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Industry Perspective: Sumant Bahl on “erratic” UK TV ratings

With ratings giving UK Asian TV broadcasters much headache over the erratic movements in numbers, BizAsiaLive.com speaks to a number of leading media executives about the state of play. After an Industry Perspective with Manish Tiwari from Here & Now 365, our series of specials continue with Sumant Bahl from Space Merchants / World Media Connect.

Just when we believe there’s a trend and we can start planning things, a turmoil comes and shakes the industry up. New leaders emerge, existing leaders get shaken up and few even lose out. Asian TV industry in the UK is seeing the same scenario as today. More than 13 years ago a decision taken by Star and Sky to make a really good niche content available at no extra cost had finally brought a beautiful and ever-growing subscription market of Asian TV in the UK to a complete dead end and to an unheard-of scenario where a whole lot of niche products were being offered either for free or for no additional cost with another service which most people chose anyway. Niche should be premium, isn’t it?

With the growing cost of operations and the head offices of all broadcasters expecting their international offices to contribute towards growing content production/acquisition costs, UK isn’t good news right now.

Nearly two months of being available to wider audiences by the remainder of pay channels on Sky have so far shown no clear direction. Clearly the changeover in the market place has caused a lot of confusion. Some channels aren’t doing as well as expected and some are doing better than their speculated fall. Stability is far away; with summer having just finished and kids back to school, more stable ratings hopefully should start coming from October onwards. Long standing market leader Star Plus, clearly is in a state of Bungee Jumping with ratings falling to an all time low one day, then all-time high over the last seven weeks. Plus average a substantial dip in total impacts, with no real change in their programming line-up, it’s an absolute nightmare for their FPC planners. At the same time Star Gold and newly launched Star Bharat are performing well.

Zee Cinema and Sony MAX with all their blockbuster titles they have broadcast so far haven’t made a significant impact as Star Gold & even the underdog B4U Movies is holding steady, while Rishtey Cineplex has seen some steady loss in its viewership and leadership position. With India v Sri Lanka having just gone and Pakistan V Sri Lanka on the cards Sony MAX is delivering on cricket days and allowing more and more people to sample the channel which expectedly should help the channel in the long term.

For a long time in the UK, be it Indian TV or Indian Cinema – the revenues/viewership/leadership position has had a lot to do with the contribution of Pakistani audiences. With a massive influx of quality Pakistani channels, a long standing political turmoil and first of its kind, the new initiative of launching the first Asian cooking channel; Together Hum TV & Hum Masala followed by New Vision, Dunya or Geo Group channels the market has new leaders just behind Star TV. We now see a clear shift of Pakistani audiences towards Pakistani channels and thus all top Indian channels who were boosting of nearly 30-40% Pakistani viewers are losing. With quality Pakistani dramas and only cooking channel of the industry, the day is not far when Indian viewers will start shifting towards Pakistani content and the dent then to Indian TV Channels will be beyond repair.

While more and more advertising revenues are coming into the industry from mainstream pie, unstable ratings make the relevance of ethnic advertisers very strong. Ethnic advertising pie obviously not growing at the speed or number of channels or their needs are growing, share of ethnic money is getting split and the rat race to grab the advertiser’s budgets is at all time high.

“I believe we still need a longer period before we look towards any clear direction and a true picture that will allow advertisers and agencies to take long term media buying decisions. It should only be seen post-Christmas and in the new year in my opinion. Appointment viewing and everyday changing rankings will be the way forward as I see it. It’s time for good PR by broadcasters or else due to many available options but lack of comparatively better PR may make some deserving channels also lose their fair share”.

Most surprising change ever since more channels have gone into Sky Original Pack is not the lack of clear path between the usual’s such as Star TV, Zee, Sony or Viacom channels, it’s the unexpectedly high deliveries on many days by channels such as ATN Bangla, Brit Asia TV, ABP News or Aaj Tak or PTV Global or Prime TV. All of these are niche among the niche and their delivery on certain days is making no logical sense at all. While another noticeable change post 1st August is that the direct relevance of impacts v daily reach has changed a lot with some channels delivering a much higher impact with low reach and another delivering a third of their impact with double the reach and all of the above is currently making some people ask the question if these ratings are as trustworthy as they used to be while the complaint of Asian broadcasters of inadequate boxes in Asian homes by BARB still remains as it is.

Let’s wait and watch on how and when does this turmoil come to a steady path.