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Anil Wanvari
Hectic activity surrounds the Channel [V] Awards show to be held in New Delhi on November 21. Channel [V] Asia head Steve Smith is going to be grooving away to the acts that have been planned for the Viewers Choice gig in the capital. Last weekend, the channel had the industry awards in Mumbai's Leela Hotel. The industry awards honour the achievements of those who go to make the artistes and play an active role behind the scenes.
The surprise was the Freddy Mercury award given to singer Jagjit Singh. Not that he was undeserving. Most of the awards were won by people associated with the work of Daler Mehndi and AR Rehman.
In fact, Sony Music chief Vijay Singh quipped that he has the brightest team with him at his company. That was when Sony Music seemed to be walking away with the awards initially. However, Magnasound's Shashi Gopal and Polygram's VJ Lazarus each got a chance to take a dig at Singh when their labels started picking up awards. In fact, Singh was the butt of many a ribbing that evening because he spoke as cockily as he is wont to.
The friendly jostling prompted Smith to remark that he hasn't seen such a competitive a scenario amongst record companies in many countries in south-east Asia. Smith, along with Channel [V] India general manager Jules Fuller, has his job cut out for him. Channel [V] is facing strong competition from MTV Asia, though the latter has to do something about hiking its ad rates. Channel [V] has strong cachet in SEC A and SEC B homes only. MTV, however, leads amongst audiences in the lower socio-economic classifications, apart from boasting some audiences in the upper classes also. Fuller says that's fine by the Channel [V] management. "We want the decision makers to stay by us. Which is what is happening," he says. "Let MTV have the mass audiences, we want the classes."
The channel is hence reverting to a full day of international music over every weekend. But it is also introducing innovative ways of approaching local music programming. "What appears on another channel cannot appear on ours," says Fuller. Folk music is a genre that the channel hopes to promote in a big way. "We are going to look a lot more vibrant," says Fuller.
"People within the channel who don't deliver around the vision we have set will have to go."
All the music channels have, however, to become vigilante about the programming and music videos that they telecast if they don't want to be given marching orders. At least that's what the state information and broadcasting minister MA Naqvi wants to do. In all fairness to the MTV India management, it probably didn't have a clue about the fact that a couple of the bands whose fare they were carrying would probably earn it a rap on the knuckles from Naqvi because they were known to be pro-liberated Kashmir and hence anti-Indian. However, the government can condone errors such as these only so many times. So music channels therefore cannot be lax in the stuff they carry. A little more vigilance will earn them a lot of admirers.
Ad spend for cricket world cup put at Rs 250 crore
What's the ad spending on the World Cup cricket going to be like? Last week's estimate in this column has been considered too low. An Ammirati Puris Lintas estimate is that marketing spends in India around the World Cup Cricket tournament are going to touch Rs 250 crore. TV will get about Rs 200 crore of this, with the rest going to press and marketing promotion. That means almost 10 per cent of the annual ad spend by marketers on TV is going to be finished off within a couple of months of the new fiscal year. The major beneficiary of this is likely to be the ESPN-Star Sports combo although DD will give it a fight as it has rights to 11 matches including the finals and the semis.
Where will that leave other entertainment channels like Zee TV, Sony Entertainment, Sahara TV, et al? Unless, ad spends go up drastically next year, and there's no indication that they are likely to, other channels will be left feeling blue. One way to reduce the blues: get on the World Cup cricket bandwagon with special programme around the premier one-day tournament. Hopefully, that move will help them steal away some commercial time from ESPN/Star Sports and DD.
Country to have 1.5 million Net subscribers by 2000
Nasscom has predicted that the number of Indian Internet subscribers is going to jump from just 150,000 to 1.5 million by the turn of the century. An incredible leap by any standards. With the opening up of the Internet, ad agencies and marketing companies, which have been hesitant so far will have to take a leap into cyberspace either to sell products or themselves or offer their clients an extra service advantage.
Indian agencies will also have to learn how they are going to deal with advertising on the web. An audience of 1.5 million web surfers cannot be ignored. Hence, both Indian advertisers and agencies have to travel up the learning curve quickly if they don't want to miss out on the action. Indian cybermerchants and cyber-preneurs are sure to come up with some innovative commercial ideas. Given time, even the credit card will find common use over the Internet within India. The Internet is a very alive medium and agencies and marketers would be foolish to ignore it in future.
The writer can be reached at wanvari@giasbm01.vsnl.net.in or television@hotmail.com
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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This story was printed from Net Express located at http://www.expressindia.com. Net Express provides a portal to India, with news from The Indian Express and The Financial Express along with sites on travel and tourism, the entertainment industry, the power sector, the environment and much more.
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