Turner-Miditech's Planned Launch of 'Real' Channel in India:Will it Succeed?

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Turner-Miditech's Planned Launch of 'Real' Channel in India:Will it Succeed?

 

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However, music was one segment that has been on a declining trend owing to factors like changing customer preferences and their inclination towards radio music than the regular music on CDs and DVDs. However, revenue from digital music is considered a relief from the overall declining trend. Thus, growth in the Indian E&M industry was remarkable with TV contributing a significant portion to the overall industry revenues. Growing Presence of the GECs in the Indian TV Segment TV emerged to the forefront of Indian E&M industry with the introduction of colour TV by the state-owned television broadcaster, Doordarshan (DD) during 1982 and liberalisation of Indian broadcasting market during 1990s. A series of economic and social reforms launched during 1991 allowed private and foreign participation in satellite TV broadcasting. Thus, as the government opened market to cable television, foreign payers like CNN10 and STAR Group and local players like Zee Telefilms and

SunNetwork¹¹ aired many satellite channels. By 1994, DD’s Doordarshan Audience Research Team (DART) lost its monopoly in audience measurement metrics to private organisations like Television Audience Measurement Media Research (TAM) and Audience Measurement and Analytics Ltd. (aMap). Away from DD’s dull and non-commercial programming content that focused on education and socio-economic development rather than entertainment, introduction of programmes like Hum Log, Ramayan and Mahabharat glued millions of viewers to their television sets. Thus, the segment grew from just 2 channels in 1991 to 50 channels in 1996.

This led to increase in the number of cable networks to nearly 60,000 with subscriber base ranging from 50 to 1,000. However, constrained by heavy investments, Indian cable operators could relay only 6 to 14 channels. This put them in a disadvantage over foreign players who set up Multiple System Operators (MSOs – operators of multiple cable television systems) and either bought up local operators or franchised cable TV. But low ad revenues coupled with aggressive retaliation fromlocal cable operators who consolidated their operations to formlocalMSOs discouraged foreign entities to expand further. As a result, the foreign entities either aborted or restricted their operations and expansion plans and converted their services into subscription-based by charging carriage fee.

Gradually, by the dawn of the new millennium, programming content on Indian television included everything from fiction and mythology to reality shows, music and movies and gave birth to a new and most popular genre, general entertainment. For instance, STAR Plus climbed to No. 1 position in the Hindi GEC category in 2000 just with one single show, Kaun Banega Crorepati, hosted by the legendary actor, Amitabh Bachchan.

Concurrently, implementation of Conditional Access System (CAS)¹² initially in four Indian metro cities provided solution to many problems facing the Indian television market – like poor reception of certain channels, arbitrary pricing and increase in prices, channel bundling, poor service delivery by local cable operators, etc. However, the system being unprofitable for broadcasters, channels like STAR Group, Zee, and ETV expanded across the nation by setting up regional channels in Telugu, Marathi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Bengali, etc. Further, business tycoons like LN Mittal, Kishore Lulla and Gokul Binani set up two Bollywood entertainment channels, B4U Music and B4U Movies, while one of the leading print media house, India Today, launched a Hindi news channel, Aaj Tak.

By the end of 2007, Hindi GECs accounted for majority share at 34% among the elite 4+ market (covers elite viewers above four years of age) and 31% among the CS4+ market (covers cable and satellite market with viewers above 4 years of age)With only few established players like Zee TV and Sony, Hindi GEC market had grown to include many new and emerging players with each one vying for more viewers, more ad revenues and more market share.

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10] Cable News Network, owned by the US-based Time Warner group, offers 24-hour television news coverage.
11] Established in 1993, this Indian cable television network based in Chennai, broadcasts a number of channels in all the four regional languages of South India – Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.
12] A digital mode of transmitting TV channels through a set-up box, with which consumers get the option to choose the channels they want to pay for and view, rather than receiving the whole set of channels that the cable operator makes available to them. Cable operators in turn pay the subscription fee to the broadcasters only for the actual number of viewers who opt for the channel, rather than for all those who have cable access.