 "N P Singh")
After taking on the Multi Screen Media (MSM) CEO’s mantle from Man Jit Singh, N P Singh has made it clear that correcting the course of SET (Sony Entertainment Television), MSM’s flagship channel, is the first thing on his plate. He tells Urvi Malvania and Sayantani Kar how he will do it. The former MSM COO will also be responsible for MAX, SAB, PIX, MIX and SIX – the network’s other channels. But sports is the genre that MSM will have exciting announcements to make in soon. Edited excerpts:
An urban focus and weak weekday fiction have been SET’s problems. But how are you addressing them?
We want to relook the whole fiction strategy. Our weekend has been traditionally very strong and all our shows on the weekend are doing well. For our weekday shows, we have started the process of revamping. There is, of course, the show with Mrs (Jaya) Bachchan, a daily weekday show before the IPL.
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The objective is to retain our loyal audience and communicate to the audience in the small towns. That will happen through the kind of content we are launching and also our timings. We will have shows that will appeal more to small towns in the early prime-time hours. There are other slots that need to be looked at and we shall launch new shows replacing some of the existing shows. There are some shows already in the pipeline.
How are you finding out what these towns want?
We are doing a lot of qualitative research through focus groups and ground activation and response. We have been doing these in the past three-four months. I personally will go to these markets to talk to people to understand their aspirations and expectations from TV content. We need to first make our content accessible to the smaller towns.
You have already started...
It has already started. So, if you look at the two new shows, the stories will appeal to a wider cross-section with inclusive concepts such as bonding between a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law and a thriller drama. The feedback has been good. At 10 pm, Maharana Pratap has a time-spent of 18 minutes for a half-hour slot. It is one of the country’s top three shows.
But there are still weak markets for the show too...
The issue is reach. I am focusing on improving sampling in some of the markets where people are not sampling it. We will go to these markets specifically through aggressive marketing and take the cast for ground activations. There is still scope to improve the show’s TVT performance. Distribution is not an issue for the channel.
What had gone wrong earlier?
Some of our content did not work as well, say, the lead cast did not work, some execution went awry. Digitisation and the rating agency’s expanding universe (to include small towns) also took a toll on SET’s fiction show ratings.
Will your small-towns inclusion dilute SET’s appeal?
SET appeals to 1 million-plus and 0.1-1 million population towns and SEC A,B and C. We will retain the core positioning – of aspiration. Small-town aspirations are very similar to the rest of the country.
At one point of time you were on the verge of acquiring Maa TV. For your regional foray, will you acquire or create new channels?
We are in conversation again. We are not thinking of launching a new channel from scratch. We are present in Bengal through a channel called Sony Aath and are doing reasonably well. We plan to expand to other markets. We will make that choice in the next few months. As a national player, we will explore all the strategic markets.
Even though we will not make any separate investments, we have done regional innovations in sports and were the first ones to do it. A tournament like IPL was broadcast in Bengali, all the 14 games of Kolkata Knight Riders were broadcast live on Sony Aath with Bangla commentary.
What are your plans for sports, including Sony Six?
Our focus is on the quality rather than the quantity. There are brands like TNA Wrestling that are popular with the older generation. Sony Six has found traction among the youth as the UFC and NBA are popular with them. We have the rights to the UEFA Euro 2016, all the European qualifiers and so also the FIFA qualifiers (football) till 2018. Youth is following a lot of football.
Any plans to acquire rights to the FIFA World Cup matches?
No comments for now. We are in the middle of the week, may be towards the end of the week, we will make some announcements.
What groundwork did you do with Man Jit Singh that will help in course corrections?
In the last five years we have taken the network from its losses to being a profitable one. We have invested in new channels. There have also been investments in distribution. SAB had weak markets, some of which have been taken care of. We also made investments in Sony Pix’s weaker markets in Bangalore, Pune and Ahmedabad.
