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Purvita Chatterjee

Few takers for regional channels

Mumbai April 26 Is there a difference in viewership patterns before the introduction of the conditional access system (CAS) and post its launch in the three metros? The Mumbai CAS market with its highest level of adoption (accounting for more than 50 per cent of the set top boxes sold across the three metros) does not immediately reveal a major shift.

While there has been an increase in the shares of the free-to-air channels, the ranking of the channels in their respective genres remain more or less unchanged. The preference for the Star and Sony bouquets continues, while individual channels from the Zee stable such as Zee Cinema and Zee TV have had adequate takers.

"Star is still the leader although the shares of ESPN Star Sports has declined since Doordarshan is showing the same matches for free,'' states Mr K. Jayaraman, Managing Director & CEO, Hathway Cable & Datacom. Consumers are exercising the `buffet' option comprising channel bouquets rather than the a la carte packages where they are expected to pay Rs 5 for every channel subscription.

Mr Anuj Gandhi, President, SET Discovery, said, "When consumers pick and choose, it's mainly the general entertainment channels (GEC) and sports channels which tend to do well in the CAS markets. Now that CAS has settled in, the mainstream channels continue to be neck to neck." The trend across the metros shows that all the three GECs — Star TV, Sony and Zee TV — have been recording almost equal shares and so have sports channels such as ESPN and Ten Sports, claim the multi-system operators (MSOs) in Mumbai.

At the same time, CAS in Mumbai has negatively impacted the regional channels. Being a cosmopolitan city, there have been few takers for the regional channels. Data from MSOs reveals that demand for regional channels is not even 20 per cent of the total CAS market with Zee Marathi and ETV Marathi leading the market followed by Gujarati channels.

The Hindi movie genre too has remained static in terms of viewing preferences in the CAS areas. "CAS has not changed the preference for Hindi movie channels. The shares of the Filmy channel vis-a-vis the other movie channels has not changed but compared to the other channels its shares have been affected due to the lack of set top boxes," states Mr Ashutosh, Business Head, Filmy, part of Sahara One Media and Entertainment Ltd.

Niche channels

Besides, it is mainly the niche channels, which are more impacted by CAS. As Mr Gandhi claims, "Niche channels will have lesser number in a CAS market. Channels such as Discovery and NGC (National Geographic) would possibly have about 70 per cent of the GEC channels."

Meanwhile, the Zee Group has been trying to catch up with the market leader. Wire and Wireless India Ltd (WWIL), Zee Group's subsidiary company in the MSO business, claims its channel has been leading for a while. According to Mr Jagjeet Singh Kohli, Head, WWIL (currently facing charges for not encrypting the channels in accordance with the TRAI), "There is now a substantial difference between Star and Zee as per the data fed into our subscription management systems." The last time WWIL fed in data, its subscriber base stood at 40,000 but today the figure has escalated to 2.5 lakh subscribers.

As for Star India, it believes in its leadership position, pre- or post-CAS. As Mr Paritosh Joshi, President, Ad Sales & Distribution, Star India, says, "The MSOs are required to give us the data from their subscription management systems and we are expected to supply them with our invoices but this is not the basis for tracking viewership behaviour. In spite of TAM not giving a report on the CAS market, we still continue to be the leader, well ahead of Zee in all the four metros including Mumbai."

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