ESPN Star Sports bags Sri Lanka Premier League rights

Insearchindia.com Team

(23 July 2012 7:00 pm)

MUMBAI: ESPN Star Sports (ESS) has reached a multi-year broadcast rights agreement for coverage of the Sri Lanka Premier League (SLPL).

In addition to India, ESS will also air SLPL in other markets like Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Hong Kong and Thailand.

Sri Lanka becomes the 6th cricket body with whom ESS is working on the shortest form of the game. ESS already has the rights to existing T20 leagues from Australia (Big Bash League), England (Pro T20), Bangladesh (Bangladesh Premier League), CLT20 and ICC WT20. The IPL, the most-watched and lucrative T20 format, however, is with Multi Screen Media (earlier known as Sony Entertainment Television India).

The multi-year deal includes a minimum of 24 T20 matches per season. Star Cricket, Star Sports and ESPN will broadcast all the matches from 11 August.

The first edition of the SLPL will see seven provisional teams compete for the trophy as well as a qualifier berth to the Champions League Twenty20 (CLT20) to be held later this year.

ESS MD Peter Hutton said, "We are delighted to be able to telecast the live matches of the SLPL in India and throughout the region. It is an excellent addition to Star Cricket's remarkable catalogue of content in the next year, headlined by India's home series against Pakistan, England and New Zealand, the ICC World T20, the Champions League T20 and the ICC Champions trophy. We look to further growing our live cricket content."

The SLPL will feature 42 international players participating from seven countries including Australia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, South Africa and West Indies. However, Indian players won't participate in SLPL following Indian cricket board's decision not to allow its players to take part in the league.

Digitisation: Broadcasters move Delhi HC

Insearchindia.com Team

(19 July 2012 7:03 pm)

NEW DELHI/MUMBAI: Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF), Star India and Zee News Ltd have filed a petition in the Delhi High Court today, challenging the extension of digitisation deadline to 1 November in the four Metros.

The petitioners have contended that the Government did not have mandate to order an extension under the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Amendment Act, 2011.

"We have moved the court against the Government's decision to extend digitisation in the four metros, after mandating it. We also want to ensure that there is no further delay," Star India CEO Uday Shankar told Insearchindia.com.

After hearing the petition, the Delhi High Court has issued notice to the government of India and the Information & Broadcasting Ministry, seeking responses by 6 August.

Earlier, the Government had decided to defer the date of cable digital addressable systems (DAS) to 1 November in the first phase covering four metros.

The four-month delay from the earlier deadline of 1 July was announced on 20 June, bowing to pressure from the local cable operators, multi-system operators (MSOs) and some state governments.

Under the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Amendment Act, 2011, it had been mandated that the switchover of the existing analogue Cable TV networks to DAS should be by December 2014, in a phased manner. In respect of the four metros of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai, the digital switchover was mandated to come into effect from 1 July 2012.

However, the Government admitted in its order that the orders of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on Tariff & Interconnection, and on the Quality of Service Regulations and the Consumer Complaint Redressal Regulations had not been substantially implemented. This had resulted in the slow pick up of set-top boxes (STBs) and the completion of the process of digitisation could not be completed by 30 June.

Trai willing to discuss with broadcasters on TV ad time issue

Insearchindia.com Team

(17 July 2012 11:19 pm)

NEW DELHI: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, whose diktat about television advertisements was challenged by broadcasters, says it is prepared to discuss the issue with organisations of the broadcasters.

This was stated today by its counsel Saket Singh when a petition by News Broadcasters Association and others challenging Trai’s ad regulations came up before the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (Tdsat).

Counsel said Trai was willing to look into various issues raised by the broadcasters which have opposed the move to put a cap on advertising time.

"There are issues we are willing to consider. We are looking in a broad manner," said the counsel. He said amendments can be made, whatever the issue.

Trai was granted its request for six months for this process by chairman Justice S B Sinha and member P K Rastogi.

Trai assured Tdsat that it would not implement its order and enforce the broadcasters to follow it till 30 August when the matter comes up for hearing.

Trai had issued a notification on 14 May limiting the duration of advertisements in TV channels to 12 minutes per hour. Any shortfall of advertisement duration in any hour cannot be carried over, the telecom regulator had said.

Trai in its regulation had also said that the minimum time gap between any two consecutive advertisement breaks should not be less than 15 minutes and not less than 30 minutes for movies.

However, Trai today also faced questions from the bench over the overlapping of its authority with the Information and Broadcasting Ministry.

"A jurisdiction issue cannot be decided by a statutory authority (Trai)," the tribunal pointed out.

Broadcasters, in their petition filed before Tdsat have questioned the powers of Trai contending that the sectoral regulator has no power to limit the ad times.

According to the broadcasters, such power vests with the Central government and that only it can issue such directions under The Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995.

They further claimed that the present Trai Act, 1997, authorises the regulator to make only recommendations. "The authority has exceeded the mandate given to it by the Central government and instead of making recommendations to the government, proceeded with the formulation of the regulation," one of the broadcasters in its petition submitted before the Tdsat.

Moreover, by the said regulation, Trai has sought to regulate not only the parameters within which the ads would be carried by the broadcasters on their respective TV channels, but also determined the format, nature and duration of the ads to be carried on TV, the broadcaster said.

"The authority has very ingeniously sought to disguise content regulation as Standards of Quality of Service, which it is not entitled to do," said the petition.

The Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF), News Broadcasters Association (NBA), and several channels had approached Tdsat against the Trai directive. On 12 June, Tdsat had issued a notice, asking Trai to file reply within three weeks. It also gave two weeks time to IBF and other broadcasters to file rejoinders over Trai's reply.

Slowdown to impact outdoor advertising

Insearchindia.com Team

(13 June 2012 1:00 pm)  

MUMBAI: The looming slowdown in the Indian advertising industry will badly hit the outdoor medium, according to media agencies who are revising their forecasts for this year.

Zenith Optimedia CEO Satayajit Sen ranks it as the third most impacted, after print and radio. “We were expecting the outdoor space to grow at 5-10 per cent this year. But it will now post low single-digit growth. All peripheral mediums like outdoor will experience ad budget cut,” he says.

Lodestar UM COO Nandini Dias feels that outdoor and print will be the most affected ad mediums. “A number of sectors like retail, finance, and banking have pulled back advertising. Since outdoor and print have a higher CPT (cost per thousand) than TV or radio, they will be more affected. Even during the last pull back, cost effective mediums like TV were the least affected,” she says.

From the advertisers’ point of view also, the availability of other “cost effective” options with “better metrics for measuring effectiveness” may affect the growth in outdoor.

Broadcasters, who are one of the major spenders on outdoor advertising, are less bullish on splurging in hoardings than they were in earlier years. Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. (Zeel) is reducing its ad spend on outdoor while increasing its exposure on digital. 

Says Zeel marketing head - national channels Akash Chawla, “If you see outdoor and billboards, it is involved in the marketing mix but that component has been going down for us since the last 3-4 years on a constant basis.”

In 2008, Zeel’s ad spend on outdoor was around 40-45 per cent of the entire marketing spend, which has fallen down to 28-31 per cent now.

“On an increasing ad budget, billboard advertising as a component has decreased. We look at hoardings from show to show perspective. In totality, ad spend on OOH is coming down. Reason being that there are lots of other options of advertising available and the metrics evaluation in the other mediums is far better. When you talk about the geographical coverage, the entire thing in outdoor is to get into smaller towns but issues like difference in printing and creative not being put up on time happen. On digital our ads spend has grown to 10 per cent from 2 per cent in 2008. How many people log on, cost per contact and pay per click help monitor the medium and get a better ROI. When it’s about BTL (below the line), we tend to do an aggressive job and that continues,” says Chawla. 

UTV Broadcasting, which spends almost 20 per cent of its marketing amount on outdoors, will keep the budget at the same level. 

Says UTV Broadcasting head marketing Kunal Mukherjee, “For us, it is a pretty much constant space. Outdoor is a good medium to be continuously present in smaller towns."

Sony Entertainment Television (Set) spends around 15 per cent of its overall marketing budget in outdoor and will keep it that way.

However, outdoor ad agencies feel that the slowdown will not be as much impacted as the other mediums.

Milestone Brandcom Founder and Managing Director Nabendu Bhattacharyya admits that it is not a very good year for the industry. “The industry as a whole is suffering and not only the hoardings. Though Telecom does not spend like it used to earlier, it is still the highest spender on hoardings followed by BFSI and then M&E. Automotive industry is also very active and luxury cars have been utilising hoardings as a medium in a big way. In smaller markets, the major spenders are gems and jewellery, lifestyle and real estate. I see FMCG spending a lot more.”

However, he hints that the need of the hour is a 15-20 per cent discounted rate. “With a 15-20 per cent discount, it (hoardings) will be preferred over other mediums. Because the demand and supply chain will change, the clients will look at it more because it has become cheaper. Hence, outdoor will be least impacted.”

According to Posterscope MD Haresh Nayak, hoardings as a percentage to OOH's total revenues have fallen over the years from 80 per cent to around 50 per cent. "The demand for activation continues. Clients have been looking at malls and multiplexes activations in a big way,” he says.

Nayak estimates the outdoor industry to grow by 10-15 per cent this year compared to 18 per cent a year ago."It is a very localised medium. It is easy to adapt and so it gets least impacted,” says Nayak.

Broadcasters get breathing space as Tdsat stays Trai's ad cap rule

Insearchindia.com Team

(12 June 2012 1:45 am) 

MUMBAI: Broadcasters have earned a five-week vacation from the upsetting regulation of limiting ad time on their networks, as Tdsat has stayed the Trai notification till the hearing comes up on 17 July.

For a while, broadcasters will at least not have their ad revenues hanging by a thread, its future determined by a 12-minute ad cap per hour fixed by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai). Stressed by a slowdown in the ad economy and anxious about the implementation of cable TV digitisation, the least they want to do is cut down on commercial time and take up the troublesome task of upping advertising rates.

True, none of the broadcasters are willing to obey the Trai order as they feel that the broadcast watchdog is overreaching its powers by regulating TV ad time.

Still, the Tdsat’s stay order comes as a major source of relief at a time when the least that the media industry wants is more headaches.

“We got a stay from the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (Tdsat) today. The hearing is due mid-July,” says Star India chief executive officer Uday Shankar.

News broadcasters have horrible woes. If there is a way for them to wriggle out of the mess that they have themselves created by coughing out high distribution costs, cutting ad rates amidst competition amongst themselves and living under high staff costs, it is by giving more commercial time to advertisers.

Hindi TV news, the most fragmented of the lot, dedicates on an average 20-24 minutes of ad time per hour. Even with this abundant supply, news broadcasters find their ad revenues crawling at below 10-per cent growth and their profitability under attack.

Zee News Ltd (ZNL) chose a different path to tread this year, cutting the commercial time of its flagship Hindi news channel, Zee News, by 30 per cent while upping the ad rates by 40 per cent. However, the 'Maximum News, Minimum Break' journey from 2 April has been a bumpy one.

“The ratings have not seen much impact. And we have ended up producing more content. Perhaps, this experiment needs more time to yield results. We will wait for a couple of quarters more before we take a call on whether we want to go back to our old route,” says Zee News Ltd chief executive Barun Das.

Let's not forget that Zee News’ slash in ad time of eight minutes for every half-hour slot is still above the ceiling of Trai’s prescription of 12 minutes of commercial time per clock hour. So imagine the misery news broadcasters will be in if they have to swallow Trai's medicine!

In the tangled financial problems that the news broadcasters face, it is the timing of Trai’s regulation that comes under question. News channels need more time to weed out the ad inventory flab that they have created due to economic compulsions, much to the irritation of the TV audiences.

Says TV Today Network CEO Joy Chakraborthy, “Trai’s so-called radical step would jeopardise the business models of news channels. Less ad time would mean more content costs. Besides, scaling back on ad inventory by 40 per cent (from our average of 20 minutes per hour to 12 minutes) would mean demand outstripping supply and, hence, higher costs. This will discourage small and local advertisers, who form a fair bulk of clients for news channels, to come on board. These steps suggested by Trai should come when the digitisation rollout is complete. We can’t fight on all fronts.”

The ad time on news channels varies from month to month.TV Today Network, for instance, offered 22 minutes of commercial time per hour in March. This came down to 18 minutes in April.

News and sports broadcasters consider another regulation by Trai as retrograde at this stage of maturity: the ban on part-screen and drop-down advertisements.

“We use scrolls on a positive sense. For Olympics, we, for instance, will run scrolls. We earn Rs 120-140 million from the part-screen and drop-down ads,” says Chakraborthy.

Trai’s ad regulation will also pinch hard the sports broadcasters. According to the broadcast regulator’s prescription, the ads during live broadcast of a sporting event should be only during the breaks in the sporting action.

A clock hour measurement system, however, does not suit this genre of channels as live content is seasonal and limited to a specific period.

Entertainment TV networks have also objected against the capping of ad duration on their channels.

“It looks like Trai is linking digitisation to shrinkage of advertisement space. There is no logic in this and it is very untimely,” says the head of a broadcasting company on condition of anonymity.

Trai’s control in ad diet is something that TV viewers would, indeed, love to have. Broadcasters, however, feel that the best route to maturity is self-regulation in content and ad inventory management.

“Trai’s order is ridiculous. It is like putting the camel’s nose in the tent. Every independent player should decide on what course of action to take. Market forces know best how to play the balancing role,” says Times Television Network MD and CEO Sunil Lulla.