The Hindu Business Line : DD News makes private channels sit up, rejig ad revenue plans

THE heat seems to be on the private news channels after the national broadcaster launched its full-fledged news channel and garnered substantial viewership numbers in the first week itself.

Star News, for one, is anxious about its final uplinking permission in order to step up its advertising revenue generation plans.

Sources in the Star Group said that with competition increasing, the uplinking permission has become crucial for the channel to get more localised ads.

Currently, while the news is uplinked from India, the channel is put together in Hong Kong and is beamed from there.

"The ads are inserted at Hong Kong and therefore the channel cannot accept local ads. But once we get the uplinking permission, we can insert the ads in India itself," said sources.

According to the existing law, channels uplinking from abroad can accept ads only from those companies that have export earnings.

Star News has not yet got its permanent licence and is operating on a temporary approval, which was being extended on a weekly basis.

With the increase in number of players, every advertiser big or small is crucial, said media planners.

While news channels have really not announced any cuts in ad rates, industry officials are expecting them to change their strategies.

"DD News is a must carry channel on prime band on the cable network and also has a terrestrial reach. This gives it an advantage over other private channels in terms of reach," said a Mumbai-based media planner.

According to Mr G. Krishnan, CEO of TV Today, which owns Aaj Tak, "DD has managed to garner good viewership in the Southern markets. Also, the channel has managed to get a large number of female audience, which is in a way, skewed."

But Mr Atul Phadnis, Director S-Group, TAM India said that DD News had managed to do well even in the metros.

"So the effort on the part of the private news channels would be to push distribution especially in the Hindi-speaking belt," Mr Phadnis said. Cable operators too are expecting heightened activity on the distribution front.

Meanwhile, with viewership numbers out for only the first week, news channels are waiting to see whether DD News will be able to sustain its performance or the high numbers are just a flash in the pan.

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