News TV staff salaries spiral up

The employee cost in a news channel as a ratio of its operating cost is headed north. Data culled from the quarterly results, annual reports and red rerring prospectuses of some news channel broadcasters show that the employee cost has shot up by between 30 per cent and 100 per cent.

TV Today's unaudited financial results for the quarter ending September 30 show that the company's employee cost has doubled over the same period last year. It has increased from Rs 3.30 crore in July-September 2003 to Rs 6.31 crore in the same quarter this year.

Even as part of the total cost of operations, the expenditure on employees has gone up. For instance, in 2001, TV Today's employee cost was about 17 per cent of its cost of operations. In 2004, it is touching 25 per cent.

The employee cost for NDTV Ltd is nearly 40 per cent of its operating cost. In March 2004, NDTV Ltd's and its ad sales company NDTV Media Ltd's wage bill was Rs 42.89 crore. This was higher than the Rs 35.69 crore that NDTV incurred as employee cost in March 2003 before it turned a broadcaster.

TV Today's executive director G Krishnan says that the company's employee cost shows an increase as it launched the English news channel Headlines Today. However, he also adds that the salaries in the news television business have reached unrealistic levels.

The reasons for the burgeoning wage bills are not hard to find. For starters, almost all the news broadcasters have either added or are planning to add more channels to their kitty and are, consequently, hiring more people. TV Today, for instance, had 403 employees in March 2003. In the same month this year, its employee number stood at 650.

Secondly, wage bills are shooting up as demand is outstripping supply. With a plethora of new channels in the general and business news category such as CNBC Byapar and business channels from TV Today, NDTV and Times TV on the cards, poaching is pushing salaries up.

In fact, incentives to retain people have also inflated company wage bills. Insiders at Sahara's news channel admit giving a 30-35 per cent salary hike to prevent people from switching jobs.

"It is critical to retain people as newcomers take time to adjust to the new work environment. Even though all the news channels are using server-based systems, these vary and it may take up to six months to master a new one," says a senior Sahara executive.

To retain people, Aaj Tak is said to have given up to 50 per cent hike in salaries this year. The company, however, devised a scheme where a lump sum is given only at the completion of one year. The idea is to block money and discourage employee churn.

Krishnan expects the average salary to stabilise in a year or two when there will be a surplus of trained people produced by the growing number of training schools in the country.

"Besides the companies will also re-engineer themselves. They will curb costs with the help of multi-tasking and introducing new technology," he concludes.