The Hindu Business Line : A roller-coaster ride for the media industry

In January 08, the media was exuberant, riding high on its big plans and growth projections for the TV-loving Indian market. But as the year comes to an end, plans are being downsized or postponed. The year pretty much replicated all the drama of our favourite soaps.

Olympics, clearly amongst the big events of the year elsewhere, gave the nation a set of new heroes to celebrate. But the loudest party was the one hosted by Indian Premier League.

The lows were just as extreme: the (Federation of Western India Cine Employees) strike that brought the TV industry to a halt and coverage of the terror attacks.

New TV programming

This year, disruptive programming ended the complacent reign of saas-bahu serials, which hasn’t come as a shock to the audience as experts had already warned a year ago that the GEC audience was being taken for granted. But the last six months saw a fresh lease in TV programming. The Indian Premier League where cricket was dressed for TV and on prime time even managed to draw in women viewers. Then came Viacom18’s new GEC Colors with its movie-scale, reality game show Fear Factor on prime time again.

Already NDTV Imagine’s Ramayan telecast on primetime had won over audiences. Colors’ success brought home the point that more than formula, innovative programming can rake in the TRPs. A case in point is the success of Baalika Vadhu with its unconventional child-bride heroine. This helped the channel close in on market leader Star Plus.

Not only did Kyunki, one of TV’s most successful serials, come to an end, so did the Star -Balaji Telefilms exclusive partnership. The network divested its 26 per cent stake holding in the production house, and also decided to pursue its regional ambitions, originally planned with Balaji, with Asianet Communications. Four months after Rupert Murdoch’s visit to India, Star coming to terms with the new fragmented entertainment space, had finally had its regional entertainment plans rolling.

News under scrutiny

This year, TV news also came under close public scrutiny. English news broadcasters had always distanced themselves from the Hindi channels prone to hysterical coverage of ghost sightings and the like in the past. However, the three-day Mumbai terror attacks also found them fumbling through their P2Cs (piece to camera). Public opinion expressed in blogs offered a stronger indictment than what came off the meetings between the Ministry of I&B and the industry. But it gave the Government an opportunity to renew the content regulation debate.

Although the Government also showed an inclination to raise the FDI caps for TV platforms acknowledging convergence of media, yet Conditional Access System was not extended, and digitisation of television not pushed sufficiently. Large cable operators, however, took it upon themselves to offer digital TV in the face the rapid growth of DTH with the entry of new players such as Bharti or Reliance ADAG.

DTH consumers were also offered many stand-alone packages. True choice, however, will have to wait the judgement on pricing regulatory issues. Sport broadcaster ESPN is still fighting Tata Sky and regulator TRAI in courts. During the year, many media houses announced their foray into print. Some of these plans such as TV 18’s joint venture with Financial Times publisher Pearson for a financial daily are yet to be seen. Hopefully they’ll make their debut in 2009, when more TV channels, including a couple of business newspapers’ proposed business channels are launched.