A close analysis
of events in the past three years points to an undeniable fact
- that the Specialist content channels had rescued the industry
from a near slump situation in 2001. Curious? Read on.....
A medium like
Television has, at all times, certain constant set of advertisers
and brands that continuously advertise and contribute to the revenues
on the medium. However, there is a constant string of new brands
and advertisers that also contribute to the medium's organic growth.
If this steady traffic of new advertisers were to stop or worse,
were to reverse, one would find either degrowth or sluggish growths
for TV revenues.
And that's
exactly what seems to have happened at the beginning of the Millennium.
As in the graph below, the year 2001 saw some advertisers actually
backing out of Television. The number of Companies on TV fell
from 4339 to 4137.
This dip
in the number of Advertisers on TV in 2001 is also indicated by
a corresponding drop in the number of brands on TV.
However, this drop would
have been steeper if it had not been for the Specialist Channels!
That gets established as we study the number of brands and advertisers
that came onto News channels in the last three years. The drop that
we see in overall TV in 2001 in terms of the number of brands/ advertisers,
however saw a big increase for News channels as newer players came
onto these channels in 2001. From around 500 Advertisers on News
in 2000, there was a steep increase to almost 700 in 2001! If one
recalls, 2001 was around the same time that Aaj Tak was launched,
that September 11 & December 13 attacks took place.
The most interesting
trend is that News channels today are inspiring categories to come
in, that earlier would have considered it blasphemous to be present
on News! Three years ago, salt ads, hair conditioner ads, Toothbrush
ads would have been a no-no for News channels. Not any more. "Have
audiences-Will come in" seems to be the mantra for most companies
as they trash the 'brand-fit' argument!
Interestingly, similar trends are also seen for English Entertainment
channels, Infotainment channels and Hindi Movie channels where there
was actually an increase in the number of brands and advertisers
present of those channels in 2001.
These trends
yet again point to the fact that Specialist Channels are inspiring
a new breed of advertisers to come into Television thus taking up
the level of spends on the medium!
Atul Phadnis
Director
S-Group
TAM Media Research
All figures used are courtesy TAM TV ADEX
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