NIKHIL GANDHI, PRESIDENT – REVENUE, TIMES NETWORK
On Focus Areas: The focus area is to take the brands into a whole new territory in terms of revenue growth and profitability. I have drawn a threefold strategy – to get the right people, move to a brand-led approach rather than a product-led approach and most critically be aware of the growing competitive environment. With the huge number of followers that we have on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, I am putting together a strategy of how we can monetize all of this because these are the audiences that advertisers are seeking. We are going to integrate the social media connect with television and digital and put it together and offer the client one big solution.
On Growth Drivers: We want to take branded content into a whole new space altogether and scale it up, for each and every product and IPs that we create. For Zoom, we are looking at a new digital play. From a revenue perspective, we need to grow some of our brands on the ad sales.
RAHUL SHIVSHANKAR, CHIEF EDITOR, TIMES NOW
On Focus Areas: The emphasis of any professional news brand should be on projecting news based on facts and that is central to my journalistic career. A large number of news channels, including prospective ones, have been built on the journalism of views and rhetoric and I believe that we should be aggressive on facts and good hard stories that change lives and alter our perception. That’s what I want to build on.
On The Core Team: We have a very good set of individuals who have been associated with the brand for years and they are central to the core ethos of Times Now. It’s because of them that this channel is in a leadership position and hasn’t suffered despite exits and that’s a huge credit to the team. It is an extremely tight machine which binds together and each member of the core team understands their place in the team and executes their role to perfection.
VIVEK SRIVASTAVA, SENIOR VP & HEAD – ENGLISH ENTERTAINMENT CLUSTER & ZOOM
On Zoom: While we were a leading Bollywood entertainment brand, we were not playing the latest music. Now we do not play music that’s more than eight years old. Secondly, we increased the tempo of music and adopted mood-based programming across day parts. Thirdly, we changed the language in which we were talking to consumers. We had shows like ‘Music Takatak’ and ‘Acche Din’ – two different vocabularies while talking to viewers. Now, we have shows like Music Takatak, Loudspeaker, Toofani Hits, which are in the same zone and talk to the hardcore filmy music viewer. These things collectively have given us that bump up in GRPs, we have gone up from about 9½ to 12½ GRPs.
On the English Cluster: The space is about smart acquisition, smart scheduling and smart segmentation and this is our mantra. You play the best movie in the best slot and get the ratings and combat competition. The English movies segment has been the most stable space after BARC has come in with no unexplained fluctuations.
SANDEEP GURUMURTHI, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, ET NOW
On Key Differentiators: The one key differentiator is that we are a hardcore news-driven organization with aggressive focus on agenda-setting rather than following a template. We are nimble as we don’t have the overhang of a 20-year legacy. While the nature of content is commoditized during market hours, the innovations we have brought on the screen are a differentiator. Our USP is that we are a fiercely independent newsroom and I can say with authority that there has never been an instance of anyone trying to influence me or my team’s views.
On Growing the Genre: We have led the genre for a large part in the last couple of years and have helped grow the genre. We have had considerable success both in terms of viewership and the response that we get from various stakeholders – be it the industry or the government. People engage with us because they see that the brand has evolved significantly over the last two years. Looking ahead, I am reasonably hopeful that in three months we will be in the market with a significant disruption that will again force the entire category to look at English business news space. We are looking at how to get more people to watch business news post market hours.
JAGDISH MULCHANDANI, PRESIDENT & CFO, TIMES NETWORK
On Growing the Revenue Pie: In the last three years we have added products both in Standard definition (SD) and high definition (HD) and have been able to grow. Looking at CAGR, we are growing much better than the market. This year apart from ad sales taking a dip because of demonetization, every other revenue has been intact. The subscription pie and branded content have been growing almost at the same pace and have done well. The ad sales stream is likely to pick up and will be back on track.
On Growing contribution of English Cluster: Going forward,English movies will have a much larger revenue share in the overall pie. News sometimes becomes seasonal as elections and any big event happening in the country gives you a peak. But when you take the English cluster, it gives you a steady rate, because of the inventory and the right products.
WHEN TIMES NOW WAS IN THE NEWS
The biggest news from the Times Network was the exit of star anchor and former Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami. In the decade that Goswami spent at Times Network, he had helped catapult Times Now to numero uno position and his dominance on the primetime 9 pm slot made Newshour – and even Times Now – synonymous with him. While many wondered how Times Now would fare post Goswami’s exit, the channel has managed to retain its market-share of 42% (Source: BARC| India Urban| NCCS AB 22-50 Males| Wk 50’16-10’17| 24 Hrs|Relative Share %), though rating of The Newshour has seen a dip. Times Now was often criticized for its over-dependence on Goswami, with limited scope for others, with The Newshour driving the rating and revenue game. But, all this is set to change now with Rahul Shivshankar stepping in as the new Editor-in-Chief, and efforts being made to broad-base shows and anchors. For starters, Shivshankar comes on at 8pm with ‘India Upfront’ – and not 9pm as Goswami did. Explaining the rationale behind this, Shivshankar says, “The Newshour is associated with a rhetoric-driven format and that is what Arnab excels in. I wanted to broad-base and expand primetime as it is not just 9 o’clock. We also have to ensure that we bring credibility at different times.”
“The earlier system did not have too many IPs. We will have more IPs on the channel because the channel deserves more IPs, and the viewers deserve more IPs,” Anand declares. “In addition, we will ensure that we monetize all IPs, that allow us more potential for sponsor engagement and more activities for advertisers to engage with their customers. More IPs is not just because we arebroad-basing but because this is how the channel should have been.”
BREAKING OUT OF THE MOULD: ET NOW
Talking of ET Now, Anand says that he is happy with the performance of the business news channel and on the financial front, ET Now “has caught up” with CNBC-TV18, though distribution remains an area where ET Now is still to catch up. In terms of ratings, ET Now has a 41% share compared to a 51% share of CNBC-TV18 (Source:BARC| Mega Cities| NCCS AB 22+ | Wk 7-10’17| 24 Hrs| Relative Share %) making the genre a virtual two-horse race.
Sandeep Gurumurthi, who took over as Executive Editor at ET Now a couple of years ago, says in his time at the helm, the channel has “brought the rigour of a general news channel to the business news channel in terms of systems, processes and the way we attacked big stories”.
In addition, the business news screen was completely redesigned with more actionable information being provided to the viewer. ET Now’s content offerings’ were also broad-based post market hours to include general news like politics and sports. A major shift was breaking the set pattern of the FPC duplicating a general news channel when it comes to breaking news. Gurumurthi says, “We demolished the concept of a FPC and said that we remain with the news when we break a big story. We stay on the big story for 10 hours or even two to three days as against just half-an-hour, as was the norm earlier. If it’s a big story, then we put all our might behind it and the entire organization works on that story. We also broke the morning and evening time bands of traditional business channels and integrated to become one news team, synergizing our people to one purpose.”
LEARNING FROM THE ZOOM REVAMP
Times Network had revamped Zoom – its first channel – from a glamour product, with elements of Bollywood and fashion to a channel that jumped the hurdle of social media in June, 2015. However, the changed format resulted in a loss of viewership but corrections soon after have shown encouraging results. Says Vivek Srivastava, Senior Vice President & Head – English Entertainment Cluster & Zoom, “On Zoom, we had a bit of a challenge post the revamp as the numbers were not quite in the range that we had expected. We fell down to number 9/10 in terms of ranking. In the last six months, we have slowly and gradually come up to number 6, if you also consider the FTA channels. If you don’t consider the FTA and the retro channels in the picture, then we would be the No.3 brand. The ramp-up has been fantastic and also means that we have taken the right steps.”
AT FULL THROTTLE: THE ENGLISH CLUSTER
A bright spot for Times Network was the performance of the English cluster as with four launches in 2016 – Romedy Now HD, Movies Now HD, MN+ HD and Movies Now 2 – it was an action-packed year. In addition, the English cluster saw an aggressive marketing push which helped bump up numbers, particularly on the TRP front with Movies Now (19%) and Movies Now 2 (11%), making up one-third of the genre (Source: BARC| Mega Cities| NCCS AB 15-50| WK 50’16-10’ 17| 24 Hrs| Relative Share %)
Says Srivastava, “We became very aggressive on the marketing front. We believe that if we are the No. 1 channel, we have to be No. 1 not only in viewership but also in share of mind and if you see the share of voice in marketing, across all networks, our brands typically have had the maximum share, and that’s why our properties have also done well. For example, most of our premieres have done better than the competition.” While Movies Now has consistently been among the top two in English movies, what’s “heartening and a delight” has been the performance of Movies Now 2 which in a short time managed to pip HBO and is in the top five channels in the genre. Srivastava believes that Movies Now 2 “will get very close to the No. 3 spot in the next financial year”.
Times Network has bet big on the HD space and this belief has paid off with the success of its four HD channels. The next year is expected to see the next level of growth for HD with more cable operators focusing and pushing HD channels – particularly English and sports channels – to drive up their ARPUs. With HD fitting in perfectly with Times Network’s top of the pyramid positioning, targeting the influential top 2% of the population, the company believes its HD proposition offers the advertiser the right focused audience and brings a significant contribution to revenues.
‘REMONETISE INDIA’
Following the Government’s demonetization announcement in November 2016, which pulled out of circulation 85% of India’s currency, Times Network initiated a nationwide campaign – ‘Remonetise India’ – to bring the economy back on track. The campaign was launched on January 4, 2017 and in the first phase ‘Remonetise India – Invest in the Nation’, activitiesincluded Telethon, Go-Cashless Rally and Sahayta Camps. The second phase, ‘Help your Help’ was launched on February 15, 2017. The campaign aims to build awareness and reach out to urban Indians and sensitize them to aid financial inclusion. Commenting on this initiative, MK Anand, MD and CEO, Times Network says, “Times Network reaches out to about 4.5 crore urban English viewers every week. This the largest premium, influential audience in the country and the Network in fact is an influencer to influencers.” He adds that Times Network’s reach and access to influencers and decision-makers made it imperative for them to help the transition from cash to digital payments, and adopt it as a CSR initiative. “It started as sort of a poser that can we as a company influence the economic growth of this country? Can we add one percentage point to the GDP growth of this country? It was a lofty idea that if India is growing at 7.5%, can we at Times Network do XYZ things and make this 8.5%?” Anand says.
GOOD GOING ON THE INTERNATIONAL FRONT
On the international front, Times Network is now present in 100countries. Post the UK launch of Times Now, the recent expansion enables Times Network to add a potential audience of 1.4 million Indians in mainland Europe, taking the international footprint to 10 million on five continents. The international presence helps the network particularly to grow on the IP front and it has engaged in market contact and expansion by way of ground activities in the Gulf, US and Singapore.
NOW, THE BIG FOCUS AREA IS DIGITAL…
With Times Network Digital now being a separate business vertical, digital expansion will be a key focus area. Earlier, the digital mandate was given to the individual teams and Anand admits that it was a mistake. He says, “That was a mistake because broadcast natives cannot really be digital. With all due respect to people who were handling it, we would have been a lot more ahead if we had a digital native in charge.” As part of this strategy, Times Network will go big on acquisition of talent, looking for digital natives in the next 12-18 months, with the aim to take on their broadcast competitors in the digital play and possibly become larger than them in this space.
For the year, Anand says that 2017 will be the “end of the consolidation of the English leadership which we have effectively been able to execute and deliver”. Looking ahead, he adds that, “Some amount of brand work still remains, consolidating the leadership and getting paid for what we are really worth. That’s not a one day job, and that’s the last part of my work, that remains in the current phase. I would look at CY2017 and FY2018 as consolidation and getting to the final stage of monetization.”
On the channel front, the network will be launching Times Now HD and Viceland in partnership with Vice media. Commenting on expansion beyond the English space, Anand says, “Two areas of growth for Times Network, once you are the market leader and taken 30-35% of the total English market, is to enter other languages and go beyond news.” With the infrastructure in place, the focus will be on product launches and ensuring that the “installed capacity is optimally utilized to deliver as many channels that it can” just as it was done in the recent past. Though delayed, due to demonetization, the management’s priority remains taking the company to over Rs 1,000 crore in the next couple of years and contributing to 15-16% of BCCL’s revenues.
