Nick's desi trick

Pradeep Hejmadi

The children's channel is going local. Will it work?

Gerald and Jamie, Eliza and Debbie, and Chuckie and Tommy behave like most siblings do. They squabble, outbid each other and wear their rivalry like a badge. On August 19, they declared peace.

As part of its Raksha Bandhan special, children's entertainment channel Nick India showed these six sibling characters from three shows (Hey Arnold!, The Wild Thornberrys and Rugrats) being nice to each other.

Okay, so they didn't tie rakhis on each other or dress up in Indian clothing, but as Pradeep Hejmadi, director, business and operations, Nick India, says, "For a child it does not matter whether the show is American or Indian. The concept is important."

And Nick has a lot of concept selling to do. The American channel, which re-entered Indian homes in 2004, is a low fifth among the seven television channels that cater exclusively to children, according to research by Tam Media.

Nickelodeon, a children's channel from the US-based media giant Viacom, entered Indian homes through two windows in 1999. It had a syndicated block on Zee Network, which showed programmes dubbed in Hindi. Then, Siti Cable, the cable network of Zee, beamed the English channel.

At the time, Nickelodeon claimed to be one up on the competition because it could boast live action productions, apart from the regular animated shows. The only other children's channel at the time was Cartoon Network, which concentrated exclusively on animation.

Hejmadi says that this dual strategy was implemented to increase brand penetration. The Zee TV presence was aimed at taking the brand to the masses and introduce Indian kids to American programming. But the positioning was clear "" it was to be an all-American programming mix.

It didn't work. Zee, which had taken on Nickelodeon after losing the Disney block to Sony Entertainment Television (SET), soon found itself regretting the decision. "It turned out to be a disaster. The all-American programming with poor quality dubbing did not appeal at all to younger audiences," says a former Zee executive, who was associated with the Nickelodeon block. Hejmadi disagrees. "Content was not a problem. We had some teething troubles with distribution, which were being resolved."

Still, Zee was obviously not convinced. By 2002, it had quit its alliance with Nickelodeon and instead signed on with Cartoon Network.

Around the same time, Viacom decided to hand over the distribution of Nickelodeon to its other channel, MTV Networks. And in 2004, MTV and Nickelodeon joined the SET-Discovery promoted bouquet, One Alliance. The new alliance boasted of an audience of more than 22 million homes "" five times the size of Siticable's reach of 4 million-plus homes.

Still, Nickelodeon was lagging behind. And in the meantime, the children's entertainment sphere was turning on its head. Five new channels targeted at younger audiences came on air in 2004 "" Cartoon Network launched Pogo in January, followed by Sony's Animax in July. UTV's Hungama in November and the two Disney channels (Toon Disney and Disney Channel) in December.

Along with the number of players, the revenue pie also increased marginally. According to TAM Media Research findings, while young audience viewership in children's channels and blocks on general entertainment channels remained stagnant at 2 per cent of total viewership between 2002 and 2004, advertising revenue for these sectors grew one percentage point over the same period, to touch 3 per cent. Not surprisingly, Viacom decided to renew its focus on Nickelodeon.

Internal studies showed that Nickelodeon as a name was considered difficult to pronounce, and had low brand recall among Indian children. The result: Nickelodeon became Nick India. And along with the new name also came the new strategy "" investing in local productions.

First came a new brand ambassador: actor Saif Ali Khan, who declared in ads that Nick was now in Hindi. The Hindi feed was also increased substantially. In its earlier avatar, the channel had a Hindi audio feed for 12 hours on weekdays and seven and a half hours on weekends. This has now been increased to 19.5 hours on weekdays and 17.5 hours on weekends.

Then there was Jadoo, a serial based on the alien from Bollywood blockbuster Koi Mil Gaya. The show premiered on Children's Day in 2004. The series saw more than 660,000 kids tuning in, of which nearly 10 per cent participated in the "I want to be with Jadoo" contest, which was aired in the final episode.

According to Hejmadi, the show acted as a catalyst for the channel. The character made appearances at various McDonald's outlets and Nick claims that footfalls on those days increased five times.

Nick India's efforts seem to be paying off. From a cumulative reach of 8 per cent in February 2005, Nick India reached 15 per cent in July. The channel is now looking at movie acquisitions and home productions from its division Nick Movies. As Hejmadi says, "We are trying to do what Nick has done worldwide "" localise and grow."

But media planners are still wary of the channel. Although they claim to be impressed with the latest offerings, few are prepared to put their "" and their client's "" money where their mouths are.

Debbie and Eliza may have called off their battle, but the war of viewership continues.