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, it was too early to pop up the champagne as all GECs including Colors suffered a set back when in October 2008, TV workers union – Federation of Western India Cine Employees (FWICE – the parent body of almost 22 workers unions) differed with TV producers associations regarding compensation issues. The seven major broadcasting companies – STAR, Zee Entertainment Enterprises, SET, Sahara One, Viacom18, INX Media and NDTV issued an ultimatum to the two parties to resolve their differences by November 9th 2008. As the disparities continued, all seven of them stopped telecasting fresh episodes of the programmes. As TV content producers refused to accept FWICE demands of – higher and timely wages, better work conditions and more breaks between shoots – worker unions disrupted shooting and stopped working from November 10th 2008, broadcasters were forced to air repeat telecasts of their old episodes.Though all players in the Indian televisionmarketwere affected by the strike, broadcasterswere the hardest hit. There was an average drop of primetime Gross Rating Points (GRPs)21 at 35%–55%during the strike period

Finally, the 10-day strike had been called off on November 19th 2008 with the content producers’ proposal to raise cost of the content by an aggregate 10%–15%. Amid such circumstances, Mumbai terror attacks on November 26th 2008 added to GECs’ existing woes . For the first time ever, STAR Plus lost its supremacy to Colors and Zee TV, as its GRPs fell by 12.5%to 98 during the week ended November 29th 2008 as against 112 the previous week. Colors topped the Hindi GEC slot with 124 GRPs and Zee in the second place at 102 GRPs.²²

However, Hindi GECs bounced back on December 1st 2008 with all new shows and fresh episodes .As the market recouped, STAR Plus regained its No. 1 position gaining 263 GRPs for the week ended December 6th 2008 and Colors got back to second position with 213 GRPs and Zee remained third with 189 GRPs. The following week, Zee TV shared the No. 2 position with Colors increasing its channel share from 17% to 20%. By the end of January 2009, Colors inched close to STAR Plus with a channel share difference of 0.5%

Above all, with increased fragmentation and overall decline in television viewership share, one or two shows no longer capture viewers’ attention and broadcasters face the challenge of offering unlimited content in limited time . Amid this competitive scenario, on January 21st 2009, RGB announced the proposed launch of a new GEC, Real.

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21] Gross Rating Points – A sum of the television ratings of individual programmes calculated on the basis of reach and the time spent by viewers.
22] “Entertainment channel ratings hit on terror”, http://tvtoday.wordpress.com/category/hindi/, December 5th 2008