers.

Part of the rate card of the Star Network’s news channels for
weekdays.
Star News Star Ananda Star Majha
Day part Time band (INR/10sec) (INR/10sec) (INR/10sec)
Morning 5am-10am 3800 1200 800
Day 10am-6pm 2000 600 400
Evening 6pm-1am 11000 3300 2200
Source - MCCS (2008 data)

In the advertising pie, the News channels have a significant share of

14%. In fact genre wise after General Entertainment Channels (Hindi +
Regional), News channels have the second largest market share in ad
spends.

SUBSCRIPTION FEES
This is a fee charged by the Broadcasters to the Cable Operators
who in turn pass on the expense to the Subscriber (Viewer). This fee is
charged per channel per cable home.

If a channel is a Pay Channel even then the pricing is always demand

driven. Offering unique & high quality content allows a channel to
charge a premium to its viewers.

Sr. News channel Subscription

no. Fee

(Rupees/month)
1 Sun News 1.40
2 Gemini News 7.50
3 Times Now 9.10
4 CNBC TV18 9.10
5 CNBC Awaaz 4.82
6 CNN-IBN 5.35
7 BBC World 5.00
8 News X 8.50
9 ET Now 8.50
Source - TRAI Report as on June 30, 2009

Revenue Stream for B2C process

Hypothesis 1 - Content Differentiation & Demand Inelasticity
Competition in the English News genre is just warming up with
new players entering the space. However, the Hindi News genre has
been a highly competitive space for the past few years. If you refer to
the table above, none of the Hindi news channels are in the Pay
channel list.

The reason cited is lack of content differentiation among Hindi

news channels. Simply said there is hardly any difference between one
Hindi news channel from another. For a viewer they all look the same.
So if one of the Hindi news channels becomes pay channel then the
viewer would most likely switch to other channels that are free. So the
demand pull is not the same in case of all news channels. Some news
channels (mostly English & regional language) enjoy brand loyalty
because of unique content while some news channels (mostly Hindi)
are commoditized due to lack of content differentiation. Hence the
former can afford to become pay channels without losing viewership
while the case is opposite for the latter.

The Hypothesis states that Demand Inelasticity is directly

proportional to the degree of content differentiation.

Assumption – Effect of brand loyalty due to Promotional efforts are

considered constant.

Inferences:
 Demand Inelasticity can also be called as Viewers’ Loyalty in case
of TV channels.
 Viewers’ Loyalty results in no or less effect of price decisions by
the company.
 Sustained efforts in producing quality content would result in
growth of viewership.
 Quality content simply means providing content that the viewers
want & not that the content is differentiated.

Hence quality content results in growth in viewership while

differentiated quality content results in growth in viewership as
well as builds loyalty among the viewers.
 Hypothesis 2 - Impact of conversion from free to
pay category
Viewership – Price
Decision Relation

Pay channel

Viewershi Value
p channel
Commodity
channel

Free to air
channel

Price
Category
Value channel is the one which has a quality content which is unique
compared to its peers. Here quality would vaguely mean providing
content that the viewers want. Commodity channel is the one whose
content can be hardly be differentiated when compared to its peers.

The Hypothesis states that as soon as a channel makes the

decision to become a pay channel its viewership base & rate of
growth of viewership are unaffected if it’s a value channel & is
adversely affected if it’s a commodity channel.

While the value channel has a sizeable amount of loyal viewers, the
commodity channel’s viewers are most likely to switch over to other
channels providing the same undifferentiated content.

Assumption – Both value & commodity channels provide quality

content.

Distribution (Place)
Cable Television
India has some 249 million households. It is estimated that in the
Indian Cable Television Market, 45 million subscribers are receiving
Cable TV services, with an annual growth rate of 15% to 20%. At
present, over 160 cable and satellite channels are broadcasting in
national and regional languages. The distribution chain in the cable TV
industry consists of Broadcasters, independent Multi System Operators
(MSOs) and their franchisees, and Independent local cable operators.
The distribution chain is depicted in the figure below:
Satellite Channels

Multi-System Operators(MSOs)
Independent Cable Operators (IOCs)

Franchisees of MSOs

Households

Direct to Home Services (DTH)

DTH is a distribution platform for multi-channel TV programs on KU-
Band by using a satellite system that transmits the programs/provides
TV signals directly to subscribers’ premises. The reception of
signals/programs requires a small dish antenna and a Set Top Box. The
Set Top Box contains software, which together with the viewing card
unscrambles the digital TV signals and allows the viewer to watch the
DTH service. The viewing card acts as a key to access any DTH
platform for authorizing the service. The delivery mechanism through
DTH is depicted in the figure below:
Source: Frontline Magazine

Internet Protocol based TV or IPTV

The advent of high-speed residential Internet access creates an
alternative method to deliver video programming. Where adequate
bandwidth exists IP TV is capable of a much richer suite of services.
IPTV uses the same network infrastructure as the Internet and it
eliminates the need to build a dedicated application specific video
network to the home.
The Cable Dominance

About 85% of the Pay TV market is occupied by Analog Cable TV

(without set top box). In India there are more than 450 channels but
due to the analog nature of the Cable TV providers have bandwidth for
only 98 – 102 channels. Due to mandatory allocation for DD channels &
other technical allocation, less than 90 channels are available.
Obviously demand has overshot the supply by more than four times.

Carriage Money – A Major Distribution Cost for the Broadcaster

today
In such a situation, MSOs & Independent cable operators are the most
sought after by the Distribution Managers of these 450 odd channels.
The Distribution Managers thus have to pay a fee to the cable
operators so that their channel is distributed to the viewers. The
money paid by the broadcaster to the cable operators to carry their
channel on their system is called Carriage money.

It does not matter that a channel is pay or free to air, the reality is to
be among those 90 odd channels the broadcaster has to pay up. The
distribution costs relating to carriage money runs in several crores.
Sagar Pande,Distribution Manager of Star News says that the network
spends more than INR 40 crores annually as carriage money for their
three channels and this grows by 30 – 40% YOY. He adds that Colors, a
general entertainment channel, may have spent nearly INR 100 crores
during the launching year of the channel. The Broadcasters’ margin is
under tremendous pressure due to carriage money.

Is there a Solution?
Can one avoid such an expenditure annually which is growing at an
alarming rate? The answer is one can’t do much about it in the short
term. However there are three factors that can ease the pressure &
minimize the expenditure gradually in the times ahead.
Implementation of CAS
When you pay your monthly cable bill, the cable guy never gives you a
breakup of which channel charges what subscription fees as you might
tell him that you don’t want that channel. To avoid this he makes a
bouquet of channels & charges you a lump sum. In another words, he
prepares a bouquet of channels consisting largely those channels that
have paid him the carriage money.

Conditional Access System allows a subscriber to view only those

channels that he wishes & also pay for those many channels. Moreover
all the Free to Air channels will also be available along with the pay
channels he chooses. There will be a minimum billing for distributing
free to air channels & additional cost for every pay channel the
subscriber wishes to view.

This system will take decision making ability from the cable operators
to the end consumers. Hence neither the broadcaster with his carriage
money nor the cable operators with their monopolistic position can
decide what the consumer will see. This will help the broadcasters
reduce the carriage expenses as CAS gets implemented & completely
eliminate the Carriage money concept once CAS gets fully
implemented throughout the country.
Competition from DTH
In DTH services, just like CAS, a subscriber can pay only for those
channels he wishes to see. Currently the market share of DTH is only
around 10%. Cable TV still has monopoly when it comes to distribution
needs of the Broadcaster. Strong growth is projected for DTH in coming
years. DTH market share is expected to double from here to at least
20% by 2013. This will reduce the broadcaster’s dependence on Cable
operator’s for distribution needs & gradually reduce the carriage costs
with reduction in market share of the cable operators. Both DTH and
Cable operators will be competing with each other to provide better
service & more channels to the customers edge each other. With
Emergence of IPTV, which is still at a nascent stage, the competition is
expected to heat up benefiting the end consumer & fair business for all
the stakeholders in the industry.

Both the factors discussed are factors that cannot be controlled by the
Broadcaster. However there is something the broadcaster can do to
reduce the carriage expenses in distribution.

Hypothesis 3 – Effect of Increased Demand for the Channel

If the channel is loved by most of the subscribers/viewers, then the
Broadcaster has a bit of a bargaining power while negotiating carriage
money with the Cable operators. The Cable operator cannot take a
channel off his system which is in demand as his customers may get
irate. If the Broadcaster produces high quality differentiated content on
his channel then he retains some bargaining power thereby reducing
the carriage money he spends annually. Moreover such a demand
allows a channel to become a pay channel further boosting its margins.

The Hypothesis states that the rate of growth of Carriage

expenses is inversely proportional to the channel’s Inelastic
Demand.

Assumptions:

 Competition in the Pay TV remains the same

 CAS is not implemented or is implemented at a uniform
growth rate.

Promotion
As a TV News Channel has two types of processes, B2C & B2B, it needs
to customize marketing to cater to the needs of both the processes.
One, to increase & strengthen viewership & the other, to attract
advertisers.

CONTENT PROMOTIONS
It is aimed at the viewers both potential & existing to increase
viewership of a channel’s flagship programs & the channel as a whole.

VIEWERSHIP BUILDING
It is aimed at attracting new viewers to the channel’s viewership
pool. It is usually done during new launches. A new program will attract
all the Television viewers interested in it irrespective of whether they
are the channel’s existing viewer or not.
Illustration1 - Viewership Building

Viewer Viewers
s of of news
Viewers of
news on
other
Channel
shows on
A
Channel A
[B]
 They [A]
can move

TOOLS FOR PROMOTION

 Outdoor Hoardings
 Print Media
 Radio
 TV
 Spiral Marketing
 Internet
 Press Releases
 Events

LOYALTY BUILDING
It is aimed at engaging existing viewers. The channel promotes
the new launches & current shows among its existing viewers on the
channel. This keeps the existing viewers engaged & prevents them
from switching over to other channels to seek news, information &
even entertainment. Continuous practice of promoting the channel’s
shows among its viewers & differentiated quality programming builds
loyalty of the viewers towards the channel.
Illustration2 – Loyalty Building

Viewer Viewers
s of of news
Viewers of
news. on
other shows
[A] Channel
on Channel
A. [AпB]
A [B]
 They [B]
can move

TOOLS FOR PROMOTION

 Promote via same channel
 Channel website
 Mailing list

TRADE MARKETING
It is aimed at attracting advertisers to the channel & it does not in any
way concern to increase viewership. The approach in trade marketing
is less about creating excitement & more about influencing the
advertiser’s buy decisions by way of presenting facts & figures as well
as building higher imagery for the brand.

TOOLS FOR PROMOTION

 Sponsorships
 E - mailers
 Tele Marketing
 Personal Selling
 Advertising (Advertiser specific)
 Sales Promotion (by way of special offers)
According to Parul Dawar, Brand Manager of Star News, the channel
spends anywhere between INR 2-3 crores annually for Trade
Marketing.

THE FUTURE OF NEWS

 The Battle for time
– Plenty of
Options

For the first time in its

history India is
experiencing a truly
free market for news. It
is changing the way we
live, work and vote.
If you are over 35, stretch your mind to your teenage years.
Do you remember thinking that Russia and India were the best of
friends; that the non-aligned movement was the biggest summit
in the world? Many of those beliefs and ideas seem foolish now.
Yet they came to our head and we lived by them (Of course I
wasn’t born back then). We accepted an ideology, a government
and decades of economic inactivity since we believed that our
mixed-economy, non-aligned, left leaning way of life was the best
option. If you think India should have snapped out of the Russian
bear hug faster and switched affections to Uncle Sam, you’re
doing it again. You are reacting to what you read, hear and watch
on news.

News is to the mind what infrastructure is to the economy - a

crucial network of information, analysis, opinions, discussions,
arguments and visuals. These ostensibly form the backdrop of our
lives but are actually active ingredients in everything we do. If the
network of roads, railways or electric supply is weak, it will
hamper your ability to work efficiently. If it is good, you will hardly
have an opinion on it. Similarly if a democracy does not have a
free news market with lots of debate and discussion the state of
everything from institutions to government suffers. The way we
think, live, work, the choices we make could destroy us. All it
takes is a look at our past or that of the former communist
countries or current dictatorial regimes to realize that. That is why
a free news market is important. It is a non-negotiable fact of a
working democracy. Coming as we do from a controlled news
environment, a free news market is a concept alien to us. More
often than not, it is equated with the freedom of expression. But
there is more to a free news market than that. It is also about the
freedom to do business - without capital, technology or other
constraints. In a sense, the Indian news media has been freed
only over the last three to five years, though technically, it has
been ‘free’ since Independence.

Partial Press freedom came in 2002 when FDI was allowed. It

became completely open in 2005 when foreign institutional
investment was permitted. Though TV was given a free hand in
1992, capital and other controls meant that we did not really see
a free news market till 2003. The internet is largely free and so is
the mobile phone. Radio is still hamstrung by regulations that
forbid news broadcasting but if a pending Telecom Regulatory
Authority of India (TRAI) paper becomes policy that should change
soon. The effect of this freedom is resonating across the country
as news media options go through the roof - 67 news channels in
11 languages, 99 million copies of newspapers sold daily and
hundreds of websites vie just for the privilege of giving us news.
We are loving it. And they are battling for a scarce commodity -
our time.

This, in turn, has made information, opinion and analysis available

to everybody, not just a few English-speaking people. More
importantly, it has given a voice to large tracts of India. Notice the
ease with which Indians face TV cameras now, whether to show
their anger at something or to take part in reality shows. As the
prime accused in the murder of his daughter, Dr Talwar and his
family have been using the news outlets to tell their side of the
story. That is exactly what his compounder Krishna’s family did
when he was arrested. Ten years ago, we would never have seen
or heard of them after they had been arrested.

This freedom has come with its own set of problems - that of
tabloidization, sensationalism, of selling out to advertisers and the
blurring of ethical boundaries long held sacrosanct in the media
business. Does that mean that it should be regulated? That we
need a content code with committees and sub-committees? No,
we don’t. What we see is a phase in the evolution of a free news
market and reacting to it at one point in time and locking
ourselves into regulation will be disastrous. Right now, the
situation is chaotic, this will eventually balance out, and maturity
will come. I don’t think that any punitive action is needed against
news channels. The government would like to control them
because they show government shortcomings. Jawaharlal Nehru
had once famously remarked that even a bad press was
acceptable but that it should be free and self-regulated. The UK is
a great example of a country where the tabloid and the serious
survive and make money and each operates within the same
regulatory framework. In India, there is already a good
programming code in place; all the news media industry needs to
do is apply it well.
Note: Figures for 2008 are from Jan-May; Source: Hansa Research & IRS and Starcom Worldwide
The thing is, the industry is too busy coping, enjoying, moping or
freaking out on the growth and so are consumers. This, then, is
the perfect time to ask where it all is headed. This is the right
time to look at the future of news.

After months of research, several interviews and reading tomes

on the news business countrywide, one thing is clear. The biggest
debates in the Indian news market currently are about the
amount of news, its ability to bring in fair returns for investors and
the quality of it. Two facts need to be hardwired into our minds
before we begin the discussion. One, mass media dominates in
India, a high volume market. The focus of this research (Future of
News) will, largely, be mass media vehicles for news. The online
world is limited to 55 million people, even if it is the world you
and I occupy. TV reaches 437 million people whereas newspapers
are read by over 300 million. So, for those looking for buzzwords
like user-generated content or WAP and VAS, this survey will
disappoint. It sticks to India’s reality. Two, for too long, the
dialogue in policy matters has been limited to the middle-class
English speaking population. The Centre for Media Studies (CMS)
data shows that in August 2007, a whopping 57 per cent of the
stories in national newspapers originated from Delhi. Some of top
newspapers and channels are based in New Delhi, so the city is
the de facto lens through which any event is viewed. There is a
joke among most analysts that there is a Delhi- Mumbai corridor
of English speakers beyond which any discussion on India barely
matters.

The fact is that only 100 million Indians speak English, while 500
million speak Hindi and its various dialects. The other 500 million-
odd is split between several languages. Just as free news market
is a democratic axiom, so too is a heterogeneous one that reflects
the pulls and pushes of all interest groups is one as well. The
news market now evolving is pushing the business of news to a
point where the debate on national issues is truly national. If it
manages to do that, the free news market we see now, would
have achieved something that decades of control could not –
involve all Indians in any discussion of their future.

We are loving it!

– The business
News follows part

entertainment as the
second-largest genre
of content
in India. Why?
Can you hear the babble? It is the sound of an entire country
going jabber jabber. India has over 437 million TV watchers, about
302 million newspaper readers, 55 million surfers and 1.2 million
bloggers. Look at it another way – as a country we buy 99 million
copies of newspapers everyday, making it the second-largest
newspaper market in the world, after the US. At 115 million TV
sets and 275 million mobile phones we are among the top five TV
and cellphone markets in the world. We have 67 news channels,
arguably more than any other country in the world. If you total up
the average across newspapers, news TV and online, Indians
spend an average of 50 minutes a day consuming news.

Last year, advertisers spent Rs 12,000-odd crore to reach them in

those 50 minutes, according to data put together by Starcom
Worldwide. Add in subscription and news is a roughly Rs 16,000
crore market. That makes it the second largest media business in
India after entertainment - in audience share, topline and now
investor interest too.

Why do we have so much news?

There is an influx of funds because news is elastic; there has been

no fatigue factor yet. Have you seen any channel close down? The
growth in ad spends on news genre has outpaced the growth of
the TV advertising pie. Newspaper advertising has grown below
industry average, but on a base that is ten times that of TV news.
Size, democracy and innocence make for a seductive cocktail of
reasons why the Indian news market rocks. Now stir in a lot of
investment (Rs 1,500 crore since January 2007 and still counting),
low entry costs, a declining global market for news and you know
why we are hot. However, as the rush into news increases, almost
everybody has seen a jump in operating costs, though margins
haven’t declined yet. The level of competition and the state of the
economy suggests that consolidation is about to happen. There is
usually a strong positive correlation between GDP and advertising
growth; if one slips, the other will, too. A bulk of the news media
in India is advertiser funded, so if GDP slips, expect advertising
growth to decline.

A lot of fun

For now though, the fundamentals of the news business on both

the supply and the demand side, seem strong. According to IRS
data there are 359 million literate Indians who do not read a
publication. Television as yet penetrates only half of India and at
55 million surfers websites haven’t even scratched the surface.
The possibilities for growth in unheard of markets, with say a
Bhojpuri news channel or a Bengali lifestyle one, are as yet
unexplored. (See chart, The Entry Points, in The Prediction). To
these building blocks add a couple of qualifiers. The first and
biggest is a functioning democracy. Indians love to debate, argue
and generally drive each other crazy.

And as they move from having one newspaper and one TV

channel they are discovering the fun of arguing across the
country on scores of television channels, newspapers and on the
internet, in about 20 odd languages. The second is a complete
lack of cynicism, so far. We are just discovering what it means to
be media rich. Unlike the west, we are not a sated or bored
audience but a credulous and avid one. Literacy is prized and the
‘buddhijeevi’ or ‘intellectual’ is a man who can debate or discuss
anything. For decades the debating was limited to coffee houses,
dhabas, schools, colleges or at village panchayats. For long, our
thirst for information and for an outlet to voice our opinion
remained just that - a thirst. Till as recently as 1990 a few
newspapers defined both the news agenda and the texture of the
news market along with the state-owned Doordarshan and All
India Radio. When satellite television first hit India in 1991, CNN
brought a whiff of what independent news could be, and then
came BBC. By 1995 websites such as Indiaworld.com, Rediff and,
later, Indiatimes came into play. India’s first private news
channel, the Hindi/English Star News was launched in 1998. With
economic liberalisation, the opening up of news and information
too had begun. The big news event however happened in 2000
with the coming of Aaj Tak. This spunky little Hindi news channel
from Aroon Purie’s Living Media, changed the rules of the game.
Its 24- hour news anchors made news accessible and available to
more than 500 million people who understand Hindi or its various
forms.

Life after Aaj Tak

Aaj Tak’s success (it is still the leading news channel in India)
made one very important point. It showed that the language of
news, just like the language of entertainment, had to be as local
as possible. This coincided with several things. The first was the
loosening of controls over foreign capital in the newspaper
business. Two, technology had made it easier to launch more
editions in print or more channels with less bandwidth on TV.

The third was the growth of several new categories of advertisers

who found news suitable for their products. These are advertisers
whose products have a higher male skew or need their
involvement in the purchase decision. Automobiles, telecom,
financial services were(and are) the fastest growing categories of
advertising on newspapers, television and on websites too. “News
is very important for us. A lot of our products, such as LCDs, PCs
and mobile phones are targeted at males,” says L.K.Gupta, chief
marketing officer, LG India. About three-fourths of LG’s ad spend
goes to “media vehicles that are news disseminators,” saysGupta.

Advertisers like LG and Tata Motors, led to the doubling of the

overall ad pie from just under Rs 10,000 crore in 2003 to Rs
22,000 crore in 2007. This in turn has meant a tripling of the TV
news ad spend and a 60 per cent growth in spends on
newspapers during this period.
Note: Figures for 2008 are from Jan-May; Figures based on ad volumes in seconds on TV; Advertising during commercial
time (Promos
are excluded); All figures for news include regional news channels and all figures for GEC include regional GECs; Base year
for indexed
growth in ad volumes is 2006. Source: TAM Peoplemeter System and AdEx India - A Division of TAM Media Research TG: CS
4+
What it costs to be on the News
The chart shows indexed cost per thousand on the top news brands. Note: Times and NDTV
24X7 are not in the top 5 (by channel share) technically, but has been included for English
comparison; * TV covers top English and Hindi news channels.

The money argument

The youngest newspaper on the block, Sakshi, a Telugu
newspaper that launched with 23 editions earlier this year, has
had a great beginning. Designed by Mario arcia, the man who
designed Mint - among other newspapers - Sakshi aims to be
more contemporary and younger than leader Eenadu. It has, for
instance, three pages of business against Eenadu’s one,
everyday. This means 32 pages for Sakshi against Eenadu’s 30 on
most days. It takes roughly Rs 100-150 crore to launch a
newspaper. The rapidity of launches, (Sakshi is one of about a
dozen this year) raises the obvious questions on the viability of
these ventures. Today most newspaper investment happens for
valuation, I doubt whether they are serious about the business.
Besides advertising, there is very little that news media can get
from other revenue streams. Except for the Rs 4,000 odd crore
that newspapers are estimated to make from circulation
revenues, there isn’t much coming by way of pay revenues.
Internet, mobile, or overseas - any of the other sources of
revenues - are not yet significant for most companies (except for
Bennett, Coleman & Co Ltd or BCCL). Then there is the threat of
rising newsprint prices slated to touch $1,000 per tonne by end of
the year, up from just under $800 a tonne currently. Yet, it is
newspaper companies that most analysts and investors are
comfortable with. Most of the listed and unlisted newspapers
make operating margins of close to 25 per cent or more. So in
spite of the expansion, the bottomlines from existing businesses
are still healthy. Also the fit with online and mobile is clearer and
more direct for newspaper companies, so investors like them.

It is in television news that investors should start getting

concerned. The way the business is structured, there is complete
dependence on advertising. “I wonder why new players are
coming, what is their proposition, do they have a bottomline or
only a topline,” quips G. Krishnan, executive director and CEO, TV
Today Network.“In TV news right now people are just taking
advantage of the availability of capital,” answers Vivek Couto,
executive director, Media Partners Asia, a Hong-Kong-based
media consulting firm. The fact is that operating costs for
television news have gone through the roof. Just the cost of
distributing a channel went up from Rs 15 crore in 2006 to Rs 30
crore in 2007 because the largest form of distribution, cable, is
log jammed with new channels. The only figures available are for
the three listed broadcasters, of which two, NDTV and Network18,
are now diversified media companies not pure news broadcasters.
“No one is making money from TV news in India,” says Couto.

A shakeout therefore is imminent, especially if the market slows

down. However, unlike many other countries which are
homogenous markets, in India within each genre and each
language 2-3 channels will survive. The ones to survive will be the
ones who enter the maximum number of small Rs 50-100 crore
niches the market offers, from city channels to lifestyle or
education news. The immediate issue however is not the growth
potential of the market, but the threat of regulation. Thanks to
news television’s wild jump into tabloid news and newspapers’
into money for editorial deals, there is a real possibility that a
nasty content code will hit the business soon. That, as the next
piece argues, will be more dangerous than a fall in ad spend
growth.
 The Dumb Blonde is Here to
Stay
– The Invasion

The tabloidization of
news is here to stay. It
will co-exist with
serious news. The
balance between the
two will change when
the structure of the
news business changes.
Try this. When you are at a particularly dull dinner party next,
just mention the words ‘news channels.’ Then sit back and watch
the conversation that erupts across the room. You will hear words
like ‘Sensationalist, trivialization, tabloidization, invasion of
privacy....’

Welcome to the party. The abundance of news outlets in India

(See previous piece) comes with its own set of social, ethical and
moral issues that any serious analysis of the business cannot
ignore. How much is too much? In the name of accessibility and
relevance are we really destroying the news ethic? Why does
‘dumbing down’ happen in the first place? Will the tabloidization
of news fall to levels where advertisers will start walking out to
avoid being associated with a negative content genre. Will
investors get put off? What about the viewer – the fact is, he is
lapping it up. Every time Rakhi Sawant, a celebrity whose only
talent is the one she has for hogging publicity, is on air, the show
beats everything else on viewership. It is the worst pieces of
programming that the public most wants to watch, so why blame
the media?

Every time Rakhi

Sawant, a celebrity
whose only talent is
the one she has for
hogging publicity, is
on air, the show
beats everything else
on viewership. Why
blame the media?
Alternatively, the question to ask is this - are we getting blinded
by television news channels and ignoring the good things that an
abundance of news across all media has done. It has helped bring
to the forefront issues which would have never made it on to the
news agenda. News outlets have become the new haven for
people who don’t have a voice. From activist Binayak Sen’s arrest
to farmer suicides to Aarushi’s murder, the news - media not just
TV news channels - has forced authorities to sit up and do things.
As viewers flock to TV news, it has forced newspapers and
magazines to focus on real issues and real people, not just
intellectual babble. For the first time in years the whole issue of
editorial being sold in newspapers, the unhealthy dependence on
advertising in both print and TV that leads to unethical practices,
and the blurring lines between editorial and business are being
discussed openly. The question is how far news media should be
pushing. Can the now very public ridicule for television news help
the government to force through changes such as the content
code that could harm both the news business and democracy in
the long run? If the future is the internet or mobile, (which is as
mass as TV), should these also be subject to the same controls?
One of the foundations that make this business robust in India is
democracy. Does the freedom of expression come without
responsibility? Does it translate into the freedom to do bad
reportage, lousy analysis and post whatever you want to on the
net in the name of user-generated-content?

No it doesn’t. Just like other freedoms, the one to express yourself

has to be earned and it is a freedom that not all news outlets
have earned, yet. At the heart of a profitable (and free) news
business lie credible brands that people trust and go to again and
again. The BBC, The Economist, CNN, Guardian, The New York
Times are all profitable, yet trusted brands. They don’t sell
editorial, they don’t sensationalize news. It is their content and
that from good mainstream news brands that drive the traffic on
most aggregators and search engine sites, says research from
Poynter’s The State of the News Media. Of the top 20 news sites
in the US, 17 are from old mass media brands. So whether the
future is more digital, less print, more mobile less TV, being able
to trust a headline blindly, is a real imperative in this business.
That doesn’t go away with a change in media vehicle.

You could argue that The Sun is still the most popular newspaper
in the UK, not The Guardian or that people prefer ITV and Channel
4 not BBC for their entertainment. That is exactly what will
happen in India. So the Mumbai Mirror will survive along with
Hindustan Times and India TV along with CNN-IBN. The tabloid (as
in popular) and the serious both have a place because there are
people who want them. In any market in the world, the tabloid is
the more popular form and by definition has a larger audience
and ad spend. The serious news media usually has a lower
audience share but commands a higher rate.

There are historical and structural reasons why news is tilting

towards the sensational, especially on TV (more of this later). But
most are just signs of an evolving industry.
What’s happening?

There is no doubt that TV news channels lead the ‘tabloidization’

brigade. An analysis of content on the top six national news
channels by the New Delhi-based Centre for Media Studies (CMS)
shows that entertainment programming increased almost three
times the level in 2006 while politics plummeted from 23 per cent
to 10 per cent. Sports and crime saw big jumps. Development and
environment issues got a fraction of programming time across the
three years of the study. TAM data backs that. Non-news
programming was 39 per cent of what news channels broadcast
this year, up from 25 per cent in 2006.

Everyone is trying to make a quick buck. Hindi news channels

have turned into cheap entertainment cum reality channels
dishing out content which is not fit for family viewing and can
seriously disturb the social fabric of our country.
Newspapers, it would seem are, less guilty of ignoring the ‘larger
good’. So politics, for some reason seen as more serious news,
remained at the top of the news agenda for the top four national
English papers, according to CMS. The fact remains that
newspapers are especially weak when it comes to advertiser
pressure and deals that are not in the reader interest. So does
another fact – it was newspapers that started the change.

When did it start?

‘Prime minister visits Yugoslavia.’ Many years back this was the
typical headline in Indian newspapers. This was the time when
editors treated readers with contempt and readers treated editors
with reverence.

That was till 1986 when a young man named Samir Jain took over
an ailing Bennett, Coleman & Co Ltd (BCCL). In an era when no
one questioned what editors did, Jain, now vice chairman of BCCL,
tried to look at his paper, The Times of India like he would have at
a consumer product. He played around with everything - people,
pricing, content and format - to maximize returns. In a few years
BCCL became India’s largest and most profitable media company.
At Rs 2,789 crore in revenues and Rs 760 crore in operating
profits (2005-06), it still is.

That is really when the notion of news started changing. Almost

every major newspaper followed Jain’s lead in some form or the
other. The content started becoming more accessible, less
‘intellectually snooty,’ and cover prices fell, in some cases
drastically. The movement picked up speed with liberalization. As
entertainment channels took off in the early nineties, reading
time went down. Newspapers struck back with more colour, more
supplements and lower prices, and in much of this Jain took the
lead.

Today, 10 years after the first private news channel was launched
in India, the entire notion of news has been turned upside down.
That raises questions about the definition of news.

So what is news?

News is about relevance and “What is relevant has changed,”

says Ravi Dhariwal, CEO, BCCL. Arnab Goswami, editor-in-chief,
Times Now, points out to stories like Sunita Williams or the
controversies around the infamous India-Australia series some
time ago. Earlier these would never have made headline news
even if everyone was dying to know more. In the old days (let us
call them the Yugoslavia days), consumers did not have a choice.
Between 1990 and now, four things changed – their numbers,
patience, time and choice.

Of these, choice is the most critical to understand what is

happening. All media is booming simultaneously in India. In the
US, newspapers took off first, then radio, then television and later
the internet. So each, had time to evolve. Most of Indian

THE TOP 20
CHANNELS
Channel share of the top TV channels.
Note: *Figures are descending as per
the year 2008 (Jan- May); The ranking is based on
viewership share of individual news channels in the total TV
viewership pie.
Source: TAM Peoplemeter
System
TG: CS 15+ years
Markets: All India ‘08

Media has been liberated only over the last ten years. This has
meant over 400 TV channels, thousands of websites and dozens
of newspapers and magazines all jostling for time and attention at
the same time. As a result while the total time spent on media
increased in this decade (it is now going down), it got split
between more and more vehicles. (See charts on the time spend
on media in opening essay). This coupled with liberalization, rising
purchasing power, stressed out lives and all the other
accompaniments of a prosperous India changed everything – the
notion of what, when, why, how and who, of news.

News now, “has to do with a greater degree of

interconnectedness and relevance in the world,” says Dhariwal.
The biggest manifestation is the space that news outlets, even in
regional languages ones, now give to international views,
opinions, business and entertainment.

People don’t attach the same glamour to politicians that they do

to sportspersons, entertainers or business people. The new
generation is unwilling to accept people in authority, but are
willing accept successful people. Sakshi, a Telugu paper launched
in Andhra Pradesh this year with 23 editions, offers three pages of
business, against the one page that leader Eenadu does. This
would have been unheard of in a language paper till even ten
years back.

If you plot the centre of a concentric circle of issues that news

vehicles carry then 15 years back politics was at the centre with
lifestyle, crime or entertainment, the lurid stuff at the fringes. The
target audience was one mass of Indians assumed to be
interested in a common list of things that editors decided on.
Now, the target audience has splintered in dozens of clusters. And
the centre of the concentric circle for each cluster, young, middle-
aged, old, is different. So young people want education and
career guidance from newspapers, they want ‘timepass’ from
television and a social life on the internet. Older people want
more politics and serious news and so on and so forth. Finally, the
heterogeneity of the market is reflected in the way news is
changing.

Why news standards are falling

That news is becoming more accessible, more heterogeneous and

relevant is wonderful. However a disproportionate amount of time
is spent on things that can’t be called news. Many point out that it
is Hindi channels that are more sensationalist. That some say is
not correct. The viewership numbers in other languages are so
small, that it doesn’t show up. Even Tamil and Telugu news
channels get a lot of viewership for dumbed down programming.

But really why is this happening on a scale where there seems to

be a backlash in the making? Why are news channels showing
fake godmen making predictions or MMS clips of a 14-year old
murder victim? Why have things degenerated from accessibility
to sleaze?

We came across several reasons, which work together or

individually to make the Indian news business what it is.

One is the “TRP trap”. India is an avowed one-TV market. Indian

families believe that TV watching is a family activity and getting a
second TV will isolate younger members. So news television vies
for the same audiences that entertainment or sports does. To this
add the pressure of 24-hour news which stresses the best brands.
In the US, cable channels which run 24 hour news are the ones
accused of sensationalizing while the quality of news on
broadcast channels, which have intermittent news, rarely draws
any flak. Now factor in sixty seven 24-hour news channels all
fighting for every fractional increase in rating points. The result is
what you see. Ditto for newspapers which try to get the largest
mass of people possible with buckets or kettles as gifts. So what
they get are gift junkies, not readers.

Two, even with low ratings it is possible to capture the high

impact of the viewership of niche channels, but at 7,200 meters
for 72 million cable and satellite homes, most analysts say the
sample for measuring viewership is too small. Media buyers’
obsession with numbers makes it an uphill battle for a niche
brand to prove that the 30 minutes even 10 users spend on it, is
high-quality time. Chandradeep Mitra, president, Mudra Max
agrees that, “the buying community is to blame for what is
happening.” Since advertisers, marketers or media owners, seem
unwilling to pay higher fees for a bigger sample, metrics become
a limiting factor.
The third factor, is the lack of revenue flexibility. In TV pay
revenues remains a distant dream because pay TV platforms like
digital cable or DTH are some way from reaching critical mass. On
analog cable, the widest mode of distribution, most news
channels are afraid to go pay for fear of losing viewers and
therefore ad revenues. In newspapers the debate on raising
prices has been going on since Samir Jain came. A newspaper
costs anywhere between Rs 15 and Rs 30 to produce but it sells
for Rs 1-3. Therefore there is tremendous pressure on making
money through advertising and the abject dependence on it. It is
routine for advertisers to pull out campaigns from papers that
critique them even a bit. That explains why there has been no
single corporate corruption story in newspapers in the last five
years.

Four, operating costs across the board are going up even while
capital costs have fallen. In dailies, newsprint, marketing and
content costs have gone up the highest. In TV it is distribution and
content costs that have doubled over the last couple of years. As
a result the depth of coverage has reduced. Against every four
hours earlier, TV news is now refreshed every half hour. That
means more anchors, more reporters and a wider coverage so
that the

chances of getting a fresh story increase. In newspapers beats

are becoming redundant; anybody is put onto any story creating a
sea of people who know a little bit about everything.

What does it mean?

This massification would have happened earlier if controls had not

existed, so this is a natural progression. True. In entertainment
TV, the demand for differentiated content has come now, after 15
years of free private television. Whether we like it or not, in spite
of the freedom to do so Indian audiences are not switching off the
Babajis and the lurid stories. Only when news audiences are sated
and sick of the popular form of news will they look for news
outlets that offer serious analysis or cutting edge talk shows.
Even then a larger proportion of the audience will prefer the
popular form of news.

What are the implications of this massification? It may mean that

the advertiser who comes to news because there is a male skew
and high involvement is going away. L.K. Gupta, chief marketing
officer, LG India says that he hasn’t decided because he can’t see
the evidence. If news channels go more mass advertisers will
have to cherry pick what suits their TG (Target Group). It can be
illustrated by way of example of cricket. A brand has to choose
the tournaments and the channels best suited to its needs.

The male skew is coming down in newspapers. This makes news

more attractive to a larger set of advertisers. For instance, ever
since Aaj Tak changed tracks three years back to become more
mass, the Amba Sariya kind of advertiser has been replaced by
the more premium Gili Diamonds type. FMCGs or Fast Moving
Consumer Goods such as soaps and shampoos, which would have
never touched news, are now regulars on news channels. For the
serious news advertiser the options are limited – BBC, CNN-IBN,
CNBC, NDTV 24X7, business newspapers and magazines.

In the long run, the players who diversify beyond news in other
genres, geographies and media are the ones that will emerge
healthier, more credible and profitable. They are also the ones
investors lust after. The few broadcasters that are refusing to
massify such as NDTV and Network 18 are the ones with a
diversified portfolio. NDTV Hindi is seen as losing share because it
is the only channel that does not have a crime show. In
newspapers, though, this is not necessarily true. The most serious
and credible papers like The Hindu or Business Standard are the
ones whose record on diversification is not as good.
There are other ways of bringing credibility back. One is reduce
the dependence on advertising. The reader is reluctant to pay Rs
3 for a paper, but pays Rs 3 for a one line SMS. The point is that
media owners have to move towards charging a fairer price for
their product and improving the advertisers’ perception of the
audience that they offer. The other is better metrics and research.
Since most research agencies come from markets where
newspaper circulation is declining, they have very little incentive
to invest in newspaper research and measurement and make it
more real-time. That would apply to TV research too. Media
owners need to get together to invest in measurement tools that
make the sample more robust and reduce the ‘TAM town’ bias or
the ‘readership’ bias. As the money that rides on news keeps
increasing, news outlets will have to get their act on both the
quality of content and metrics in order. That is the only way to
avoid attracting the regulators’ eye, losing advertisers and
putting off investors. It will also safeguard the future of a free
news market.
 The Prediction
– The little
The future of news screen

belongs to media
that can be adapted
to India’s reality.
MyToday offers a bouquet of services on mobile phones. These
include news, stock markets, cricket and health among several
others. The user has to opt for this free service and he gets
headlines with a text ad at the bottom of the screen. Since it was
launched in 2006, MyToday has hooked 3.5 million subscribers.

News is the second most popular service at MyToday after cricket

with more than one million subscribers and is one of the highest
revenue earners. More than 75 advertisers such as Akai, Birla
Sunlife and Shopper’s Stop have used MyToday which is on its
way to becoming a very profitable service. At a rate of 300,000
new subscribers every month it will hit 10 million in a year, says
Abhijit Saxena, CEO, Netcore. The Mumbai-based company is the
brainchild of Rajesh Jain. The man who launched one of India’s
first portals, IndiaWorld.com in 1995 (later sold to Sify) has been
an evangelist of sorts for the online medium. Why then did he
choose the mobile for his next big venture? “Internet growth in
India has been somewhat stymied because of penetration,” says
Jain. The mobile he reckons is a much more versatile device, with
a large penetration. Before you splutter that mobile internet is
just a fraction of the total mobile population of 275 million, rest
easy. Jain is keen on exploiting a service that is low on bandwidth
consumption (a huge limitation in India) and is easily available –
SMS. “So far all usage of the mobile media has been around
ringtones, wallpapers, things that you create pull for,” says Jain.
The result has been an industry where the content creators have
no connect with the consumers they serve. “All the VAS (value-
added services) operators sit behind the mobile operators,” says
Jain. His idea was to speak direct to- consumer.

Jain’s insight on what can and cannot work in India is crucial to

understanding where the news business is headed. If there is any
lesson to be learnt from the tabloidization of news, especially on
television, it is that the imperatives of doing business in India will
finally get you. The business plan that your consultants draw up
could be grand. However, all news media will have to operate
within the limitations of India - electricity being the biggest one.
Assuming that this will not change drastically in the near-term,
the question we asked ourselves was which media vehicle has the
hardiness to survive, penetrate and get big numbers – the mobile
and radio stood out. (See table below).
Who will lead?

Radio is out for now. Even if the government allows radio

operators to offer news, most don’t see themselves becoming full-
fledged 24-hour news broadcasters. They will at best offer an
hourly or daily bulletin on their stations. In large tracts of India,
newspapers and television will continue to analyze what the
mobile phone alerts you on. This could be through SMS or if
bandwidth permits, through clips. In the metros and top 20 towns,
the internet will play in combination with the mobile phone. It is
not as if the mobile and radio will take over all news
dissemination. They will probably have an increasing share of
news consumption and therefore revenues, especially pay.
That is the media vehicle part, what about the content? From
whatever one has read so far, it is clear that there are two distinct
needs from news. One is the demand for commodity news on
what happened, when etc. This is the bread and butter of the
news business and across media the pressure on this will keep
increasing. This will by definition be a high-volume, low-margin,
tabloidish game.

It could mean more sting operations on TV, more user generated

‘content’ on the net or reams on Saif Ali Khan’s affair with
Kareena Kapoor in print. This is a market that can be dominated
by any media that can reach faster, quicker and has a fun take on
anything that happens. This kind of news will largely be ad-
supported and subscription will have a smaller role to play.

The other is the demand for an editorially led product that makes
sense of the babble. The kind that consumers are willing to pay
for to read or watch its sharp analysis and viewpoint, a bit like
The Economist. This will be a smaller, very profitable market. It
will by definition be a somewhat verbose product, so this market
will be dominated by newspapers, magazines and websites. The
odd BBC or CNN-IBN could be part of this market, but TV will have
a limited role to play here. This could be a blend of ad plus pay
revenues, though considering the texture of the Indian market,
one suspects it will be premium-advertiser supported.

So, the changes coming up in the news market in India, most

expected to kick in by 2009, an election year, will operate at two
levels. The first is consolidation and more specialization and
segmentation especially in the more mature markets where
commodity news outlets are already plentiful. The second is the
rise in penetration across India and a greater massification and
commoditization of news. Both these changes will mean more
media across a bigger geography and hopefully more variety. It
will be a continuation of what the privatization of news started in
India – a plug-in into the heterogeneity of the market and its
volumes.

The specialized news market

News is becoming a commodity especially on the electronic front.

L.K. Gupta, chief marketing officer LG India, one of the biggest
advertisers on the news genre coincides: “Two years back 75 per
cent of our spends went to newspapers, now less than 60 per
cent goes to them because we can’t target sharply enough.” The
answer is sharper target definition that gets into psychographics,
reading/watching behaviour, time spent et al. From that
perspective, Mint has done a good job. The business paper
launched by HT Media in 2007 has the texture of a daily news
magazine and a deliciously non-businesslike design. In spite of
being the fifth English business paper in a market of barely 100
million English speaking people, it has certainly created a lot of
buzz.

This is change number one. In markets that are well-penetrated

by all media vehicles, where a lot of news brands compete for the
time of a jaded audience, say the seven metros or the top 20
towns, it is more specialization and segmentation that will work.
Some of this is already evident in both print and television.
Evidence lies in more & more gadget shows, education
supplements, foreign news supplements, auto shows and so on.
Since single television homes could limit segmenting, one way of
doing it is by looking at day parts more innovatively. In prime
time, news is becoming entertainment; off prime time it is sharply
segmented. The commodity news will exist here but perhaps will
grow faster on newer vehicles, say the mobile phone or in car
radios. But from an ad spend perspective it will be a falling yield
game, unless the numbers are massive. To really make money
from commodity news, a brand will have to be among the top two
in terms of reach.

News, the commodity

The second trend - of deeper penetration by geography, language

and by being more local - will see more action. News channels’
viewership seems to be moving away from metros to non-metros.
In Hindi news viewership (prime time 9 pm) the growth was 16
per cent in non-metros, as against only a 10 per cent growth in
metros. In the same time band, English news channels have
grown by 20 per cent in viewership in non-metros and stagnated
in the metros. The same is true for regional news channels that
have shown a higher growth rate of over 30 per cent in non-
metros, against 20 per cent for metros.

Media owners know this. Of the 67 news channels in India 23 are

in Hindi, 13 in English, while other major languages have anything
between 2-5 channels each. Many were launched in 2007. Earlier
this year Business Standard, The Economic Times and Dainik
Bhaskar launched business dailies in Hindi. Business Standard
launched one in Gujarati too. Then there is a Hindi business daily
due from the tie-up between Dainik Jagran-Network18. These
launches, more than anything else, finally acknowledge that
India’s economic growth is not limited to English speaking metros.

This is true for the Internet too. The next level of growth is going
to come from tier 2 and 3 cities. “We very firmly believe that the
future growth of India is through small towns. That is why we
have embarked on private treaties,” says Ravi Dhariwal, CEO,
BCCL. Private treaties refers to the picking up of equity in small
and medium scale enterprises (SMEs), the largest growing
category of advertisers, in exchange for media. BCCL has signed
on over 100 companies under private treaties. SMEs in fact are
the reason why ad spends growth has kept pace with the growth
of regional editions of newspapers. The numbers and spend of
SMEs has been rising. And it is to tap into this advertiser who
wants to reach out to his audience in a local context that you will
see the trend towards localization increasing.

The free market for news will eventually connect up all of India
and get everyone jabbering about issues, a feat a controlled news
market could never achieve. That will make for a better
functioning and robust democracy. That alone should be a good
enough reason to cheer this babble along.

Viewer Survey
Segmentation statement:
Male/Female 18 – 65 yrs, SEC AB located in the suburban Mumbai.

Demographic Classification of the Total 50 viewers surveyed

 In the Adult students’ category, 6 males & 4 females were

surveyed.
 In the Employed/ Self Employed category, 20 males & 10 females
were surveyed.
 Finally, 5 homemakers & 5retired males were surveyed.

13 Questions were asked on topics/issues relating to 4 broad

categories:

A. General Opinion/Preferences
B. Opinions/Preferences on Content
C. Opinion on Conduct of News Channels
D. Awareness/Opinions/choices about Intermediary Services like
Cable, DTH & IPTV.

A] General Preferences/Opinions

1) Which is your preferred platform for News?

Observation:
Nearly half (48%) of the news viewers prefer Print as a medium for
news. This is followed by TV at 38%. This does not mean that those
who read newspapers do not watch news on TV & vice – versa. The
data is overlapping & not mutually exclusive. Internet News is
consumed by only 14% & by the younger generation who prefers
Yahoo more than CNBC or Times.

2) Which is your preferred genre/type of news channel on TV?

Observation:
➢ National & Business News is what the viewers like to tune into on
TV.
➢ Channels like Aaj Tak, Star News, CNN-IBN & CNBC TV18 were
among the favorite channels for National & Business news
respectively.
 ➢ On the other hand only 4% watched International News channels
like CNN International & BBC. International news has not caught
up as an interest to the viewers as yet.

1) What is your preferred language for News?

Observation:
➢ Hindi is still the most preferred language for news viewers which
is followed close on heels by English which is fast catching on.
➢ Hindi has a mixed viewer profile.
➢ Most English viewers consist of students & working professionals.
➢ Regional Language is a distant third preferred mostly by some
homemakers & the retired ones.
 1) There are 67 News channels in 11 languages. Do you think a
viewer has more News channels than required?

Observation:
➢ Most (78%) felt that there is an oversupply of news channel & can
live with fewer news channels.
➢ Some (10%) felt that more no. of news channel means more
choice for a viewer & that the number is not an issue.
➢ Some respondents (12%) couldn’t make up there mind.

B] Opinions/Preferences on Content

1) Can you differentiate the content of one News Channel from

another or do they all look the same?

Observation:
➢ Majority (66%) of the viewers feel that news channels look all the
same to them & they lack uniqueness due to lack of content
differentiation.
➢ This majority consisted of largely Hindi News channel viewers.
 ➢ Some felt (34%) that there is some uniqueness among news
channels.
➢ This minority largely belonged to English & Regional genre.

1) Do you watch other non – news content on the News Channels?

Observation:
➢ Majority of the viewers watch non – news content on the news
channels like lifestyle shows, talk shows, and gadget shows etc.
➢ While most watched it sometimes, some viewers watch it
regularly.
➢ However some 38% never watch non – news content on News
Channels.
C] Opinions on the Conduct of the News Channels

1) How do you find a News Channel today?

Observation:
➢ Most of the respondents felt that News channels are
sensationalist & hype small things out of proportion.
➢ Some do feel there are enough news channels which are serious
about news they provide.

1) Do you think the standard of News Channels is dropping day by

day?

Observation:
➢ Majority feels that the standard of the news channels is falling
with each passing day. This is opinion is influenced by the
sensationalist nature of some news channels.
➢ Not so distant minority feels that there are enough news
channels who set high standards in the news industry.
 1) Ethics are going for a toss in some cases in the News Industry. Do
you think the freedom given to the News Media should be curbed
& the Government should regulate the content on the News
Channels?

➢ An overwhelming majority believes that bad press is better than

one regulated by the government.
➢ While a very small section of respondents felt that there should
be a content code.

D] Awareness/Opinions/Choices regarding Intermediary

Services.
 1) Which service do you avail for your TV?

Observation:
➢ A very large majority uses the Cable TV to avail TV services.
➢ Many feel that DTH does not give them enough flexibility & hence
prefer Cable TV. For e.g. : Whenever there is India’s cricket
match, the Cable Operator provides the very channel the match
is on without additional charges while the case is different in
case of DTH who will charge separately for each channel.
➢ Only 12% use DTH services & believe they provide better picture
quality than Cable TV.

1) Do you think that your Cable Operator charges you fairly?

Observation:
➢ About 2/3rd feel that their Cable Operator is not transparent in the
billing of their services.
➢ About 1/3rd thought that the Cable Operators charge an
affordable fee for their services.

Note: Cable Operators are supposed to give a break up of which

channel costs how much to the consumers but it is not practiced.
 1) Do you think the government should make the implementation of
CAS mandatory throughout the country?

Observation:
All respondents unanimously agreed that implementation of CAS
should be made mandatory by the government as they will have
to pay only for those channels that are viewed by them.

2) Are you aware of Internet Protocol TV or IPTV?

Observation:
Almost everyone, except one respondent, was unaware of IP TV
as an alternative to Cable TV or even DTH services.

Annexure
Questionnaire:

Name:
_______________________________________________________________________
___

Age: _________ Gender: _________ Occupation:

________________________________

1. Which is your preferred platform of News?

 TV
 Print
 Internet

1. Which is your preferred genre/type of news channel on TV?

 National
  International
 Business

2. Which is your preferred language for News?

 English
 Hindi
 Regional

3. There are 67 News channels in 11 languages. Do you think a

viewer has more News channels than required?
 Yes
 No
 Can’t Say

4. Can you differentiate the content of one News Channel from

another or do they all look the same?
 They All Look The Same
 There are Differences
5. Do you watch other non – news content on the News Channels?
 Usually
 Sometimes
 Never

6. How do you find a News Channel today?

 Sensationalist
 Serious

7. Do you think the standard of News Channels is dropping day by

day?
 Yes
 No

8. Ethics are going for a toss in some cases in the News Industry. Do
you think the freedom given to the News Media should be curbed
& the Government should regulate the content on the News
Channels?
 Yes
  No

9. Which service do you avail for your TV?

 Cable TV
 DTH

10.Do you think that your Cable Operator charges you fairly?
 Yes
 No

11.Do you think the government should make the implementation of

CAS mandatory throughout the country?
 Yes
 No

12.Are you aware of Internet Protocol TV or IPTV?

 Yes
 No

Bibliography
• TRAI Consultation papers
• TRAI Report
• TAM Media
• TAM Adex
• E4m.com
• Afaqs.com
• Marketing Mix – Philip Kotler
• Brand Reporter
• Frontline
• Screen Digest
• Hansa Research
• IRS
• MyToday
• Starcom
• Mudra Max