'We have gained viewers'

Subhash Chandra's younger brother Laxmi Narain Goel took over as director news group at Zee Network in June 2002.

However, with increasing competition from a host of news channels, the going has been pretty tough for Goel as Zee News slipped from being India's number one Hindi news channel three years back to occupy the fifth slot after Aaj Tak, DD News, Star News and NDTV India.

Goel told Business Standard that Zee News has nothing to worry about.
Excerpts:

How does it feel to slip to No 5 position from being No 1 in the news segment?

How do you measure the No 1 spot? Most people in the television business go by the television viewership monitoring agency TAM's findings.

But you'll have to admit that TAM's sample is limited to roughly 4,000 homes, whereas, today there are approximately 8.5 crore TV homes in the country. By our estimates Zee News reaches 2.9 crore homes. Our share of the market is 14 per cent.

In fact, we have gained viewers in the last few years. This is true for all news channels. The market share of news channels in 2001 was just over 1 per cent. Today it is around 5.6 per cent.

But are you revamping the channel or rolling out new programmes?

You will see a "new look" Zee in the new year. However, I cannot divulge details as the formal announcement will be made around the January 10. Yes, we are also working on a couple of projects.

These include programmes on health and one with a human interest angle. We hope to start these by next month.

We are also waiting for clearance from the I&B ministry to start a business channel. Once we get the clearance we could begin our Hindi business news channel within a month's time.

What about investments in technology?

Investments is an on-going process. In the last 18 months we have invested Rs 15 crore in our channel. The investments have been made in graphics machines, news automisation and OB vans.

What sort of revenues are looking forward to?

Last year (till March, 2003) Zee news clocked Rs 70 crore. We'll touch Rs 80 crore by March 2004. We have several new advertisers that have come on board. These include Coca Cola, Air India, Kenstar and Canon. Our other major advertisers include LG, Samsung, Maruti, HLL and PP Jewellers.

Zee News has just about three months to restructure its equity shareholding to comply with the government's media guidelines. Any progress on the issue?

The decision on Zee News equity restructuring will be taken at the corporate level. I just run the news channel.