NEW DELHI: When it's a newsy year, it's bad for business, said Times Network MD and CEO MK Anand in a throwaway comment at the ninth edition of CII Big Picture Summit. All jokes aside, he can't deny the fact that the crises that popped up throughout the year benefited his news networks by reeling in more viewers.
“It was a fantastic opportunity, because we really had a period where we knew that the newsiness will be there for more than three to five days. This was also a period when the consumer behaviour changed drastically. They were not travelling and working from home and had more time to spend with family and watch media. Fortunately for the news space, we had the wherewithal and infrastructure to continue providing the fresh content on a continuous basis and in a period when people were interesting in knowing what was happening around,” shared Anand during a one-on-one session titled ‘Changing Face of News Media - Future of Indian News’, moderated by EY M&E lead Ashish Pherwani.
It was pretty evident during the lockdown that several genres on the television ran out of fresh content and as news reporters were covering the pandemic, the Sushant Singh Rajput case, elections and other issues and conflicts, the audience’s proximity to news was extremely high. This resulted in the genre having a high viewership.
“The initial phases of the lockdown were a period where we felt there could be a disruption but we got a very positive feedback from the fourth week onwards. The initial situation was that the cable operators were wondering whether they will be able to operate or connect, all that went away by April and the numbers are there to see,” said Anand.
He further added that it was a great opportunity for new players, whose success had chiefly to do with the fact that consumer behaviour was in flux and there was a high propensity to spend time in front of channels.
The question that remains is whether this spike in viewership will sustain or not. “People have a lot of things to do than to only watch news channels. I think there will be a minor lift up and certain things will not change. There will be a 10-15 per cent change in viewership share that can be expected to stay at least for the next year or so,” Anand conjectured.
He went on to add that for the media industry, the long-term RoI of Covid2019 will be positive, heavy losses incurred in the last six months notwithstanding.
Besides fluctuations in revenue and viewership, another dynamic aspect this past year has been the adoption of new technologies and innovations to keep the news cycle grinding away even when the going got tough. The Times Network too was quick to adapt and switch things in terms of processes, new techniques of innovation and collaborations, shared Anand.
“We have had at least three properties which we would not have probably thought of and executed and which now will be a part of our regular line-up. We have been able to link up our research, finance, ad sales, and marketing people in the organisation and there is some serious amount of collaboration that we have been able to set up, which will go beyond Covid and we are seeing certain properties that are surprising us,” he elaborated.
On the operations side, the media group plans to keep working remotely, not just in the foreseeable future but in the long-term too. “In 2022, there will be 30 per cent work from office and 70 per cent work from home. A good example is - ET Now at any given day had 200 people in the office, and we were able to operate it with five people on hand. All the anchors were working from home and we had no issues; we have been able to experiment a lot more than what we were able to do before.”
Anand also pointed that the times have changed and digital will play a crucial role in how we work and operate. “Physical has a charm, more perceived value and glamour. The addition of digital presence to physical will be a lot faster adopted and paid for. I don’t think digital will replace physical, the latter will come back in a very big way, but the acceptance of tech in this area will be a lot better and interesting.”
Talking about interesting, one subject that has made the news industry sit up and take notice is the alleged TRP manipulation racket, which led BARC to cease news ratings for a period of 12 weeks.
Anand stated that the scam has led to authorities recognising this menace as a criminal offence and not just a civil matter. Essentially, such malpractices are not fair to competitor, consumers, advertisers and investors, he asserted.
“We have championed the cause of reach by high cost of marketing collaterals such as landing pages. The fact that it (rigging TRPs) is prevalent and is used to take money off the table from honest and fair players and it’s a competitive problem. No one needs to bleed for competition, but you definitely need to bleed for advertiser as he is taken for a ride. I don’t think it has impacted any ad sales in Oct-Nov-Dec or will impact in Jan-Feb-March,” concluded Anand.
