Special Report | Hindi becoming the language of sports commentary

MUMBAI: English was the language of cricket commentary when it started in India in the early 1940s on All India Radio. The listenership was limited to the English-speaking class. It was in the late 1950s that cricket commentary in Hindi made a beginning. Commentary in the language of the people took the game of cricket to the hinterlands.
 
The dominance of cricket commentary in Hindi continued till the mid-1980s. Live commentary of India winning the 1983 cricket world cup was heard by most cricket fans in India in Hindi.
 
For the older generation, the names of cricket commentators in Hindi such as Suresh Saraiya, Narottam Puri and Ravi Chaturvedi still bring back memories of the 1970s and early 1980s when words created action happening on the cricket field.
 
With the emergence of colour television began the decline of radio commentary and the rise of English commentators on television. The government-owned Doordarshan was the only television channel available in the 1980s.
 
The rise of private broadcasters in the 1990s again saw the rise of cricket commentary in English and then its dominance. The first decade of the new millennium did make sports broadcasters aware of the importance of commentary in Hindi but it took almost a decade for them to actually wake up to the full potential of Hindi.
 
The likes of Star Sports, Ten Sports, SET Max and Sony Six made a beeline to incorporate more and more Hindi language programming in their sports coverage to grow their viewership.
 
Only this year, India’s oldest sports channel, Star Sports, launched the country’s first 24x7 Hindi sports channel, Star Sports 3, following an exercise that involved rebranding as well as reorganisation. 
 
“We changed the landscape of cricket broadcast in the country in 2012 with the launch of a world class Hindi commentary simulcast in addition to the existing English language feed,” says Star Sports business head Nitin Kukreja.
 
The Hindi language feed attracted immediate attention from viewers. 
 
Star Sports says 71 per cent of the viewership for the dual language-feed India-Australia series came from Hindi commentary. Thereafter, Star Sports took the engagement with the Hindi audiences even further.
 
“We launched India’s first 24X7 Hindi sports channel, Star Sports 3, with content, graphics and shows in Hindi - a giant step forward to dramatically increase the reach of sports in the country,” says Kukreja.
 
Apart from the launch of Star Sports 3, 2013 also saw Star Sports channels providing Hindi commentary feed for the Indian Badminton League (IBL), Barclays Premier League (BPL) and Hockey India League (HIL).
 
Says Kukreja: “In a nation where less than 10 per cent of the population understands English, sports broadcasters have traditionally programmed only in one language – English. We want to change that. We want to focus on a language that the viewers understand.”
 
For Star Sports, ‘Hindi dedicated’ is not just about the commentary being available in Hindi. It is a comprehensive Hindi offering in terms of graphics, navigation tools and all such constituents.
 
To increase its viewer base, Star Sports will now show not just cricket in Hindi but a range of shows on other sports including hockey, badminton and football and special shows such as Star Power, Heroes, Masterclass and Hockey Hotshots. 
 
Star Sports is not stopping at just Hindi. The channel is considering providing feeds in languages such as Tamil and Bengali very soon.
 
Ten Sports too has jumped onto the Hindi bandwagon. For the recently concluded India-South Africa series, it had Hindi commentary on Ten Sports and English on Ten Cricket and Ten HD.  
 
“With the viewer becoming more and more demanding like any other nation, and rightfully so, there is a viewer base that is looking forward to Hindi commentary and then the usual English commentary feed,” reasons Ten Sports CEO Rajesh Sethi. And like Star Sports, Ten Sports too is looking at going multi-lingual in the future to expand its viewership.
 
Sony Entertainment Television provided commentary in both Hindi and English for its biggest sports asset, the Indian Premier League (IPL). While Set Max had commentary in English, the nearly two-year old Sony Six had commentary in Hindi for Pepsi IPL 2013.
 
“The Hindi feed was very well appreciated. We reached close to a 100 million viewers! The consumers were delighted to be provided with a choice of language preference,” says a Sony Six official. Sony plans to expand the number of IPL games with Hindi commentary.
 
Star Sports claims it has had higher core viewers coming from its Hindi feed than Engilsh. “During the period October-November 2013, about 24 million viewers were core to Hindi only, while English language had core viewership of about 9 million. Another 8.4 million viewers were core to both Hindi and English language,” reveals Kukreja.
 
On their part, advertisers are happy with the Hindi, English fragmentation of viewers. Madison Media COO Karthik Lakshminarayanan says, “Currently, you buy a match, not a feed, so advertisers come on both feeds but soon, we will see that different advertisers will go for the two feeds (separately).”
 
The rates for Hindi feed are expected to be higher than the English feed given the much higher core viewership for the Indian language commentary. The segmentation could also attract advertisers who so far had shied away from sports channels. 
 
Madison’s Lakshminarayanan says, “The more you can split an audience, the better it is for the advertiser. If you can further a demand with regional languages, then it should work.”
 
The Hindi channel being a new proposition, Star Sports isn’t yet selling its two language feeds separately. “Sometime in the future, we see value in unbundling the two offerings to different sets of clients. This will help the clients reach out more effectively to their target audience at one level and/or tailor their communication to suit specific sets of audiences,” says Star Sports’ Kukreja.
 
Sports programming in Hindi and other Indian languages can only help expand viewership for sports and will be beneficial to broadcasters as well as advertisers. The sports broadcasters will have their pockets deepened, the advertisers can reach more people and the viewers can watch programming in the language of their choice.

TRAI ends aggregation of content from different broadcaster groups

MUMBAI:  Aggregation of television content from various broadcasters will soon be history and content aggregators will be able to act only as agents of broadcasters.

These are the provisions in the amended regulations notified by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) today.

The TRAI has barred content aggregators from signing Reference Interconnect Offers (RIOs) with Distribution Platform Operators and said broadcasters themselves will now need to publish the Reference Interconnect Offers (RIOs) and also enter into interconnection agreements with Distribution Platform Operators (DPOs).

TRAI has now clearly defined the roles of the broadcaster, the channel aggregator and the DPOs which include the multi-system operators.

Broadcasters have six months to sign RIOs with DPOs themselves and current content aggregators like Media Pro, IndiaCast UTV Media Distribution and One Alliance will only be able to function as agents of broadcasters.

TRAI has allowed a broadcaster to appoint an agent for signing the RIOs, but clearly stating that the agent can only act in the name of and on behalf of the broadcaster.

The regulator in the notification clearly mentions that the appointed agent cannot alter the bouquets as offered in the RIO of the broadcaster and if one agent acts as an authorised agent of multiple broadcasters, individual broadcasters need to ensure that such agents do not bundle channels or bouquets with other broadcasters, TRAI said.

TRAI has, however, provided relief to broadcaster groups by allowing more than one company belonging to the same group to bundle their channels into packages.

Broadcasters will have to file amended RIOs and interconnection agreements with the regulator.

According to TRAI, currently around 239 pay channels (including HD and advertisement-free channels) are offered by 55 pay broadcasters. These channels are distributed by 30 broadcasters/aggregators/ agents of broadcasters.

“The distribution business of 58.6 per cent of the total pay TV market available today is controlled by the top three aggregators,” the TRAI said, referring to Media Pro, IndiaCast and One Alliance.

TRAI feels that the bouquets offered by aggregators comprise popular channels of multiple broadcasters they represent. Thus, leaving DPOs with no option, but to subscribe to these bouquets and then push these channels to the consumers to recover costs.

Analysis of bouquets offered by Aggregators

“This shows that aggregators are offering bouquets comprising as many as 20 channels of six broadcasters. Another bouquet, comprising 13 channels, has channels drawn from 9 broadcasters,” says TRAI through its published report.

Explaining further the TRAI paper says, “Media Pro has mostly entered into agreements with MSOs for around 65 channels out of the 76 pay channels it distributes. These MSOs include both smaller independent MSOs as well as MSOs operating at national level. Similarly, IndiaCast and MSM Discovery have mostly entered into agreements for around 30 (out of 36 channels being distributed by it) and 20 channels (out of 28 channels being distributed by it) respectively. This substantiates the allegation of the DPOs that the large aggregators are virtually compelling them to enter into agreements to subscribe to almost all of their channels.”  

The regulator has also found that majority of the channels distributed by the aggregators belong to broadcaster groups who own or control the aggregator. “90.7 per cent- Media Pro, 58 per cent IndiaCast and 57 per cent- MSMD.” 

According to the regulator, the rates being charged from non-vertically integrated DPOs are, in some cases, higher by 62 per cent as compared to the vertically integrated DPOs.

“The situation becomes even worse in the case of relatively smaller non- vertically integrated DPOs in which case the rates charged are higher by about 85 per cent as compared to the vertically integrated DPOs.”

TRAI feels that the amendment will not only ensure a better spread of popular channels in different bouquets available to the DPOs but would also reduce the number of less popular channels pushed on to such bouquets.

“Even in case a DPO fails to arrive at an agreement with a particular broadcaster the opportunity of finalising agreements with other popular broadcasters is not lost. Thus, DPOs would be placed in a much better position to carry out their businesses,” TRAI said.

“The interconnect regulations aim at making available the content to DPOs in a transparent and non-discriminatory manner. For this, it is important that the offerings of the broadcasters are available in the public domain. This is why broadcasters have been mandated to publish an RIO prescribing the technical and commercial terms for making available their TV channels to the DPOs,” it says.

Press Release | Sony Six to broadcast 2014 Pepsi IPL player auction

MUMBAI: ‎Sony Six, India’s premier sports and entertainment channel will exclusively broadcastthe player auction that will take place before this year’s edition of the Pepsi Indian Premier League. Come February 12thand 13th, the 2014 Pepsi IPL Player Auction will be the talking point of the country as the bidding process rolls out for theseventh edition of the tournament.  The event that will see eight team owners battle it out to build their dream team, will be broadcast Live and Exclusive on Six and Six HD.
 
With every team given the option of retaining a maximum of 5 players, this year’s auction is certain to bring up surprises, with the 8 franchise teams drafting new approaches to retain the best mix of cricketing talent. This year’s auction will feature 219 capped players (169 Indians and 50 overseas players) and will also feature 292 uncapped players (255 Indians and 37 Overseas). Indian uncapped players will be figuring in the auction for the very first time. The auction will take place at ITC Gardenia, Bengaluru, on the 12th of February, with an option to carry onto the 13th of February.
 
The auction will be conducted by Richard Madley, a professional auctioneer from England who hasbeen conducting the player auctions since the inaugural season in 2008, and will be hosted on Six by Gaurav Kapoor and Ajay Jadeja sharing their insights on player and team strategies.
 
Some of the top players valued at the auction include Virender Sehwag, Yuvraj Singh, Robin Uthappa, Yusuf Pathan, Brad Haddin, Brad Hodge, Michael Hussey, Mitchell Johnson, Steven Smith, Mitchell Starc, Kevin Pietersen, Brendon McCullum, Ross Taylor, Jacques Kallis, MahelaJayawardene, and Marlon Samuels.
 
Sony Six business head Prasana Krishnan said, “This year’s auction is probably one of the biggest that we’ll see, as all teams will look for a major revamp. Six will bring an in-depth perspective into the strategy each team has chartered for the league, keeping the audience enthralled throughout the event.”
 
The Pepsi IPL is a Twenty20 cricket league in India consisting of 8 teams. Teams will play in a round robin format where each team plays each other twice, home and away. The top 4 teams with maximum points at the end of the round robin format, qualify for the play offs. This is the 7th season of the Indian Premier League. Mumbai Indians were the winners of the previous edition in 2013.