Wake up Zee - Star ban gaya karodpati
Nearly a decade after it has been launched in India, media baron Rupert Murdoch's Star Television has kicked off a blitzy media war to win the nation's heartland by making its flagship channel 100 percent Hindi. Star Plus has put behind a restrictive contract with rival Zee TV, India's main Hindi cable channel, and has decided to spend millions of dollars on content and advertising to bid for the prime Hindi slot.Star TV (India) gameshow hits record high. After taking USA, UK, Australia and Europe by storm, 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' is capturing the imagination of television audiences in India. The show has been renamed 'Kaun Banega Crorepati' (KBC) and brought exclusively to India on Star Plus by Star TV. The show is hosted by Amitabh Bachchan, India's biggest movie star. The show's first week ratings report by AC Nielsen showed that for the week of July 2-8, KBC outperformed closest rivals, Sony and Zee TV combined. KBC was watched by one-third of all cable subscribers or 9.5 million people in 9 Indian cities. KBC's average audience was six times bigger than Sony's and four times bigger than Zee TV. The network is confident that the show -- based on a British original and exported to 26 other countries - has the necessary staying power to keep pulling in the viewers and, more importantly, big name sponsors.
A conservative estimate of profitability shows that Star TV has already garnered huge revenues from its Kaun Banega Crorepati contest. Advertising industry sources believe that Star will more than get back the Rs.70 crore it is spending on the entire show. The four associate sponsors - LG, Dettol, Bajaj Legend and Colgate are believed to be shelling between Rs 4 crore and Rs 7 crore for 13 weeks. Besides this, there is 10 minutes of commercial time per episode. On an average, these are being hawked at Rs 4.5 lakh per 30 seconds. In case Star TV manages to sell its entire commercial time, it will earn approximately Rs 80 lakh per episode. This would entail a profit of about Rs 26 lakh per episode. Star plans 130 episodes of the show.
With Star TV planning to increase penetration into Indian homes riding piggyback on the popularity of the mega-show and the attendant hype surrounding Big B, Star Plus is expected to account for 70 per cent of the revenue kitty by 2001. The prime channel's present contribution to the kitty is around 60 per cent. Star Plus has experienced a 40 per cent growth in advertising and sales revenue in 1999-2000. This is expected to go up by 100 per cent in the current fiscal. The company, however, considers this year as an investment year. From 2001-2002 they expect their revenues to grow at around 200 percent per annum. With its renewed thrust in the Indian market, Star TV expects to more than double its viewership size over the next one year. This will help them to be the Number One channel in India, in the process bypassing Zee and Sony. The programming budget for Star Plus has also seen a step-up, shooting up nearly five times to that of last year.
The growing popularity of the programme has in a true sense affected the market price movements of Zee. The scrip has gone down the 400 mark ever since the launch of this popular programme by Star Plus. Zee now needs to take a pause and think creatively to come out with such mind-catching programmes. It needs to leverage it's brand and the better understanding of domestic markets to beat and outperform the competitors. They need to find out the triggers that enthuse Indian masses and tailor the products accordingly. This realization has to come before a foreigner invades them completely in their own territory. Ofcourse, the investors too will not blink an eye to take a toll out of them if they do not perform.
Subhanshu Gupta