Channel V has revamped its content with more reality shows. Can it regain its market position?
Prem Kamat, Channel V’s senior vice-president, has the look of a content man. Sitting back comfortably on a sofa in his Mumbai office, he’s unruffled by even the tricky questions. The reason, says he, is the unprecedented success the channel has seen in the last few weeks. Within a month of its re-launch, Channel V delivered its best performance in the last 145 weeks — close to three years. Four weeks before its re-launch on August 29, the channel’s gross rating points stood at 16, while MTV’s was 39 and 9XM’s 17. Following the re-launch, Channel V is at 20, 9XM has fallen to 12. MTV still leads the pack with 32 but its lead over Channel V has shortened.
The revamped strategy has more than one dimension. On the content front, there is a brand new mix — 60 per cent music and 40 per cent reality television. Earlier, music made up about 95 per cent of the mix, while shows were a measly five per cent. Likewise, broadcast design has also undergone a major overhaul. Every week will see a new logo that will be designed by the channel’s graphics team. Break bumpers too have been changed from “Bai” to “Bhai”.
This, to be sure, is not the first time the channel has re-launched. In a span of 15 years, the channel has undergone five changes. Arch rival MTV, which delinked from Star in 1994, has had a successful run at the top, though it tweaked its strategy earlier this year to include more reality shows and improve its play list of songs. It can now claim better viewership than a host of lifestyle channels.
Rise and fall
So why has Channel V been unable to establish itself as the market leader, especially considering its successful start 15 years ago with the “Hinglish” programming that comprised a mix of Hindi songs and western numbers? The reason has a lot to do with MTV’s rise in India since 1996. Seeing the success of Channel V, MTV upped the ante with a Hindi-English mix of roughly 80:20.
The move worked. In February 1997, Channel V had a commanding 53.3 per cent of the viewership, while MTV was 26 per cent (market share in the music channel space). A year later, Channel V’s rating dropped ten points, while MTV’s had risen to 34.4 per cent. At the same time, Zee Network’s Zee Music also managed to gain. In 1999, Channel V had ceded the top spot and got dislodged to third place.
That triggered a wake-up call for the channel and it repositioned itself as a youth channel. In terms of content, music still made up about 70 per cent of the programming. However, it introduced about 25 new programmes, 17 of them being non-music. Still, there were no signs of improvement. At the same time, MTV too tweaked its content towards the youth. The difference was while Channel V’s audience was more homogenous with shows like Style Police and Virtual V, MTV relied on corny humour, a case in point being MTV Bakra that appealed more to the Indian audience.
The media environment too had changed. General entertainment channels had infiltrated the music space and launched a slew of music shows. On top of that, music was now freely available on the Net, iPod and mobile phone.
Being relevant
Now, a decade later, Channel V is going down the same youth road, albeit better equipped. Around February this year, the channel decided that if the consumer won’t come to it, it will go to the consumer. A detailed in-house study was conducted on 4,000 individuals across seven metros to gauge the mind of 17-year-olds. This time around, the channel figured that the behaviour, attitude and aspiration of its core age group of 17 to 24 were varied. More importantly, it identified that young Indians are not one homogenous set. Thus, based on the behaviour trends of the youth, Kamat and his team picked the elements that were highest on relevance, intensity of involvement and entertainment factor. “The youth have been consuming more than music,” says Kamat.
Based on the four-month-long research, the channel came up with four big themes for the youth today that include relationships, belonging to the peer group, recreation and grooming. In line with that, it launched the shows Exhausted, Kidnap (both game shows) and Dare to Date (based on the concept of blind dates). Additionally, it has also launched two small format shows called Lola Sunday and Campus Blogs. “Channel V is iconic to the youth and we believe we have both the personality and brand equity to draw our target audience,” says Kamat.
Interestingly, 70 per cent of this content is created by the channel itself, while the rest will be acquired foreign formats. To ensure that its message is heard, the channel has gone in for a full 360-degree campaign.
This shift is significant for many reasons. One, it is the fifth time that the channel has undergone a facelift since its launch in 1994. Two, it’s an admission that the previous positioning hadn’t really worked. The new model offers the channel greater monetisation and flexibility than its earlier version. The spot rates for reality shows are sold at a huge premium.
For his part, Kamat feels that this move is a big differentiator for the channel. “Music across all channels is the same and this helps us stand out,” he says. Ten years ago, the consumption of music was about 70-80 per cent, while the content mix was about 95 per cent. Hence, the focus was completely on music. “That is changing with pure music losing its sheen,” he adds.
Kamat is also gung ho about audience engagement. By that he means digital activities on its website that will be associated with relevant brands. For instance, the channel’s latest show, Kidnap, got no fewer than 700,000 responses on its website, the highest for any show so far. “It’s these intangible activities that drive viewership,” he explains. As a result, the website too is going to be re-launched starting November 15 with 90 per cent of the content custom-created. Not surprisingly, Kamat admits that at a more suitable point, he’s hoping to monetise the website as well.
Tough market
The flipside of the entire initiative is the fact that the channel looks at a narrow market — 15- to 24-year-olds in the socio-economic categories A and B in metros and Hindi-speaking markets. That’s limiting to say the least. Also, typically the cost of making reality shows is far higher than any music show. Music channels can actually be run by spending a minimum amount on programming while revenues can be more than double of that. “But you see in reality shows the dividends are rich,” smiles Kamat.
Of course, the current change is not without its naysayers. There is a wide section of industry analysts and experts that believes that these channels will always only make up a quarter of a typical general entertainment channel’s rating. Either way, most believe that this is a do or die situation for the channel.
According to PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Associate Director, Entertainment and Media, Smita Jha, ad rates are benchmarked on ratings and reality shows have been doing well in that respect. But the pecking order is what counts, which is where niche channels such as Channel V tend to lose out to general entertainment channels, news and movie channels. “Also if you talk to advertisers they don’t really shift the media plans based on weekly ratings but more on quarterly basis. A channel has to be consistently doing well to feature on their radar,” she says. As for paying premium for ad spots, she feels it gets diluted by bonus spots that are provided to advertisers, which usually sends averages very low. “Advertisers don’t really pay extra, but they will put their money on shows that do exceptionally well,” Jha adds.
If she sees scope for niche channels, it’s in the space of digitisation — or direct-to-home. “Here consumers choose what they want to watch, that’s where real value lies. Otherwise, niche channels only get marginalised.”
For now, the move it seems has paid off. Exhausted has become the most successful launch for Channel V in the last one year, recording ratings of 0.21 — it was watched by 0.21 per cent of the cable and satellite homes in the country. However, the real winner has been Dare to Date which has already begun contributing 10 per cent of the GRPs to the channel. As for market share, this is the first time Channel V has seen an uptick in three years at 0.5 per cent. But the question is, can it keep up the pace?
