LUNCH WITH BS: Kunal Dasgupta

'Audience fragmentation is a challenge'

Kunal Dasgupta

Sony Entertainment's CEO feels US style TV consolidation is unlikely because Indians want to create businesses.

A Bengali to the core, "ilish macher shorshe bata (Hilsa fish in mustard sauce)", cannot but be a favourite, especially during the monsoon. But Kunal Dasgupta, CEO, Sony Entertainment Television (SET), is also partial to Japanese food "" sushi and sashimi "" because he says, it's so light and yet so tasty. Dasgupta confesses he's a foodie "" he also enjoys Chettinad and Malabar cuisine. Unfortunately, the "Lunch with BS" that we have planned at the Taj Land's End, doesn't work out because he has a meeting, so we decide to drive with him into town, to catch up on the latest happenings in the television world. It's also true that the portly Dasgupta is trying to shed a few pounds by playing golf at least a couple of times a week at the Bombay Presidency in Chembur, and perhaps didn't mind skipping lunch as much as we did, write Business Standard.

The competition in the television industry is getting keener by the day admits Dasgupta, who's not into management books because he doesn't believe you can learn too much from them. However, despite the proliferation of channels, he does not see any US-style consolidation in the industry for a while. That's because of the entrepreneurial zeal that people in this country have, wanting to create businesses and, also because, right now, there is enough easy money to bankroll projects, says the Sony chief, who enjoys reading biographies. His top pick: Passion to Win by Sumner Redstone, Viacom's Chairman and CEO, in which he reveals how he battled his way to head one of the world's biggest media empires.

Dasgupta's probably taken a leaf or two out of the book in trying to build the business at Sony where he's now spent eleven years. He claims there's no politics in the company and is proud that it's probably the only company that has an alumni association. Right now though, he's got his work cut out with Sony's flagship general entertainment channel having yielded some ground to Zee, during the prime time hours"" between eight and ten in the evenings.

"It's happened just for the last couple of months," Dasgupta says, adding that a couple of Sony's shows that were being aired between nine and ten didn't work out too well. He feels it's just a matter of two programmes and since Zee has been lagging Sony for five years, two or three months will not make much of a difference to the brand. While revenues have been impacted somewhat, the Sony chief, who cut his teeth with Plus Channel in his earlier assignment with Blowplast, is confident that they will bounce back once the new programmes start becoming more popular. While advertising revenues have been growing at around six to seven per cent annually, in the last few years, subscription revenues from cable have remained flat.

DTH, he is convinced, will change all that. With plasma TV, LCDs and home theatre becoming more popular, DTH, he says, will become the preferred platform in the next three or four years, acquiring scale and becoming easier to operate.

Dasgupta himself is a quite a film buff addicted to Spielberg, James Cameron and Karan Johar. He does some amount of home video shooting on the weekends, which he says is strictly reserved for the family. However, he says he'd rather be an entrepreneur than a creative person, because he likes managing talent.

Sony, he explains, has agreed to provide its content to both the Sky TV and Dish TV platforms, rather than venture into the DTH space on its own because it cannot see any advantage in doing so. The "must provide" clause, he believes, is an irrelevant item of legislation since market forces and consumer demand will be the deciding factors.

One of the serials that Dasgupta never missed was Pankaj Parashar's Karamchand, the popular detective serial of the eighties, and quite different from anything else being shown at the time. He seems to have been quite inspired by it and has tried to be different, partly because soaps have never done too well on Sony. The CEO claims the channel's audiences are different. He says the content caters to a progressive mindset, at the same time, rooted in tradition.

The repositioned SAB TV, which Sony acquired recently, will, while retaining the comedy element, cater to a younger and metro-skewed audience, he says, noting that while earlier the channel tended towards male audience, it is now attempting to cater to women viewers.

The increasing fragmentation of television audiences and markets, however, is becoming a challenge, admits Dasgupta, though he feels that like in the West, general entertainment and film channels will continue to draw the majority of the audiences. Nonetheless, Sony, he says, will be looking to leverage its content and audience through other platforms such as mobile phones, Internet and home video spaces. "There is huge untapped potential to utilise the existing content and it's also a good way to increase margins," he says, adding that the initiatives,will require an investment of at least Rs 25-30 crore.

However, Sony, has no plans for going public right now, with cash flows strong enough to take care of investments, especially since there is no debt on the books. Dasgupta concedes though that the Indian promoters, as also institutional investors, want an exit and new buyers, whether private equity funds or others, too want the assurance of an IPO at some time.

With the Champions Trophy around the corner and the World Cup Cricket tournament next year, Sony is looking forward to its revenues getting a boost. "Will Mandira Bedi still be around?" Dasgupta does not reveal anything.

We've reached the venue for his meeting and we agree that we must definitely do a lunch at "Oh Calcutta" before the monsoon ends.