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Break Ke Baad
Berra Garak
Sunder Singh Sabrang
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Brand alignments with news
broadcasters, media partnerships and even fully-funded
programmes are the new reality on the television news business.
But no one in India is making much noise about it.
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 Things are
hardly different in the electronic media in India.
We were
disgusted by the advertisement punch line on Indian TV that spoke of
"Shave India Movement." Clearly, one expected that any TV channel
will object to the ad saying it will hurt the Sikh sensibilities and
even Muslim sensibilities. In case of Sikhs, the very suggestion of
such a punch line is bound to hurt deeply and even enrage the entire
community.
But far from
objecting to the ad, just see how the ad campaign was formulated and
how it was implemented.
Clearly a blade
manufacturing company Gillette
India
was behind this fake campaign ostensibly launched by some
like-minded women, including a few actors, who claimed taht their
sould could only rest if they go to war. The war that they chose was
called War Against Lazy Stubble (WALS), targetting men who are too
lazy to shave. Shamelessly, it was called a "social campaign" even
by sections of the responsible media.
 Now, Gillette’s
Shave India Movement has been around for a yearand has been
“covered” by well-known English news channel CNN-IBN, which has been
running a series of shows comprising news features, interviews of
celebrities as well as panel discussions on the issue: To Shave Or
Not.
To Shave Or Not,
incidentally, is also the slogan of the movement launched by
Gillette. Now, some enterprising media investigation has brought out
that CNN-IBN was part of the company’s larger marketing gameplan to
catch consumer attention from all possible platforms for its newly
launched top-end product Gillette Mach3. The “exclusive partnership”
between the news channel and the company is now over and a website
on War Against Lazy Stubble, http://shaveindia.com, Gillette’s
latest initiative, says its copyright rests with Global Broadcast
News Ltd, the parent company of CNN-IBN.
 So much for
separating news and advertisements. Many such facts have been
brought out in by the Indian Express in a two-part series on how
Indian media has been corrupted.
Branded content
or advertiser-funded programmes are not new in the broadcast
business.
What’s new is
that from being limited to entertainment, they’ve now entered news,
once considered a sacrosanct space. The change has come in the last
two years. Brand alignments with news broadcasters, media
partnerships and even fully-funded programmes are the new reality on
the television news business.
According to at
least 10 senior professionals working across news channels,
advertising agencies and public relations firms, a varied set of
“commercial solutions” is available to advertisers to align with
news channels. Prominent among these include on-screen brand
integrations, producing exclusive shows focussed on particular
brands or companies, airing shows that are an extension of an
ongoing marketing campaign of an advertiser, media partnerships and
interviews and profiles of top executives of companies, or
celebrities.
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We were
disgusted by the advertisement punch line on Indian TV that spoke of
"Shave India Movement." Clearly, one expected that any TV channel
will object to the ad saying it will hurt the Sikh sensibilities and
even Muslim sensibilities. In case of Sikhs, the very suggestion of
such a punch line is bound to hurt deeply and even enrage the entire
community. But far from objecting to the ad, just see how the ad
campaign was formulated and how it was implemented. |
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In any week,
around eight to 10 half-an-hour slots are reserved for
advertiser-funded programmes. On an average, 30-40 per cent of shows
are funded by advertisers.
While such
relationships are now accepted in the business, the issue that is
increasingly being raised by concerned media observers is that of
disclosures. “It is important that channels come clean on such
tie-ups,” says former chief Justice of India JS Verma. He is also
the chairperson of the News Broadcasting Standards Authority set up
by industry body News Broadcasters Association (NBA) to look into
complaints against news channels.
Though there are
some who make the required disclosures, the majority does not. G
Krishnan, executive director and CEO of TV Today, the company behind
Hindi news channel Aaj Tak says: “In case there is any advertiser
funded programme, it clearly mentions it is an “advertorial”.
A spokesperson
for NDTV, who admitted that they run programmes funded by
advertisers, said: “With a title sponsor in place, disclosure would
be very funny... there’s always the advertiser name in the title.”
Senthil
Chengalavaran, president and editorial director, TV18 Business
Media, the company that runs channels such as TV18 and CNBC Awaaz,
said: “If you have the name of a company in the show, it means it is
funded. These shows do not have any editorial support.”
 Business news
channels have taken such tie-ups to a different level altogether.
For instance, they offer extensive services that include organising
events for advertisers, inviting guests in their editorial capacity
to such events, promoting the events on their network, airing them
and also carving out editorially-led programmes from such events
such as panel discussions and interviews. According to industry
watchers, the Network18 Group runs divisions such as ‘Focus’ and
‘The Cell’, whose primary mandate is to organise events and create
advertising for such events.
These services
come at a hefty price. “There are no fixed rates but the price for a
complete package, that includes repeat telecasts, varies from Rs 20
lakh to Rs 25 lakh. Partial services, which means either only the
event or only the promotion, costs less,” says the CEO of a public
relations agency that has organised several such events for its
clients. According to people in the industry, panel discussions that
run into half-an-hour are priced around Rs 8-12 lakh.
In India,
private television news has been around for less than a decade. In
these years, the industry has grown rapidly. According to the
2008-09 annual report of the Information and Broadcasting (I&B)
Ministry, 211, or 54 per cent of the total number of 394 registered
television channels in the country, are news and current affairs
channels. All of these are not operational yet, yet they comprise
the largest chunk among all genres put together.
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Association For
Democratic Reforms says, "It is known that a majority of news
channels in the country are directly or indirectly owned by
politicians or their close associates. We know even some political
parties own such channels and they are bound to support their own
case and run down their opponents.” |
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Such a large
number of players has meant a splintered viewership and a thinner
advertising pie. News channels are also considered to be largely
driven by a male audience, an audience that is not the primary
target of most consumer goods companies, one of the biggest
advertisers. Smaller and skewed viewership, therefore, has limited
the channels’ ability to command decent advertising rates. According
to estimates from media buyers, while a 10-second ad spot during
primetime on a general entertainment channel costs anywhere between
Rs 50,000 and Rs 2 lakh, a similar ad spot on national news channels
could be bought for anywhere between Rs 1,500 and Rs 5,000.
The biggest
challenge, however, is revenue leakages in the system. “Globally,
more than 70 per cent of broadcast revenues come from subscriptions
whereas Indian broadcasters get less than 20 per cent of their
legitimate income because of the under-declaration by cable
operators,” says Barun Das, CEO, Zee News. Since advertising is the
sole source of sustenance, there is a pressure on news broadcasters
to expand and tap all possible advertising opportunities.
 Yet, as Das
argues, “designing or airing content for monetary considerations is
unacceptable”. “News is about credibility and if channels succumb to
advertisers’ pressure and put a price to their editorial content,
they will only hurt themselves in the longer run.”
Aaj Tak’s
Krishnan agrees. “The role of a news product is to hold a mirror to
society. Thus, credibility is the paramount criteria for building a
successful news brand.”
Interestingly,
there have not been any indepth expose on how politicians have used
news on television to further their image. As several independent
media professionals point out, it’s so blatant that it needs no
expose. “It is known that a majority of news channels in the country
are directly or indirectly owned by politicians or their close
associates. We know even some political parties own such channels
and they are bound to support their own case and run down their
opponents,” says Anil Bairwal, national co-ordinator of the New
Delhi-based Association For Democratic Reforms (ADR).
In an analysis
of media expenditures by candidates in the 2009 general elections,
the ADR found that most candidates of major parties such as the
Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party, reached nowhere close to
the maximum expense limit prescribed by the Election Commission.
State-wise spending revealed that total average spends across states
were less than 50 per cent of the prescribed limit. “Isn’t it
ironical that while all political parties and candidates have been
complaining that the cost of media buying has sky-rocketed and the
current limit of Rs 25 lakh is too less, they haven’t even exploited
the official limit,” asks Bairwal. “Isn’t it implicit that the
parties and the candidates have spent on media through devious
routes?”
 But media
experts say it’s not easy to take news channels to task. “It is a
live medium. Before you realise that something is wrong on a
particular show, it is gone,” says Madabhushi Sridhar, a professor
of media laws at Nalsar University of Law in Hyderabad. “It is
nearly impossible to record everything and create a log of who
showed what. Besides, no independent agency in the country keeps
such records,” he says. One of Sridhar’s associates, an independent
Lok Sabha candidate in the 2009 elections from Andhra Pradesh, has
filed a case against one of his rivals alleging misuse of media. “We
have managed to collate newspaper clippings to support our case but
it has been difficult gathering televised content.”
Unlike the print
media, television news does not have an independent watchdog. It’s
an absence that worries many. Recently, there have been several
complaints over the news channels’ lack of accountability with the
issue being been raised in Parliament too. Information and
Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni has cited broadcast regulation,
especially that of news, by an independent body as one of her
foremost concerns. She has even admitted receiving complaints of
malpractices in the business.
On their part,
news channels have consistently opposed outside regulation. The News
Broadcasters Association (NBA), a body represented by all leading
news channels, has drafted a content code, which though not binding,
is expected to serve as a guideline for editorial as well as
advertising practices for its members. How the industry corrects its
course remains to be seen.
16
December 2009
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