NBA vs Republic TV — Pot calling the kettle…?

Republic TV’s entry, its over-the-top first week ratings, and its alleged manipulation of distribution expose the weaknesses of a system where the ratings agency is broadcaster-owned.

CHINTAMANI RAO puts the ensuing outcry in perspective

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It was inevitable. It was only a question of who would be first to pull the trigger, and when.

Two years ago, almost to the day, I raised the red flag – even before BARC started publishing data. Asked in a Q&A with The Hoot about the watermarking technology to be deployed by BARC, I had said (in part) the problem with it is that the broadcaster controls the switch. If you’re disgruntled and don’t want your channel to be measured you can simply stop watermarking, and the system will not be able to read your channel. That will distort the picture, and a major network doing that could hold the whole system to ransom.

Last week it happened. All English news channels turned off watermarking, and with that BARC’s ability to measure and report their viewership. All except Republic, that is, which was the cause of the action. The other English news broadcasters want BARC, or someone, to take action against Republic for multiple placement of the channel on distribution networks – having multiple LCNs, as it is termed.[i]

Let’s rewind a bit.

 

“He that is without sin among you…”

As Republic was gearing up for launch the word went round in the business that it had acquired multiple LCNs on several distribution networks. Perturbed, the News Broadcasters Association (NBA), of which Republic is not a member, wrote to BARC not to report its data. NBA also complained to TRAI.

Republic went on air on Saturday, 6th May. (Saturday is a good day to launch, because BARC’s reporting week is Saturday-Friday and you get a full week of data from your very first week. Data for the week are published on the following Thursday.) Accordingly, data for Week 19 (6th to 12th May) were published on 18th May – and all hell broke loose.

Republic was reported to have had, in its very first week, a 51% share of viewership of English news channels. Unthinkable, and unacceptable.

Times Now, long the undisputed leader in English news, had been widely expected to crash when Arnab Goswami quit. Everyone watched keenly but  week after week it remained no. 1, to the utter surprise and frustration of its competition. Then Goswami came back on air, now as the face of Republic, and – lo! – promptly that channel appeared on top while Times Now slid to second place. Worse, the viewership of Republic was 80% higher than that of Times Now, and twice that of the next three combined. No ifs and buts: Republic was it.

Meanwhile India Today TV also complained, to both BARC and TRAI, about Times Now too engaging in the same practice, of multiple LCNs. Yes, the same India Today which had done the same thing two years ago, when Headlines Today was rebranded and relaunched as India Today. According to a Chrome Data Analytics report at the time India Today TV was on dual frequencies on each of 70 cable networks, giving it an additional 22% reach. At a cost, of course: by some estimates, 50%  over its normal carriage fee.

Nor were they shy about what they had done. Ashsih Bagga, CEO of India Today Group, was quoted commenting on it, and expressing his delight with the outcome in viewership and market share. Alas, the glory was shorlived: the channel was no. 1 for one week, before dropping back to its usual place in the pecking order. An expensive, if happy, week.

Times Now did not deny India Today’s charge, only justified it as a “defensive manouvre”.

BARC chose to do nothing about either complaint – NBA’s against Republic or India Today’s against Times Now – and for very good reason. They said they were aware of broadcasters engaging in this practice in the past too, and took the position that they “… measure viewership of channels basis their unique Watermark ID, irrespective of the platform the channel is available on or the number of instances within the platform.” And, quite rightly, that “BARC India is not the regulatory body for resolving issues concerning multiplicity of LCNs for a channel.” Unexceptionable, on both counts.

In fact BARC’s policy already states that, “Regulatory issues pertaining to this, if any, would lie within the domain of the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (MIB) and/or Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).”

Reacting to what they saw as BARC’s inaction against Republic, all other English news channels stopped watermarking, thus effectively pulling out of the BARC system and rendering it unable to measure and report English news viewership at all.

Now it is reported that TRAI will conduct an enquiry. Into what and to what end remains to be seen.

 

Heads, they win; tails, we lose

Matters are now rather interestingly poised. For all the sound and fury the anchors display on their nightly shows, English news is a very tiny genre in the overall context of Indian TV: less than 0.1% of total TV viewership. Even within the news category itself all of English news is only about 8% of the leading Hindi news channel, Aaj Tak – which itslelf is only about 9% of the leading Hindi GEC, Star Plus.

So what does that imply for the current impasse?

The most important reason for audience measurment is for advertisers  to know where to put their money. If the channel or the genre is important enough they manage without data because they cannot afford to miss the audience it delivers. That is what they did during the painful period of transition from TAM to BARC: they bought on the basis of old data.

In this case, though, it’s not just the absence of current data: the whole category has been disrupted. Data up to Week 18 does not feature Republic, while data with Republic is available only for Week 19 and cannot be comapared with earlier weeks. So there is, in effect, no data at all.

Nor is English news is central to any advertiser’s plans: it is just too tiny. There is probably not a single media plan in the country which would be disrupted in its absence. That is not to say that advertising on English news is useless: just that it’s not essential. And what it adds to a media plan – frequency, impact and delivering a focused audience – it does at a relatively high cost, getting as it does 22-25% of what advertisers spend on news channels for delivering a tiny fraction of the news audience.

The affected broadcasters are caught in a cleft stick. Unless a knight in shining armour – the government, TRAI or the courts – charges in to their rescue, they have two choices: make some face-saving gesture, get back in, and risk having the Week 19 kind of data again; or stay out and risk advertisers pulling out in the absence of data. While they have acted as a subset of the NBA all of them are also members of the IBF, the biggest shareholder in BARC, and a couple of them are on its board. What they do have going for them is of course the clout of the news media, which can often induce matters to take an unpredictable turn.

BARC, on the other hand, is not immediately affected. The largest part of its revenue comes from broadcasters, and of about 900 TV channels in India only 6 are in English news. Their broadcasters cannot afford to pull out of BARC fully because all of them have other channels, for whcih they need the data.

BARC’s other source of revenue is media agencies, on behalf of advertisers, who can afford not to buy English news. This means the absence of data on English news will not materially affect the value and usefulness of BARC data to its subscribers, and therefore will not affect BARC. 

If TRAI does uphold the complaint against Republic and orders it to operate on a single LCN, it is highly unlikely that the broadcaster will snap to attention and comply: they are bound to fight any adverse ruling through all the appelate processes available to them. In other words, whatever Republic is doing or has done is not going to change in a hurry.

For the present, then, BARC is safe, advertisers are unaffected, and it is the English news channels which have something to think about: they got themselves into this situation and they have to dig themselves out of it.

 

But that is only for the present

What this standoff has done is to expose the weaknesses of the system, the better to be exploited by those better placed to do so.

First, that BARC can be held to ransom. This time it has been challenged by a small genre that does not materially affect it or its other stakeholders, but what’s been done once can be done again: next time by a single broadcaster or a group of them whose absence is keenly felt and forces BARC to the negotiating table.

Second, the practice of multiple LCNs is out in the open. It’s not financially viable on an ongoing basis but is a useful way to get a temporary blip in ratings for the launch of a new show, for example. It distorts the data but BARC will – even if rightly – do nothing about it. So, unless there a law or a court ruling to prevent it, it’s here to stay.

The advantage of a system run by a vendor – like TAM – is that the vendor has no role in the business except to provide data. They are answerable to the industry  and the survival of the system depends on their being able to keep the stakeholders satisfied.

On the other hand, the problem with an industry-owned and –driven system like BARC is that the players have interdependent relationships outside of the measurment system and have conflicting stakes in the business. Worse, in the case of BARC the ones being measured not only control the system, but also individually have the power to opt out of it at will. That cannot be a sustainable situation.

BARC as an entity is not responsible for the shenanigans of broadcasters, but those very broadcasters own (60 per cent of it) and drive it. They are the plaintiff, judge and jury. Unless it finds a solution outside the judicial system in which affected parties – which would most often be the constituents of its own shareholders – can approach an objective, independent body of third-party experts, the audience measurment ecosystem can look forward to the proverbial interesting times.

 

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[i] A channel is meant to appear in the programme guide on your TV only once, in the genre to which it belongs, i.e., among like channels. A channel that appears more than once, in different genres, increases its chances of being viewed, because when people surf they come across it more than once, and so could increase its ratings without actually being seen more. This is a questionable practice, but not illegal.

 

Chintamani Rao is one of the few people who have seen TV audience measurement in India in all its aspects. He has been a subscriber on both the broadcasting side of the business as well as on the media agency side, and has served on the boards of both the IBF and of the NBA, of which he was one of the founders. He was involved with the inception of BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council) and was Chairman in its early days. As a industry leader he played a significant role in legal and regulatory issues in broadcasting. 

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First published in The Hoot (http://asu.thehoot.org/), 22nd May 2017 

Like the curate’s egg: good in parts

 Nalin Mehta’s impressive knowledge of the television industry is evident in his latest book but bias and inconsistencies mar it.

CHINTAMANI RAO explains

Behind a Billion Screens, author Nalin Mehta, Harper Collins India, New Delhi  April 2015, 312 pages

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Nalin Mehta has been an academic and a journalist. This book has been researched by the academic and written by the journalist.

The academic is most evident in the extensive, painstaking annotation: 53 pages of end notes to support 221 pages of text. The early account of the ills that plague news television is sound, balanced and pragmatic, and later in the book Mehta presents an excellent historical perspective of broadcast regulation in India, right up to the present day.

The detailed exposition of self-regulation is also well-informed and instructive, and makes a good and valid comparison of the functioning of the two bodies, the News Broadcast Standards Authority for news and the Broadcast Content Complaints Council for entertainment. For all this the book is a must for anyone concerned with -- and about -- the management of television broadcasting in India. 

But the journalist in Mehta is irrepressible, and dominates the discourse. That would be no issue, if this were not a journalist with an agenda, characterised by sweeping statements, sometimes bordering on the irresponsible; the specious use of data; and the cavalier disregard of  inconvenient facts to make a point.

The 10-page introduction by Uday Shankar, CEO of Star TV, sets the tone: the book goes on to represent Star TV’s world view, with Shankar extensively quoted and frequently referred to throughout, and numerous examples cited of Star’s bold, innovative, far-sighted moves worthy of a leader.

Speaking of news TV ownership and describing in some detail how Zee built its news network, he comments that, “Zee’s business moves were not ideological.” That may well be true, but not a mention is made of the origins of Star News – the sweetheart deal with NDTV and the split; the attempt to structure a company with Vir Sanghvi, Suhel Seth, et al; how it ended up with ABP; and how Star News became ABP News, whereby hangs a tale.

The author is at pains to establish that the big TV networks are not as big as we might think, and asserts that they are disadvantaged with respect to buyers of advertising time. “70% of all media expenditure in India is controlled by only five media groups…. On the sellers’ side, however, fragmentation rules. There are more than 800 TV channels….”

The numbers hide more than they reveal, as is often the case. What we are not told is that the Big Five are present and strong across all genres of TV, and bundle their weak properties with the strong ones (and why shouldn’t they?), so that ultimately the two sides, buyers and sellers, are ranged across the table as countervailing forces.

There’s nothing wrong with that, but the point is that the big networks are quite well, thank you very much. It’s the long tail of hundreds of small and stand-alone broadcasters that continues to writhe in agony.

On the subject of distribution, and of digitisation, Mehta seems confused. Citing unattributed data, he says that in the period 2005-11 distribution costs more than tripled but subscription revenue barely increased, with the result that “the net money that channels made from subscriptions in this period actually reduced by almost half”. That’s amusing, because it means broadcasters were, or are, net earners from subscription. Here are the facts.

Of 832 ‘permitted’ satellite channels in the country, some 250 are pay channels. The rest, being free-to-air, only pay carriage fees: they earn no subscription revenue. Of the 250 that do, about 140 belong, directly or indirectly, to the Big Five networks, and they (fewer than 20% of the total) are the ones who are net earners from subscription. For the rest, subscription revenue only subsidises their distribution cost. Not much for the big boys to complain about.

One of the reasons why the big neworks are net earners is of course that they own properties no cable operator can afford not to carry. The other is that they themselves have distribution interests. Each of them owns and influences, directly or indirectly, every link in the distribution value chain: content aggregators; multi-system operators (MSOs); local cable operators (LCOs); and DTH platforms. And Reliance, which now owns the TV 18 network, will soon own a national 4G network.

Oddly, Mehta omits to mention that. On the contrary, he laments that broadcasters are not allowed to handle distribution. That may well be the law, but surely Mehta knows the reality. So why does he try to make the case for distribution?

Mehta’s use of data is often suspect. Trying to establish the rapid growth of the Internet, for example, he says, "In 2013 Internet access in India overtook print to become the second-largest sub-media sector in revenue after television." Later he decribes how one brand, Parle Hippo, used Twitter, to show how “social media is upending the way marketing was traditionally done”.

First, in comparing Internet access to print he is comparing apples to oranges, which you don’t expect of one with his background. Internet access refers to the money people pay to service providers to get on to the internet: that's not revenue for content providers, and there is no equivalent of it in print. In advertising revenue, however, which can be compared, the PwC report of 2014 (which he cites to make his point) estimates the Internet at Rs 29 billion and print at Rs 146 billion.

Second, having said how big the Internet has become and that social media is upending the old ways of doing things, he says in a later chapter that, “Internet penetration in the world’s largest democracy remains abysmally low,” and quotes data from the same PwC report to make the point.

Mehtas's strongest invective is directed at TAM. (Disclosure: this reviewer is a member of the TAM Transparency Panel.) Eight or 10 pages of a one-sided view are peppered with loose statements like, "The trouble is that the ratings system in India has been terribly flawed for too long”; “The ratings system is so discredited that no one believes it”; and "Senior broadcasters whisper darkly about WPP, which owns 50% of TAM, also owning a significant number of advertising agencies," betraying  his bias.

Listing the problems with TAM, he describes how some years ago 500 journalists were covering the Lakmé India Fashion Week in Delhi even as there was a spate of farmer suicides in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka. How that is the fault of the ratings provider is not evident.

Among the limitations he lists is that, “In a world where an average TV consumer in a big metro spends over three hours daily on her smartphone, the ratings don’t provide a measure of what is happening in the digital space.” Where in the world do TV ratings do that?

Speaking of digitisation, the author says that no other country’s market has shifted to digital so fast. In terms of adoption of the technology, that is no doubt true but in terms of the consumer benefiting from digitisation,  certainly not.

Digitisation is not merely about getting a sharper picture. Until consumers are able to choose what they want to watch and pay only for that, there is, in effect, no difference between digital and analogue cable. Local cable operators (LCOs) stand to be the big losers, which is why they have been stalling the change and continue to, and it is their intransigence that has prompted the government to postpone the next phase of digitisation to the end of 2015.

It’s curious that Mehta skips lightly over this situtation and pronounces satisfaction with its progress. Is it perhaps because big broadcasters too stand to lose from digitisation and don’t want to see it progress any further?This is one subject on which broadcasters and LCOs have the same agenda.

The work he has put into the book is evident and commendable. Between his earlier India on Television and the present book, Mehta probably knows far more than anyone else about Indian television today. Regrettably the evident inconsistencies and biases call the book into question, despite its merits.

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First published in The Hoot (http://asu.thehoot.org/), 27th July 2015

A service is not a product

 After weeks of resistance I succumbed to the iPad.

The argument against was that there aren't many Wi-Fi hotspots in India, which limits your ability to use one.

The answer was to get the one with 3G. That's not central to this story; it is only to say why I was in the market for a mobile phone connection.

Well, Saturday was Christmas and I was going to be travelling from the Monday, and you know how it is with tech toys: I wasn't going to wait until I returned and went to my office.

And so it came to pass that on the Sunday after Christmas I was shopping for a mobile connection.

I chose Airtel – unsurprisingly, perhaps, given the 3G options available and the recent salience of the brand.

From the website I got a list of outlets within a short radius of my home. It gave addresses and had columns for parking ('Yes' for all); timing (10 am to 8 pm for all); and the weekly day off (blank for all); but, strangely for a telecoms company, no telephone numbers.

I have Airtel landlines and ADSL at home and some kind of preferred customer status, so I called the designated customer service number.

After wading through the IVR menu and getting a live human voice at the other end (Why do call centres speak to you in Hindi after you press 1 for English?) I was told this number was only for landlines and that I should call 98101 98101.

So I did. Asked where I should go for a new connection, the gent said, "You can get it where you buy recharge coupons."

"Ah, but I don't buy recharge coupons," I replied. "I need to get a mobile connection first."

"I'm trying to help you," he said. "If you don't find that helpful there's not much I can do," and hung up. Being well trained, he didn't forget to first say, "Thank you for calling Airtel."

I stubbornly called again and got someone else. She said that number was only for prepaid connections: for 'postpaid', as the term goes, I should call 98100 12345.

So I did. More IVR, about bill payment and value added services and so forth, and "to go back to the main menu press 1", or whatever.

Oh, I missed what I needed. Back to the main menu. But I was right the first time: every conceivable kind of information was available except if you wanted a new connection.

Clearly, Airtel don't expect that if you want a new telephone connection you might use a telephone to help get one.

I got that list from the website and set out.

The first outlet was closed. And the second. And the third... "Aaj Sunday hai na, ji ... (It's Sunday, you see)" If the website hadn't left the thoughtful 'weekly off' column thoughtlessly blank, or had given a phone number to call, I would have saved time and trouble. (It was right about parking, though, when it said 'Yes': there was a street outside each outlet.)

Four phone calls and an outing later I was no closer to a mobile connection.

Here is a company at the top of the heap; grown in hardly 20 years from small beginnings to a name to reckon with internationally; grown from selling cheap Chinese telephone instruments to mobile telephony to fixed telephony, broadband internet and DTH. A single brand, a single website -- but not a single phone number.

Why would someone doing business in the 21st century and listing outlets not give their phone numbers?

What does it take for a telecoms company to think of having a universal toll-free phone number that anyone wishing to buy its services can call, to be directed by an IVR system to what they are looking for?

Mass market services are often equated with fmcg, and services referred to as products. Years ago that not only sounded sexy, but also brought attention to the idea that a service had to be taken out to the user, not wait for the user to come to it as had largely been the case in India.

Now it only distracts attention from the fact that there is more to mass market services than making them available "within an arm's reach of desire".

For fmcg the store is first a stocking point, its overriding role is convenience of access, and anyone going to any store gets the standardised product.

The task of marketing is essentially to make the product available and attractive, and the brand experience lies in ownership and usage.

Mass market services, on the other hand, are largely invisible and undifferentiated in use: it is in the interaction -- at the store, or on the telephone, or the internet -- that the brand is delivered, by the sales assistant at the counter; the call center operator; or the guy who does all the boring detail on the website.

Marketers of products experience what they and their competitors sell, but marketers of services typically don't. Unless you call Customer Service or transact on the internet or at the counter, you will never know how your customer receives your brand.

The quality of products from cars to candy is increasingly, over the last several years, bench-marked globally; but that of mass market services is still bench-marked locally.

It's a circular relationship: customers' expectations of services are limited by what they experience (shaped largely perhaps by the standards of the largest service provider, the government); and the services they get only cater to their low expectations.

It is ironical that even as the size of the services sector has surged to over 50% of the country's GDP, its quality remains mired in the bad old days.

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First published in afaqs! (www.afaqs.com), 14 Jan 2011

Remembering Mani Ayer

Chintamani Rao recalls the valuable lessons learnt

   

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I first met Mani Ayer in 1973. I was 21; he, not quite 38. I was a summer trainee, and he’d just relocated from Australia to take charge as Managing Director of a company in dire straits.

When I graduated from XLRI the following summer, OBM (Ogilvy, Benson & Mather) wasn’t hiring. Subroto Sen Gupta hired me to work with him, and I started my career at Clarion-McCann. Life went on. I naturally used to see, hear and read of Mani here and there.

Cut to 1985. Mani called me to his home and over several whiskies we spoke “… of shoes, and ships, and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings”. (In his typical fashion, he let me know that he knew I’d been a summer trainee at OBM.) Not a word was spoken about working at the agency. That most enjoyable evening ended with the promise, to my delight, to do it again, which we did. Three evenings and a dozen whiskies later we segued into discussing a job. And 12 years from that 1973 meeting, I joined OBM.

He was a glutton for knowledge, with an elephantine memory to match. He simply had to know. Everything. And never forgot it. (He once explained to me the economics of an STD booth, which he learnt by chatting up the guy who ran the one outside the MICA campus in Ahmedabad.) When one bright-eyed young manager remarked admiringly how much Mani knew, he said, “When you fellows go to cocktail parties, I stay at home and read.” Quite early, I learnt never to argue with him on facts, because he couldn’t bear to be wrong and wouldn’t back down; on the other hand, he always respected a cogently argued opinion, even if he differed with it.

Mani gave me the most important management lesson I’ve ever learnt, and one which I hope I’ve practiced.

In 1989, while sending me to off to Bangalore to head the Southern region for Ogilvy, he asked me to discuss with him my objectives. I defined three Key Result Areas: Profits, Product and People, in that order. He made only one change. (Or suggested, rather; that was Mani.) He said I’d got the order wrong.

“It should be Product, People, and then Profits. You have to fix the product first. That is your most urgent priority, and that is what an agency is always known by. Then you have to get your team together so that the product can be sustained. If you have a good product and take care of your people, the profits will take care of themselves.” He went on to tell me he didn’t spend more than 10 per cent of his time on financials. “Your financial performance is only an outcome of what you do. Spend your time doing that. Get yourself a good commercial guy and let him do his job.”

That came, by the way, from someone who not only ran perhaps the most profitable company in the industry, but had brought it back from the brink of bankruptcy.

Always gentle and utterly human, Mani never presumed to tell you what you should do. He only gave you his opinion, and left you – genuinely – to do as you thought fit. And if you misfired, he was there to support you, with never an I-told-you-so.

I last saw Mani in his hospital bed, about 48 hours before he passed away. He was so gratifyingly himself. His old friends and admirers will recognise him when I say that, in that critical state, no sooner had he seen me than he pointed at my shirt and said, through the oxygen mask covering his nose and mouth, “Batik from Solo.”

Thank you, Mani, for your friendship, guidance and support and for all those wonderful, idyllic Ogilvy years.

R.I.P.

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First published in exchange4media.com, 9th Feb 2010