14 July 2003 - a dull and rainy day, you wake up in the morning and as is your habit, you grab the remote control to check your favourite breakfast show on television. No matter how hard you try, you are not able to tune into your favourite channel and many other channels that you were able to receive till last night. In a furore, you call up your local cable operator and pat comes the reply from the other end- "Government has implemented CAS from this day!" This means that if you do not have a set top box on 14 July, you will not be able to access any pay channel. With this background, lets try gauging the possibilities that could exist on this day.

Possible scenarios on 14 July 2003:

Given the above scenario, the cable and satellite homes will be divided into two- Those having CAS set top boxes will receive the pay (40 channels) as well as the fee-to-air channels (71 channels) and those not subscribing to the set top boxes will have access only to the free-to-air channels. The pricing of the set top boxes will determine the penetration of these boxes.

Markets to be affected the most:

If one analyzes the four metros, the markets where CAS will initially roll out, Chennai and Calcutta are markets in which the regional channels are very strong. Sun TV in Chennai command high shares (~35 per cent) and so do ETV Bangla (~10 per cent) and DD7 (~5 per cent)) in Calcutta. Since these channels are free-to-air channels, the viewing behaviour in these markets might not undergo a dramatic change. On the other hand, the viewing in Mumbai and Delhi is largely skewed towards the pay channels and hence these are the two markets that are likely to be first impacted. Following is a case study as analyzed by the TAM S-Group that simulates the viewing behaviour in a Non CAS cable.

Case Study:

TAM S-Group conducted an interesting case study for the Mumbai market. The case specifics are as follows:

Date: 21 February 2003

Day: Friday

Event: Cable Blackout of all the paid channels in Mumbai. Hence all the cable and satellite households could receive only the free-to-air channels.

Analysis:
TAM SGroup conducted this detailed study of the cable blackout day in Mumbai on the basis of the reach of the channels and compared the reach to the earlier Friday to gauge the viewership changes on that day.

Reach

TAM SGroup compared the top ten channels in terms of reach on the cable blackout Friday to the one the week earlier. The interesting part to note in this analysis is that the total TV viewing has dropped by only 14 per cent to 63 per cent reach. (Refer Figure 1)

 

Figure 1

The channel with the highest reach is the local cable channel. Among the satellite channels, Sahara leads with a reach of 23 per cent followed by Aaj Tak with a reach of 20 per cent.

Top 10 channels on the basis of reach

Source: TAM Market: Mumbai Target Group: Cable And Satellite audiences 4 years and above

 

Other than the local cable channel, all rankings seem to be topsy-turvy. Sahara has gained seven places to be the number two channel. SAB TV and DD 1 have managed to penetrate the top 5 rankings.

Gain/loss analysis

Though all the pay channels were blacked out, the drop in reach was only 14 per cent. However, the drop in the total time spent per person was a whopping 50 per cent to 79 minutes from 129 minutes on the previous Friday.

Source:TAM Market: Mumbai Target Group: Cable And Satellite audiences 4 years and above Time Spent Analysis: 0600-2400

DD 1 accounted for the maximum gain in terms of reach with a reach increase of 87 per cent. SAB TV was the other big gainer with an increase in reach of more than 60 per cent. Though the time spent per cent increase of channels like SAB TV was as high as 300 per cent, the one point to be emphasized is that it is at a small base.

Channel Share Analysis:

Though reach would provide the walk-ins, channel shares would provide a robust measure of the viewership of the channels.

Source: TAM Market: Mumbai Target Group: Cable And Satellite audiences 4 years and above Time: 0600-2400

The local cable channel tops the channels shares. Sahara TV emerges as the number ones satellite channel followed closely by ETV Marathi and Aaj Tak.

This simulation provided by the Mumbai cable operators and analyzed by the TAM S-Group has provided some interesting insights. The crux of the matter is that CAS will be implemented sooner or later and life will change never to return to the same again!

S-Group study, TAM Media Research