‘Slugging’ for eyeballs! [Picture source: left; right]
CAS (conditional access system) has brought smiles on the faces of TV viewers in metro cities. They pay only the minimum fee for cable connection, and they don’t pay for channels they don’t want to see. No prize for guessing which channels get maximum viewers.
The TV channels are gradually coming to terms that no longer can they take their viewership for granted. NDTV Profit is a case in point. For long my favorite channel, it suddenly enters the ambit of CAS, and since I haven’t opted for CAS yet, dithering whether to go for it or getting Tata Sky (the DTH service), I am left with no option than to switch over to CNBC-TV18.
Yes, I do miss the smiling faces of Nikunj Dalmia and Manvi Dhillon and their analyses of stock performance in The 2-30 Factor, but then CNBC-TV18’s Closing Bell isn’t bad either. Their other programs are equally good, and more often even the analysts-on-call are the same.
NDTV Profit meanwhile has become a part-sponsor of the ongoing Sao Paulo football matches (like it does in case of big corporate programs), but their ads so pale in front of Star Ananda and Tata Steel that you’ve to literally strive hard to see them. Perhaps tomorrow’s JCT match at Delhi’s Ambedkar Stadium will see more of their ads, being their home turf.
The going getting tougher by the day, the CAS channels are now planning to aggressively advertise in traditional media in order to preserve and grow eyeballs. In today’s edition of ET, a report says that “..niche channels are slated to lose as much as 40% of their viewership post CAS and branding efforts would be the only way to create channel pull as a way to prompt consumers to go for these channels in their a la carte choices”.
Many analysts say in the long run the picture does look promising as CAS extends all over the country, which will polarize the viewership in tandem with proportional increase. In my understanding, it’s rather the other way round. The pay channels may already be discovering that ad revenue and viewer revenue are not mutually exclusive after all.
This means if viewer-generated revenue decreases, so will the ad revenue. But if the latter increases, there is no reason why the former must also increase. And since these figures will mostly be well known, it’s all the more reason for pay channels to roll up their sleeves and get muddied in the whirlpool of fight for eyeballs.
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