Mumbai: This is one gent who must be enjoying the accuracy of his predictions by having read the tea leaves about the future of the pay-TV broadcast and streaming business in India, almost five years back. It’s about having had a finger on the pulse of the market and its dynamics. The reference is to Peter Mukerjea, the former CEO of Star India who penned a book STARSTRUCK - Confessions of a TV executive on the then Murdoch-owned media and entertainment minnow which he transformed into a whale.
“According to market estimates, streaming as a one-off business will continue to lose money for years to come,” quoting Mukerjea from the book. “With so many players all wanting rich content, it’s great news for production companies, and the average per episode costs will simultaneously go up. As a comparative, market analysts believe that 20 firms globally will spend more on content than the sums invested in the oil industry.”
He asks: “The big question is who will be left standing, as a shakeout is inevitable. Star is no longer Star now – they’re Disney now, but how long before one of the FAANGs (Facebook Apple Amazon Netflix and Google) devours them. Jio will either merge or exit the content business and simply be a platform or aggregator of content.”
Television has a way of absorbing outsiders – whether they are from a tech background or banking or FMCG – and they will make expensive mistakes as they experiment with new business models. Paying vast amounts of money to acquire bragging rights for some of the cricket tourneys is a good example of that and heads have rolled for it. With all that volume of expenditure on content, there will be eagle-eyed finance people seeking revenue opportunities to match. This transition from a 24-hour schedule approach to a more flexible and splintered video-on-demand consumption will make it virtually impossible to have a clear number one influencer.”
They will all be key influencers and will collectively encourage spending cuts on entertainment or even exit businesses to shore up their bottom lines. I have not mentioned Google, Youtube or Facebook, who will eventually be acquirers and could well then gobble up a Disney or a Jio or both, given the size of their valuations.”
Yes, the splurging era has gone past us with billions being spent on creating alluring content by the streamers and the broadcasters turned OTTs. And now we are into the age of spending cuts – with jobs being axed, divisions being put on the auction block. The decisions have probably been speeded up by the global economy which is currently limping around – weakened as it is by the pandemic and Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Of course, the rapid uptake of AI and machine learning by the media and entertainment business has definitely hastened the transformation.
Will another acquisition binge follow as Peter has foreseen?
We probably are seeing the first signs of it in India: with the Zeel-Sony merger expected to get the NCLT green signal very soon. Reliance’s Jio sitting on the table with Bob Iger and their bankers to dissolve Star India into the Viacom18 brew. We will have to wait and watch when ( not if ) more gigantic fusions will come out in the wash.
