"News viewers have always been flirtatious"

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Gold the most preferred investment

: 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?