Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Thursday, Jul 28, 2005
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Thursday, Jul 28, 2005 |
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Marketing
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Marketing Research Variety - Sports No cricket? Viewers wrestle with TV sets for high ratings Sriram Srinivasan
Chennai , July 27 GUESS which sport is most watched on TV when it's off-season for the Indian cricket team. Tennis? Football? Incorrect. It is professional wrestling, from the World Wresting Entertainment stable! Between May-end and June-end, when the Men in Blue were off TV screens, a 75-minute WWE package topped the TVR (television rating) charts for sports programmes with a score of 1.56, according to data from TAM Media Research, which tracks TV viewership. Thirteen of the top 20 programmes on sports channels during that period featured wrestling, with even the Australia-England one-day encounters failing to match its viewership scores. WWE programmes such as RAW and Smackdown have "distinct soap opera style storylines and a roster of colourful characters who are immensely popular across all age-groups," says Ms Sharmista Rijhwani, Managing Director, Taj Television (India) Pvt Ltd, whose Ten Sports holds the telecast rights. After being associated with WWE since 2001, Ten Sports signed a fresh contract early this year with the wrestling body for a five-year term. The new deal has also enabled Ten Sports to telecast what are called WWE Specials, which are available only as pay-per-view in the US. One such special, called `The Judgement Day,' earned it the top slot in June. A string of WWE shows, including Heat, Velocity, The Bottom Line, After Burn and the WWE Experience, had helped Ten Sports garner nearly half the viewership for sports channels during May-June. About 15 per cent of Ten Sports' daily content pertains to WWE, which it presents in three time-bands: morning, evening and night. The fact that the 10.30 p.m. slot is popular, Ms Rijhwani says, is testimony to the fact that WWE is no longer just synonymous with kids. This has helped bring in "non-traditional advertisers" such as TVS Motors and Titan, apart from brands that woo kids, she says. A media industry official says advertisers mostly use shows such as WWE as a supplementary vehicle for reaching out, especially as a big chunk of non-cricket advertising occurs by default. In other words, as part of a bigger package. It is learnt that spot ad rates per 10 seconds for WWE typically range between Rs 1,500 and Rs 2,000, slightly lower than, say, rates for Grand Slam tennis events, which attract an elite audience.
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