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An
Interview with Haresh Chawla
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"CPRP
linked deals fail to accurately capture the quality
of our audience"
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Posted
on May 18 2002
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It's
been a happening year at CNBC India. Functioning in an unchallenged
news space, the purely business channel has seen a happy
growth curve in a climate where market sentiment has been
pretty grim overall. Revenues have grown tremendously and
the channel has achieved operating break-even. CNBCI chief
executive Haresh Chawla, who also oversees e-18 - the the
portal business of the TV18 group (which manages CNBCI)
- has been the man at the helm in all this.
Chawla, who joined CNBC India in December 1999 as CEO from
the Times of India group where he headed its music division
(Times Music), speaks to indiantelevision.com's Thomas
Abraham on where the channel's at and where it's headed.
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How do you
evaluate your performance this year over the previous year?
What have been the significant changes to the channel that
were introduced in the last year?
In the direction of enhancing CNBC's presence as a complete
business channel, we added a number of feature shows touching
a wide spectrum of sectors. We have also paid close attention
to the format of our core business news programmes to make
them crisper and meatier.
We have launched a number of special shows and on-ground properties
that act as effective communicators of our core brand. Shows
and events like Boardroom, Managing India; Union Budget
and Credit Policy Specials; Mutual Fund of The Year Awards,
etc. have created fora for the most influential corporate
decision-makers to exchange views and ideas and platforms
for top-notch business analysis.
We have augmented our studios and technological infrastructure
to support the growth in the depth and breadth of our programming.
In the year that went by we have demonstrated our capability
to manage highly complex live broadcasts.
Our revenues have grown tremendously over the last year and
we have achieved operating break-even.
Are there any
new programming initiatives that CNBC India is looking at?
A case in point is Storyboard, which has proved
a big hit.
Yes, Storyboard has been quite a satisfying addition
to the CNBC show roster. Along with Digital Revolution,
Trend Mill, Managing India and Cutting Edge, it
forms part of a strong feature band created to meet the evening
viewing needs of corporate managers.
We will continue to expand the width of our programming and
introduce shows that touch various business sectors. We have
plans to introduce shows in the spheres of success profiling,
executive health and technological advances, among others.
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"For
all practical purposes, English is integral to communication
throughout corporate India. Be that as it may, if
we see demand for regional language business programming
we'll not lose time in meeting it."
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Any major
brand associated events that you have lined up? Due to some
bad experiences in the past, your current policy seems to
be that you will not associate with any events unless you
have total creative control. Could you elaborate?
Our on-ground events are fundamentally business feature shows
done on a considerably larger scale. As with all our programming,
they are created with the idea of giving viewers the information
and tools to achieve success in their spheres of activity
- careers, business, investments, etc. In the process, we
have been able to showcase the highest standards in business
and establish benchmarks for the corporate community. Hence,
these events are logical extensions of our core brand and,
like any responsible brand custodian, we would like these
activities to reflect the core values of the CNBC brand.
Currently how
many hours of programming does TV 18 provide for CNBC India
per day?
About 11 hours a day. (When we started, the only India-related
programming on CNBC was an hour of Bazaar in the morning).
What is the break-up
between English and Hindi timewise? Will that hold for the
year ahead as well?
We have around 90 minutes of Hindi programming every day.
We have found that this is the ideal mix of English and Hindi
for a business channel.
What are your
thoughts on other regional language feeds?
The lingua franca of the business world is essentially numbers.
Therefore, differences in language across regions don't affect
CNBC's viewership as much as it would a general news channel.
And for all practical purposes, English is integral to communication
throughout corporate India. So, we don't have plans at the
moment to expand into other languages. Be that as it may,
if we see demand for regional language business programming
we'll not lose time in meeting it.
The links that
bind you to Sony Entertainment Television seem to be loosening
rather than deepening. Earlier Sony was to take a stake in
the CNBC. We now have a situation where advertising sales
for the channel is also with CNBC. Talking of ad sales, what
has your growth been like in the past year?
We enjoy an excellent business relationship with Sony. Yes,
as the channel grew, it began to make more strategic sense
to have a TV18 team dedicated exclusively to handle CNBC ad
sales. This is purely from a commercial stand-point. It's
early days yet to evaluate the outcome of this new focus,
but if the first indications are anything to go by, we expect
a sharp rise in our ad revenues from here on.
As far as the previous year goes, we've seen an ad sales growth
of around 30 per cent.
How are you positioned
today as far as filling up inventories is concerned? How many
minutes of ad time per hour do you place? What is your stand
on CPRP-linked deals? Are you okay with it?
We'd rather not disclose inventory usage numbers, but we are
very satisfied on that front.
It is our belief (and this has been borne out many times in
the past) that CPRP-linked deals fail to accurately capture
the quality of our audience and the quality/involvement of
our viewership. The reasons are many: the SEC categorisation
is not defined to reflect the higher echelons wealth-wise,
OOH is still an elusive audience for any system that tracks
reach and the low sample sizes preclude any great depth of
analysis.
The very nature of CNBC's content engenders high involvement
'lean forward' viewing, which in this age of low-attention
spans commands its own premium.
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"We
enjoy an excellent business relationship with Sony.
Yes, as the channel grew, it began to make more strategic
sense to have a TV18 team dedicated exclusively to
handle CNBC ad sales."
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Coming back to Sony, even the distribution deal seems dicey
now. Why is there this feeling in the industry that post
March 2003 you may well be on another platform?
There is no change in our distribution deal with Sony and
we have no plans as of now for post-March 2003.
Let's keep
that aside for now, but what are you looking for in a distribution
deal for CNBC India?
Put simply, apart from the normal commercial underpinnings
of a distribution agreement, our key consideration would
be the effective reach of our target audience - investor
population, the corporate and business community - across
regions.
Talking of distribution, what are your all-India numbers?
About 11 million homes.
Related
to the dip in revenues to moneycontrol.com in the last fiscal,
how does this impact on your broadband plans? Or is it a
no-no for the present at least.
Today, moneycontrol.com is the leading personal finance
portal and business news website in India, with above 10
million page views a month and more than 45,000 registered
users. Unlike many portals floated during the Internet boom,
investments in moneycontrol have been based on rational
expectations and focussed objectives. It is a media integration
success story and the huge following that it has today bears
testimony to this.
Yes, Project Broadband, which was in fact envisaged as an
infotainment television channel supported by allied web-enabled
activity, has been off the radar for almost a year now.
Quite frankly, our focus is on the combined thrust of the
business channel and the finance portal, aimed at providing
greater salient value to our users and establishing the
high-quality service that the brands stand for in the business
information arena.
Any roadmap
that you've set forth for the year ahead?
We have established ourselves among our viewers as an
influential partner in business, investing and corporate
life. Our goal will be to buttress this relationship with
our viewers by continuously improving the total information
package.
After a strong phase of growth, we are in an interim consolidation
mode right now. We see this phase lasting another three
months, after which we'll start introducing more shows relevant
to our audience across time bands. We shall also focus on
increasing our distribution reach further as, apart from
the business community, there is a large population of investors
that follows the channel keenly.
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