ASB has a rich external interface with a continuous stream of interactions occurring with Industry leaders and Academic professionals. Among the recent visitors to campus was Mr. Sudhakar Jayaram, Director and CEO of Amrita TV.
Date: 14th November, 2006
Role of Media in Society
Last evening we had an inspiring interaction with Mr. Sudhakar Jayaram, Director and CEO of Amrita TV, who shared his experiences about his one year of work with the channel. He focused his talk on the role of media in building up the society and the change it has brought in the lifestyle of people. According to him media is the easiest topic to talk about because everyone has some basic exposure to various streams of media.
Mr. Jayaram stressed the importance of print media in India which, with a 92 million print circulation, occupies second position in the world. In the matter of TV channels, with about 365 channels and another 46 waiting to be approved for launch, we are second only to China and we top the list of number of news channel with 40 odd channels covering wide variety of news from all quarters of the world.
In spite of this apparent success in terms of numbers, there are 6 paradoxes that characterize the Indian media industry. They are:-
• Tremendous choice but very little diversity
• Tremendous need for gratification but very little satisfaction
• Tremendous number of viewers but less engagement
• Tremendous immediacy but very little depth
• Tremendous information but very little knowledge
• Tremendous action but less news
The basic question that arose is – what is the product that media is selling? Is it selling information and programmes? The answer is far from this. He said that media sells audiences to the people who give them advertisements. But the cause for concern is whether the selling of people in the form of audiences is ethical. The media depicts Indian society as unipolar, homogenous and metropolitan, but this is far from the real India that is diverse, heterogeneous and predominantly rural.
Mr. Jayaram also spoke about how difficult it is to compartmentalize media activities into the 4 P’s of marketing. This is because of the broadcast media, which sells different products (programmes) at different times. In addition the consumer watching the channel changes at different points of time and the same consumer can behave differently at different times. Pricing for ad spots also tends to be quite volatile according to the changing patterns of viewership.
The switching cost (the cost of switching products, here it means changing channels) is zero. Hence no question of loyalty to a certain programme or channel arises. So TV channels have a hard time maintaining viewership numbers. Innovation is the key to success and innovation becomes easy when there is a strong focus on the customer. We need to think and live the product to achieve innovation.
Then we went on to a discussion about ‘Amrita TV – First Year and Beyond.’ Amrita TV’s mission statement- ‘Endearing, enriching and entertaining’ is inspired by Amma’s vision for the channel, which can be summarized in three sentences.
• Entertainment is needed for life
• Without entertainment life is a drag.
• Entertainment should not be divorced from culture.
In line with its vision Amrita TV tries to provide quality content that is vibrant and youthful. The programmes are designed to be tasteful and appealing. The channel has a unique programming concept that reflects our cultural heritage. Sometimes it is a challenging task to make this mix commercially successful, but the Amrita team has proved its worth by winning 15 State awards during the first year itself.
In the future, Amrita TV is planning to enhance awareness about the channel and increase connectivity across different parts of the country especially in major cities like Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi and other urban towns. Presently the channel has a 26% market share in prime time and occupies third position in overall market share. In order to increase the viewership, better programmes have to be telecast in prime time.
Mr. Jayaram concluded by saying that Amrita TV stands out as a contemporary, vibrant, useful and accountable channel. One major strength is that the channel is acceptable to everyone as it stands out as a general entertainment channel with a wide variety of programmes. With regard to the television industry as a whole the challenges will be to maintain integrity, improve market innovations, form alliances with key media partners, improving marketing innovations and promoting communications in order to have enriched and enhanced news content. In conclusion, ethics play a major role in shaping the future of any TV Channel, to increase its viewership and bring success in its long run.
By
S.Dinesh & A. Rajeev
Ist year MBA
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