The news broadcasting business is on an upswing with the market growing over 25 per cent over the past year. This is also the highest growth by any broadcasting genre and comes at a time when conventional wisdom said that there was no space for so many news channels in India. TV Today, the company that runs Aaj Tak and Headlines Today, is one of the broadcasters to reap the benefits of this, with some aggressive growth plans including an international foray.
Its Chief Executive G Krishnan thinks India has space for many news channels, provided they can identify a market and tap it properly. He spoke to Bipin Chandran about the Indian broadcasting sector, the news channel market and TV Today's plans.
Excerpts:
The television news channel business is on an upswing again. The overall news market is also doing well. Is the news broadcasting business becoming a profitable venture?
Though the news broadcasting business sector may be doing well as a whole, not all companies are doing well financially. You need to look at the financial aspect of these channels, too.
Let's look at the channels in the news segment. I do not have the news business accounts for Star, Doordarshan, Zee or Sahara, as these companies have only consolidated accounts and not individual channel accounts.
That leave us and NDTV, which can be the benchmarks for the performance of news business. We are in a good financial state and NDTV seems to be, too.
But I am sure that there are a whole host of news channels that are not making money and are still burning funds to establish themselves. News is a serious business and a 24-hour news channel is a difficult business to be in.
The entertainment business had also seen a mushrooming of channels and most of them have survived. Is this applicable to news channels as well?
News and entertainment broadcasting are different ballgames. Entertainment broadcasting may be more expensive than news. But in entertainment, you can get content from a number of sources.
If you look at the entertainment programmes aired by most channels, little is produced in-house. It is different with news. You produce all your 24-hour news content and that is a challenge. The revenue stream is also different for the two segments.
How do you see the broadcasting business evolving in India? Will it be like the US and Europe with a few national players dominating the market and niche players feeding specific markets?
The biggest problem we have in India now is that there are a lot of unclear areas. Nobody knows the future of Trai's (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) recommendations on broadcasting or cable distribution.
What is the future of direct-to-home (DTH) TV? Are the DTH players serious and how is the business evolving? All these questions have to be answered before we address the future of the broadcasting business in India.
Trai and the government seem to be at loggerheads over the policy recommendations. How does the broadcasting sector view this?
The realm of the government and Trai is like that of the Church and the State. Trai should only recommend the technology and not interfere in the commercial aspect of the business; let the market decide that.
The government, too, should stay away from the commercial aspects of the business. It should set broad rules and ensure that companies follow them. It does that in the case of the print media; it does not decide the price of the papers or the modes of distribution.
The regulation of the cable industry has been a problematic area for the government.
We do not want the cable industry to be regulated. What we want from the cable operator is transparency and the government has a role to play there. Just like broadcasters have Television Audience Measurement (TAM) to decide the various aspects of a channel reach and programme, the cable industry should also have a body that accounts for the reach of cable operators and the number of households he services.
This will bring in substantial stability to the broadcasting business.
Another area the cable networks should look at is adopting new technologies. They should go digital now. That is the only way they can compete with new broadcasting distribution systems like DTH or broadband. That is what has happened in other developed markets.
Where will TV Today be, given that there is no clarity about regulation or in the channel distribution area?
There are two areas that we should look at for growth. The domestic market, where there is immense scope. Two, the international market, where we are considering regions like West Asia, the US and Europe.
In these markets, our model will be predominantly subscription-led, with 70 per cent of the revenue coming from subscribers and the rest from advertising.
In the domestic market we have to restrict ourselves to an advertising-led model. We can look at subscription revenue in a serious way once the government addresses the distribution business and models.
How do you plan the international foray? Will you be setting up different channels for each region?
In international markets we will have to get on to one of the existing platforms and look at expanding there. We do not have to launch different channels in each of these markets "" we will have to split the feed and distribute it according to the different time zones, just as CNN or BBC operate their international channels.
But some of your competitors "" like Star News "" are already in these markets. Won't you be at a disadvantage?
It is true that Star News is on the BSkyB and Direct TV platforms in the UK and the US. But the key is to offer what the consumer wants at an affordable price. We want to be on an existing platform and add value to it to be able to charge the consumer a fee. We will not just offer news from India but local and Asian news as well.
What is your strategy for Headlines Today?
If we compare the channel with what it was a year ago, I am happy with the way it has grown. We have a good market share and have overtaken the market leader in certain areas. Besides, we have also had consistent growth in terms of the viewership time spent on the channel.
Now we will look at getting a larger share of weekend viewing. Besides, we are in the process of establishing the channel in key metro cities. Once we achieve this, the other regions will follow. We are building a brand in these markets.
You had talked about launching channels in other languages and regions. How have these plans progressed?
We have decided to hold those plans for now. We want to concentrate on the two existing channels and will look at other options only after that.
Once we achieve what we want, we will look at other markets and reach out to them with a great business opportunity. But we will do only what we are strong in "" is news. We will not look at entertainment or sports as an option.
