On the Comeback Trail

It was the success of reality show Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC 4) that helped Sony get back in the reckoning. Hosted by Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan,the reality show got an average TVR of 5.3 in the first week of its launch,catapulating Sony to the number three position. For that week,Star Plus was at 361 gross rating points (GRPs),Colors at 261,Sony was at 221,and Zee TV at 178,according to data released by television audience measurement firm TAM Media Research. In the week before KBC,Star Plus was at 363 GRPs,Colors at 271,Zee TV at 200 and Sony at 173. According to the latest data released by TAM,Star Plus is at 343 GRPs,Colors at 240,Zee TV at 196,Sony at 178 and SAB TV at 126.

Sony is now looking to better that. MSM chairman Manjit Singh says with a strong fiction line-up,Sony can be number one or two in the next couple of years. I would like to be the number one or number two channel,but more importantly,I would like to be the most profitable channel.

Achieving that will not be easy. Both Star Plus and Colors are entrenched players,and their connect with the audiences is legendary. Yash Khanna,president of PR agency CMCG,who has spent about 17 years in the GEC segment (with Star India,in various positions),says,It is definitely possible to displace the number one channel as has been seen when Star Plus overtook Zee in 2000 and again last year when Colors displaced Star Plus. Sony will need to strengthen its distribution along with the programming strategy to achieve this.

The GEC space has been extremely dynamic especially since the launch of Viacom18s channel Colors in 2008. In the battle among Colors,Star Plus,Zee,NDTV Imagine and Sony for the viewers attention,Sony took a beating as it slipped to the number five position. But now Sony seems confident with its new position and wants to further move up the ladder by strengthening its fiction programming. When we got into the system,we spent time developing our programming strategy. We were in a bit of a disarray as we didnt know who we were catering to. There is a lot that we achieved through market research. It brought some science to the art form of programming. We figured out who our audience was going to be (both in small and big town) and what our positioning was going to be. We did not want family dramas. We decided that we will try and be aspirational for women, said Singh.

Explains Ajit Thakur,business head,Sony,Our scheduling of shows is different from the other GECs. We have a very different view of the audience. We not only target housewives,but also the youth. We believe that a younger audience will help in future growth too. The balance between men and women is good in our case. Every programme has a primary target audience but we make sure that it doesnt alienate the rest of the family.

Thakur says that to get the channel to where it is today was a daunting task. He attributes the success to Sonys strong brand equity and distinctive positioning. I dont believe in the number game as the whole landscape keeps changing. The idea is to grow in a sustainable and profitable manner. Sonys current advertising revenue is pegged at around Rs 250-275 crore (after KBC 4),according to industry sources. The distribution revenue is more than Rs 200 crore,according to sources.

The head of a rival GEC blames poor fiction for Sonys weak performance. Sony has been a pioneer in its programming,bringing Indian audiences shows such as Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahi and was the first to think of reality shows such as Indian Idol,Bigg Boss and Khatron Ke Khiladi. But in recent years,its experimentation with new forms of fiction were not too successful. Early this year,it tied up with Yash Raj Films for a slew of fiction programmes,but these havent had audiences riveted.

Says Singh,It was weekly fiction rather than daily fiction and this was new for the Indian audience. We knew this but we also knew that when audience starts understanding this,we will have loyalists. It will be a different breed of audience and it will have a different kind of involvement. While,certainly the TRPs (television rating points) may not have been as high as we wanted,people who were watching that programming were opinion leaders. The advertising support for that kind of audience was huge. We understand that probably we were too far ahead of our audience so with the second season,we are going to pull back a little. We will find a sort of a mid-ground and have more mass appeal.

The channel is also looking at re-working its reality-fiction mix. Right now the fiction-reality mix is 75-25 but it may go up to 90-10. We may do a few reality shows during the weekends and nothing during the weekdays. Fiction will be the dominant form of entertainment. It will be innovative,different and weekly, says Singh. The next big-ticket reality show on Sony will be an Indian version of hit British show X Factor.

Thakur also feels that getting a lot of new people in the fiction team at Sony will help. Overall,we have a brilliant and a younger team now. There is a lot more aggression now, says Thakur.

On the management side,Singh feels that Sony Entertainment has the best team in the business which can make the channel achieve its goal. There was a major churn in the top management some time back after the exit of Kunal Dasgupta (who was the CEO of MSM) but now the team is in place with Ajit Thakur as business head,Ajay Balwankar as programming head,Danish Khan as marketing head and NP Singh as chief operating officer of MSM.

Says Singh,The churn that took place was to de-layer the organisation as it was too hierarchical. Now there is stability,clarity of vision and commitment to vision. We encourage risk taking throughout the organisation. We aim to create a culture where our employees feel like that they can innovate. We are making very conscious effort to include everyone as a lot of programming ideas come from within.

MSM,which was launched in India in 1995,comprises Sony,Max which is its movies and special events channel,SAB,a Hindi comedy channel and Pix,a Hollywood movie channel. Apart from Sony,MSM is now also looking at strengthening SAB,Max and Pix. While Anooj Kapoor is the business head of SAB TV,Sneha Rajani and Sunder Aaron are the respective executive vice-president and business heads of Max and Pix.

Singh says,We decided to make SAB a complete comedy channel. We made it a first in every sense,be it the first courtroom comedy,Tarak Mehta kind of comedy,etc. That has been very successful. We have tripled our ratings with SAB. Max is the number one Hindi movie channel. We know that we will have to invest in buying big properties so we buy big properties like 3 Idiots and very consciously keep the image of Max as the number one channel.

It has been the same with Pix. With Pix,we have evolved our strategy. We decided to take a few risks and put out a few premiers like Slumdog Millionaire,Michael Jackson’s This Is It to see how we would do. These were number one rated movie premieres. So we have decided to put all Sony movie premieres on Pix and beat Star Movies,HBO and everyone, says Singh.

The media company is also ready to explore other avenues and is once again attempting to expand its portfolio of channels. It has already announced its plans to launch an exclusive sports channel. Singh says,We know that cricket is disruptive to the movie watching experience so we will make Sony Max an exclusive movie channel and will soon launch a sports channel on which the premier property will be the Indian Premier League (IPL),which is the biggest sports property in India.

Singh says that it will take some time as the other sports properties on the channel have to be of the calibre of IPL. It will take sometime to get all the rights together as they come up at different points. We won’t launch unless we have a number of rights that compliment IPL. When we launch,we will be the most premier sports channel with properties that will compliment IPL.

Media analysts have their doubts about how profitable the channel can be as the prices of sports properties are shooting up. Says CMCG’s Khanna,”It will be a difficult space. The prices are way too high and advertisers can’t match upto that kind of money. They can have a profitable sports channel only when the distribution money starts coming.”

While the sports channel will take some time,the company is almost ready to launch its Hindi music channel. Says Singh,We are looking at a pure Hindi music channel on which the type of music will change depending on the audience segment watching the channel at different points of time. There will be film-based love songs for the housewives in the afternoon and higher tempo music in the evening for the youth. Different parts of the day will be dedicated to different kinds of music. There will be no reality. It will be 100 per cent music. On being asked if it will be similar to 9XM (Bollywood music channel from the INX Media group),Singh justifies,9XM has some of the elements that we are looking at but it is not day-part positioned. It is aimed at a certain audience throughout the day. We will do things a bit differently. There will be different concepts for radio jockeys.

MSM has been contemplating entering the regional market for sometime now. When I took over,we were looking at the regional space but the valuations were very high. Then came the financial crisis and everything slowed down. Now we are ready to get re-started. As we are getting a bit late into the space,the best approach for us is to acquire. We are in discussions with different players in different markets. In the next 12 months,we will make an entry into the regional market, says Singh. Right now it has only one regional channelSony Aatha Bengali movie channel,but it now plans to get into Gujarati,Bhojpuri and South Indian regional channel space.

The interesting thing here is that it might be a difficult market to crack as players like Zee and Star already have a host of channels in this space. Says Khanna,Regional is definitely growing faster than the GEC sector. TV penetration is growing in smaller towns where people would prefer watching regional channels. Even though Sony has announced its plans to launch regional channels,Star and Zee have an advantage as they are already established in the space.

While we will wait,watch and evaluate these developments as and when they happen in the future,MSM’s biggest property till date,IPL,will soon be back with its fourth season. However,IPL 4 is shrouded with a lot of controversy and would be devoid of two teamsRajasthan Royals and Kings XI. Singh,however,is optimistic about IPL 4. He says,When the lights are on in the stadium and the best cricketers walk onto the field,nothing else matters. All that people want to see is a great game and great entertainment. IPL is for the family and people are really looking forward to season 4. From the advertisers’ perspective,it is the only risk-free cricket. For IPL 4,we will roll out a joint promotion campaign with BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India).

I would like (it) to be the most profitable channel

For Multi Screen Medias (MSM) flagship channel Sony Entertainment Television,which slipped to the fifth position in the general entertainment channel space in the last two years,a turnaround has been elusive. Finally,this year,it climbed back to the number three position. In an interview with BrandWagon,MSM chairman Manjit Singh talks about Sonys turnaround strategy and the goals it has set for itself. Edited excerpts.

What was your mandate when you took over as the chairman of MSM?
Three and a half years ago,when I took over as chairman,we were really interested in looking at new initiatives like regional channels. The management was focused on looking at existing business. Eighteen months ago,I took over as the CEO and came into direct line management. At that time,we were at a low point. The programming wasnt working. The mandate was to turn the business around and get it back to where it used to be. In 2000-2001,we were number the one channel.

Thus,the mandate was to get all the channels working as none of the channels were working except for Max. Today,we are number three with Sony and have three channels in the top ten channels. So,we have achieved what we set out to do.

Do you think there are still some objectives that are unfulfilled?
Absolutely. We had a turnaround time of three years to become the most profitable channel and there is still some time to go. I would like to see SET as the number one or number two channel. We will take about 12 months to enter the regional market but this was planned as we needed to take a breather to get our core business right. There is no point in adding new business if your base business isnt working. Now that we are comfortable,know what we are doing and have a process in place for our core business,we are ready to expand to regional space.

We understand that the regional market is growing rapidly and we definitely need to be in that space.

You want to be the number one GEC in the next one year. What is the plan of action on that front?
I would like to be the number one or number two channel,but more importantly,I would like to be the most profitable channel. The way to become the most profitable channel or the number one channel is to get your fiction working. So,that is the plan going ahead. Reality can get you only so far. It is a tempo. But beyond that,you have to build great fiction. So the focus is on getting the fiction product right. We want to differentiate it from our competitors while imbibing traditional Sony values of innovation,of being traditional and upbeat. We want the viewers to feel that their dreams are being spun out in fiction. They should be able to relate to it in both small and big towns. Thats really the positioning.

What is the biggest challenge in front of you now?
It is not only for us but for all the broadcasters. It is the issue of distribution the under-reporting of subscriber numbers and the huge carriage fees that we pay. This makes our business model over-dependent on advertisers and,as we know,advertising is dependent on the economy. Our big challenge is to get the number of subscribers right so that we can get our share of subscription revenue. The other challenge is to continue the innovation in our programming.