"News viewers have always been flirtatious"

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BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the BBC that claims 76 million viewers a week in 200 countries, recently made some top-level changes to its advertising and sales team in India. The team now operates in two streams, news and non-news. A sign of things to come? “Absolutely,” says Vaishali Sharma, marketing head for BBC Worldwide in India, who is happy with the Indian news consumer, who is as clued in to home news as he is to what is happening around the world. This is the viewer that the channel is aggressively wooing. Sharma shares her organisation’s plans with FE’s Radhika Sachdev.

With its no-frills image, will BBC programming find any permanent takers among India’s young media consumers?

I don’t agree with that assertion. On the contrary, international news on BBC World is all set to become more important to Indian viewers. India’s growth story is only the beginning of the place that the country will occupy on the world map. Given the amount of talent we have to offer, across platforms like science, arts and culture, our influence on world politics etc, India would also grow on the world stage. So our reckoning is that these young media consumers, who would be the key contributors to all these fields, would also like to know what the world media is saying about them.

Growth, we believe can never be a one-sided story. If we have to make a difference either in India or across the globe, we need to get a more balanced perspective on the world and this is where BBC World comes into the picture. With news bulletins like World News Today and India Business Report, we give them a widow to the world and wider spectrum through features on technology like Click, season like Inside China and Russia.

How do you propose to grab a substantial share of a market that is increasingly getting fragmented and where viewers are turning more flirtatious by the day?

While at one end, the market may be getting fragmented, at the other, there seems to be emerging a growing need for genres that are impacting viewers lives. We are aware that BBC World will become important to our viewers in India as they increasingly need and consume international news. That will grow the category.

Take the travel, and the lifestyle category. Earlier, news related to this genre was carried across channels and was not an area of thrust. Today, it’s a separate, booming genre in itself whether in the media or in product launch space.

Similarly, a few years ago few would have evinced interest in following election coverage relating to another country. But today, there is a large number of people in India who are following the US elections because they know that the outcome will impact India in many ways.

Therefore, an increasing number of people other than financial experts are tuning into world markets, which have a direct impact on the Sensex in India, leading to investment highs and lows for an ordinary, average person like me.

News viewing as a category has always been flirtatious and we never depend on it as a single source for revenue. In that scenario, a credible, in-depth news provider like the BBC World will never lose its place.

On the contrary, in today’s world where there is an information explosion, the need for BBC World’s credibility and analysis will only grow and multiply.

What kind of above- and below-the-line activities have you planned for this fiscal to generate buzz around the brand?

This year we will be an interesting year for us and we will continue to have an aggressive presence in India. The last fiscal year saw successful campaign launches and Promax wins for the brand campaign “’What affects the world affects you” that strengthened the BBC World position as a leading international news provider and for our programme launch World News Today with Nik Gowing. The same year, we also launched India Business Report with Karishma Vaswani. The idea is to engage viewers by getting them to connect with international news and its impact on their lives. We will continue with that theme this year as well. Our marketing mix will go across media both above—and below-the-line to promote not just our key flagship programmes but also to continue to connect emotionally with our audiences.

Media watchers maintain that the ultimate media would be a hand-held device, that is, a cell phone. As a TV person, how do you react to that prediction?

The technology revolution does not mean replacement of any one form of media. In fact, with newer technology, viewers’ consumption of various media would also evolve. This is fuelled by the need to be informed and entertained more frequently than ever before. In such a scenario, dependence on any single media platform will cease to exist. This in no way implies that the need for television will diminish, or that TV sets would go extinct.

A hand-held device is useful when a person is out of his home. Indoors, whether at home or sitting in a club or a pub, television viewing will continue to dominate for a long time to come. Indeed, in the future convergence will be the ruling mantra. The interesting trend to watch out for would be the evolution of the screen as a converging point for the television and the Internet.

To cite an example, when television was a rage a decade or two ago, many predicted that it spelt the death knoll for the cinema, particularly when home entertainment with VCRs and later DVDs became possible. In fact, today’s audiences are more voracious consumers of movies in theatres than movies at home, thanks to the multiplex boom. Likewise, Internet and the possibility of e-books predicted the death of print books until JK Rowling happened.

We provide our news across platforms—television, Internet and mobile. The objective is to ensure that viewers can access our news from any platform, wherever they may happen to be. Anywhere, anytime news. That’s what we specialise in.

Who’s is your average viewer?