However, thats slowly changing with the arrival of DTH and the amendment to the Cable Act in 2011 that made digitisation mandatory. It means television signals can no longer be sold without a digital set-top box. The first phase of digitisation in the four metros of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai was completed in November 2012, and the second phase in 38 cities is due to end on March 31 this year. There may be delays but the process is underway. L V Krishnan, chief executive officer, TAM Media Research,reckons it is too early for clear patterns to come out, but three things are emerging. One, sampling has increased, which in turn has led to a rise in the reach and time spent for several genres. There has been, for instance, a 58 per cent jump in sampling for English entertainment in Delhi, largely because of availability and the electronic programming guide, which improves a viewers ability to navigate within a genre or between genres. Since there are no capacity constraints, all channels are available for anyone wanting to watch them in digital homes. Our channels now rate higher in the digital universe than in the analog one because the availability is higher, says Johri. Two, differentiation is now critical. This means that news, music, or any category with low or no differentiation will have few takers. For instance, one can access news anywhere, in newspapers, online or on free-to-air TV channels. So one would subscribe to a news channel only if there was something exceptional about it. Three, digitisation helps increase the long tail of content either by shifting the place or the time of consumption. This allows broadcasters to reach out to new markets or smaller clusters of audiences profitably. For example, operators such as Airtel offer 27 Tamil channels (among others) all over the country. This means Tamil consumers anywhere could watch shows in their language. The combined Tamil offerings of operators has actually pushed up the sampling of Tamil general entertainment channels (GECs) and films by a whopping 76 per cent in Delhi, considered for long a Hindi market. The growth of pay-per-view is another example of the long-tail effect. A decent movie gets 200,000-300,000 views on DTH and this is a completely new revenue stream. You can try creating this window from day zero up to say day 21 or more. On day zero a film could be priced at Rs 1,000 on DTH, decreasing progressively and going to Rs 50 per view in the last phase, says Harit Nagpal, CEO, Tata Sky.
Posted on: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 03:07:08 +0000
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