MUMBAI: The Election Commission of India (ECI) has received 750 complaints of paid news during the state assembly elections in the current year, Information & Broadcasting minister Manish Tewari said.

In comparison, the ECI had received 155 complaints of paid news during the state assembly elections last year.
Tewari also informed that the Press Council of India (PCI) has received nine complaints of paid news this year compared to 17 in the previous.

"The Press Council of India (PCI), an autonomous body to maintain and improve the standards of press, received 17 complaints of paid news in the year 2009-10, two complaints in the year 2010-11 and 11 complaints in 2011-12 and nine complaints till date in the current year," Tewari said in a statement laid in the Lok Sabha.

In response to another question, Tewari told the Lok Sabha that Doordarshan had earned Rs 865.7 million from the auction of slots on its direct-to-home (DTH) platform to free-to-air channels in the year 2011-12.

NEW DELHI: Close on the heels of a financial package including some waivers approved recently by the Union Cabinet, Prasar Bharati today announced that the government had approved the filling up of 1150 posts in the programming and the technical wings of Doordarshan and All India Radio.

These posts are part of the 3452 essential category posts which were approved by the Group of Ministers (GoM) headed by the present Finance Minister P. Chidamabaram in 2011. A majority of these posts belong to Group B & C, that is, Grade Pay of less than Rs 4,600. While the Group B & C would be filled up by Staff Selection Commission, the remaining would be filled up by the Prasar Bharati Recruitment Board. The recruitment process is expected to be over by middle of the next year.

Prasar Bharati CEO Jawhar Sircar said: ?This is the first major infusion of new blood into Doordarshan and All India Radio after a period of 15 long years. After approval of the Cabinet for the financial restructuring, which involved a waiver of Rs 120.71 billion, this is the second biggest decision. It would go a long way in creating quality content for our viewers and help us in facing the emerging competition.?

The 1150 posts include Assistant Station Directors, Assistant Director (Programme), Engineering Assistants, Programme Executives, Transmission Executives, Technicians, Camerapersons, Production Assistants and Administrative Staff.

Member (Personnel) Brig. (Retd) V A M Hussain added: ?These were critical and essential posts, which had lapsed and needed to be revived. A number of our stations were without engineers and programming staff, which had affected their operations. It is a new dawn on the horizon of Prasar Bharati and will help the Corporation to tide over its acute manpower shortage.?

After the revival of the Prasar Bharati Board under the current CEO, it has been working on a number of plans to revive the public broadcaster through aggressive focus on shoring up revenues through marketing, organisational restructuring and manpower planning.

The pubcaster plans to have six senior officers with domain expertise to look after various verticals including Marketing, DTH, Technology, Infrastructure, Archives and Security. The Corporation has also engaged an HR Advisor of retired Secretary level to expedite promotions of staff persons, who had stagnated at the same posts for as long as 20 years and had little motivation to give their best.

In other organisational reforms, the Doordarshan and AIR zones are being combined into a total of seven zones viz. North Zone, North Central Zone, Central Zone, East Zone, West Zone, South Zone and North-East Zone. At present there are 12 Zones in All India Radio and six Zones in Doordarshan and 5 Zones in Engineering Wing combined for AIR/DD.

In the restructured model, each Zone will have three ADGs with one each for Engineering Projects, Engineering Maintenance and Programmes & Administration. The reorganisation, which makes DD and AIR coterminous for the first time in the history, is aimed at decentralisation and improvement in organisational efficiency.

MUMBAI: For infotainment channel History TV18, the pace of the first year has been dictated by regional-language feeds, heavy marketing with Bollywood superstar Salman Khan as the face, carriage agreements with cable and DTH networks and meticulous study of ratings to see where the viewership expansion is taking place.

The results are palpable. The first year of History TV18 happened to be in a period when the share of infotainment genre in the television space, according to TAM data c&s4+ all India, grew by 37 per cent to 1.4 per cent in genre share (Jan - September 2012) from 1.1 per cent a year earlier. The increase in the share of infotainment was in part because competition too beefed up content and launched more local language feeds.

History TV18 GM marketing Sangeetha Aiyer notes that while progress has been made there is a way to go to achieve what it has done in the US. "History is a leader in the US and other key markets of the world. We are yet to achieve that in the India market."

In terms of the way forward, she says that the first key step to consolidate ratings is to strengthen the distribution footprint. Expansion in 1mn+ town class therefore will be important. The channel is also pinning its hopes on digitisation as the factual genre gets significant contribution to viewership from digital cable and DTH platforms. "So we are ensuring that we focus on our presence and availability through these broadcast platforms."

Along with focussing on connectivity and availability to be optimal and accelerated, parallely the broadcaster is also working on the programming strategy and content mix. "A few subgenres within the factual entertainment genre have shown traction for us," said Aiyer.

She elaborates that the sub genres that will be focussed on going forward are 1) Action/ adventuer/ thrills; 2) informative programming packaged in an entertaining way like The Works, Food Tech, etc that are character driven; and 3) India centric content. The aim is to continue to strengthen this sub genre. Another type of content that is working is topical stuff which will more be like a tactical strategy to get the much needed spikes, she points out.

One main issue for this channel like others in the English space is to build appointment viewing. "More and more we are also moving to stripping content as a strategy. That seems the key to build some amount of pattern for appointment viewing in this genre which is otherwise snacking in nature," she says.

Earlier A+E Networks had a JV with Fox International Channels for The History Channel. When the JV concluded the channel was rebranded as Fox History and Entertainment. Subsequently, the channel moved into the lifestyle space and was rebranded as Fox Traveller leaving room for the new History TV18 channel.

Aiyer said that one of the biggest challenges faced was the brand name. "Unfortunately, since the channel already had a presence in India, people had misconceptions that the new History TV18 channel would be all about History in the real sense of the word. Also because of its name, there was a perception that the content will be about date, text bookish, documentary-style, preachy etc. That was the main challenge."

That was one of the main reasons that the channel used Salman Khan as a brand ambassador in order to dispel this. This move was unusual and the deal with Khan was for one year. The tagline ?Kuchh Naya Dekho, History Bante Dekho? aims to encompass the breadth of content and themes that History brings to Indian audiences - History here is not just about the past, it?s as much about people making history today.

Talking about the difference between the new History TV18 channel vis-?-vis what the earlier avatar was, she said that the focus is on contemporary; it is about action and adventure. It is about people making History every day. "And through this unique and exciting partnership with Salman Khan, we have managed to reach out to a number of mainstream viewers we could reach otherwise."

"With such a strong positioning we are clearly differentiated from competition and our strategy is more proactive in nature and in line with our strategy of growing the genre. The channel was launched with universal themes that use the premise of history but are entertaining, engaging and thrilling and would appeal to a very wide audience, including younger demographics and also discerning audiences."

More Languages: The other thing that History TV18 did was to launch in eight languages. No other broadcaster in this genre is available in so many languages. Asked if History TV18 was maybe a bit too aggressive on the language feed front, she noted that being present in different languages was one of its key differentiators which helped grow the entire genre. "It has been one of our greatest strengths. Moreover, we wouldn?t have ventured into ?languaging? if the cost-benefit aspect didn?t work out."

Localisation has played a key role in building brand connect with ?The Greatest Indian? initiative. This was a search to find the greatest Indian since Mahatma Gandhi. This gave the channel the chance to use social media in an effective way. "We got over 2 crore votes coming through missed calls and online. The campaign also sustained a healthy engagement on Social Media platforms reaching over 20 lac Facebook users through viral content. Comparisons and discussions followed on Twitter with hashtags related to the initiative trending consistently and reaching over 200,000 users daily."

What is the roadmap in this regard going to be? "Our aim is to have one local show a quarter. We have also acquired shows that were shot in India like ?Passage Through India?, ?India on 4 Wheels?. Having said that, it has been a mix of shows like ?Pawn Stars? that have delivered," Aiyer said.

Now as part of its special anniversary celebration, the broadcaster has introduced ?History?s Hot Shots?, a recap of some series aired on the channel in the last 1 year. The channel is airing shows like ?IRT Deadliest Roads?, ?Food Tech?, ?Pawn Stars - Season 2?, ?Ax Men - Season 4?, ?Around the World in 80 Days? and ?Chasing Mummies?.

More channels in pipeline? No decision has been made yet about more channel launches. Like other broadcasters, the JV is looking to see how digitisation pans out. The priority is to establish History TV18 as the flagship channel from the JV and watch it grow the genre, market share and revenues.

Ad market scenario: On the ad revenue front, Aiyer says that the challenge is that despite delivering five times the GRPS of other English genres like news and English GEC, the revenue that the Factual Entertainment genre has is probably one fifth that of English News. It stands at around Rs 2 billion.

"This will most probably need a more concentrated effort by the genre itself and the players thereof to push the agenda of the kind and number of audiences its delivers. We at History TV18 continue to push this agenda with trade and advertising fraternity," says Aiyer.

Dwelling on the difference that the channel has made in revenue terms, Aiyer said that this genre had maximum contribution from FMCG in the past. "This is an established rule that we have challenged. We have tried and have succeeded in bringing on board other categories actively like banking, telecom, consumer durables, etc. Our objective this year is to become the number two player in terms of revenue and so far we are on track for the same."

She adds that the leader in the genre needs to take a call on pushing effective rates.

In terms if the slowdown, Aiyer notes that the belief is that if one gets the fundamentals right, everything else will fall in place. "We know we have a great product offering and believe there is a strong market for us. Moreover the breadth of our audiences and advertisers provides a bit of an edge or cushioning as compared to categories and genres that are independent or have fewer advertiser segments."

Offering a media buyer?s take, VivaKi Exchange CEO Mona Jain says that History has given some amount of incremental reach. "It provides cost effective opportunities to target SEC A,B audiences. clients that use the infotainment genre have added History to the media mix. Using Salman Khan got them instant reach. Also interest levels rose. Now the content has to speak for itself. Viewership will depend on the kind of properties that they have."

The effective rate on this genre is around Rs 1300 per 10 second spot. "It will be difficult for them to take this up. This category has become competitive with many players. I expect this genre to grow by around 10 per cent this year. i don?t think that the slowdown will affect it. The slowdown is having a bigger effect on big ticket properties where advertisers are hesitating and waiting. But for cost effective channels that provide a good entry point like History that will not be the case."

Equal split in ad-subscription revenue possible: With digitisation, niche broadcasters hope to get a fairer share in subscription revenue.

Aiyer feels that with digitisation there is the chance that the split between advertising and subscription revenue could be 50:50 three years down the line for this genre if the digital timeline is stuck to. She maintains that the channel is on track to achieve breakeven in two years time.

"While still a niche genre in India, factual entertainment is a growth genre. It is the only genre that has seen a year-on-year growth 2008 onwards. In fact, it has a 29 per cent growth in viewership (2008 versus 2010). We believe it has potential to grow more and become a relatively mainstream genre. And digitisation will provide an impetus to the same," says Aiyer.