Victory in defeat

BACKSTAGE

He is hooked on to Zee TV's 10.30 pm serial, Teen Bahuraniyan. "Frankly, I have little choice at home "" I watch whatever my wife is watching," says Jawahar Goel, managing director of Dish TV, the DTH company of the Essel Group. "It's an interesting soap dealing with the politics of a joint family," he adds. However, it was a political soap of a different kind that Goel, president of Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF), the eight-year-old television association, had to contend with last week. He was re-elected IBF president for the second consecutive year last month and in early October, the association announced a 25 per cent surcharge on all advertising on television networks. IBF also set an October 16 deadline for the advertisers to conform to the new spot rates.

IBF's basic argument was that advertisers had not revised ad rates in the last five years despite a sharp increase in the number of cable television viewers "" from 40 million to 70 million households. It also asked for more transparency in the media-buying process. "Media agencies buy spots in bulk from channels for Rs X and sell it to advertisers for Rs Y. Besides they never pay on time and blame it on the client (read advertiser)," says Goel.

To be sure, Goel was merely advocating the view of the broadcasting industry, including major networks such as Sony Entertainment Television, Star India, Network 18, NDTV and Sahara, among others. However, advertisers and agencies represented by the Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA) and the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) did not buy IBF's logic and when channels started dropping spots, the ISA decided to take legal recourse.

Cracks appeared in the IBF rather quickly and the body backtracked on its advisory on dropping ads. Clearly, Goel was unable to keep the IBF members united. So does he see it as a loss of face? "Not at all. Our purpose was served. The intention was to draw attention. Clients are now aware of our problems." Though many channel executives are disappointed at the "unstructured" way the entire exercise was conducted, some others see it as a milestone of sorts. "Never before have so many rival channels come together for a cause, even if for a day," insists an NDTV executive.

Goel, of course, sees the coming together of arch rivals as a "collective achievement" and not a "personal" one. A media industry source says that though the top ad sales executives of Sony, Zee and Star were responsible for driving the effort to get fair value for ads on television, the credit of leading the cause cannot be taken away from the 53-year-old IBF president. His friends say that he's a man of action who'd rather roll up his sleeves and get down to work than wait and watch the action from the sidelines.

It is for this quality that Essel Group Chairman Subhash Chandra's younger brother, Goel, gets to manage different projects that need a hands-on man. Earlier, he successfully managed the group's cable business Siti Cable. Today, other than Dish TV, he is responsible for the entire media group's technology requirements. He also manages the regulatory and legal issues on behalf of the broadcaster.

Famous for being outspoken, Goel is confident that despite the recent setback, IBF will manage to get broadcasters' their due. "Our surcharge will be applicable on all new advertising deals. Even Doordarshan and the southern channels which work on the slot-sale model have assured us of implementing the surcharge. Our crusade has just begun."