Wednesday is to television what Friday is to movies?a day of reckoning. The only difference is that for a movie, that fateful Friday comes once in its lifetime; for a TV show, Wednesdays show up every week, again and again.

On Wednesday mornings, the television industry gets a report card of its performance for the week gone by. The television rating points (TRP) of individual shows add up into gross rating points (GRP) for the channel overall ?and the weekly pecking order is released. Ratings give an indication of who is watching, what they’re watching, how much they’re watching and how many of them are watching.

For the uninitiated, India has around 400-plus channels, distributed to over 120 million analogue and digital TV homes, and boasts content ranging from women centric dramas, format and reality shows, news, kids programmes, international content, programmes for teenagers, sports, movies, music and lifestyle programmes. But the general entertainment category commands the lion’s share of viewership, with about six channels capturing 35% of audience share and 37% of TV advertising revenue. No surprises here — in a single television set home, women and soaps dominate viewership and, therefore, determine advertising spends.

The past 18 months have seen Star Plus comfortably perched atop the highly competitive television heap, with Sony, Colors and Zee trading places at 2, 3 and 4. Between 2000-2008 Star Plus completely dominated the Hindi entertainment landscape, but in recent years, the gap has narrowed considerably. Star Plus keeps ahead bolstered by a combination of legacy, additional content hours, distinctive storytelling, big format shows and significant expenditure on content and marketing. The Indian Premier League storm comes along once a year to topple Star Plus from its n?mero uno position, but soon normalcy returns.

For Hindi general entertainment channels (GECs), among whom the rating wars are the most fierce and most publicised – the weekly rating numbers are critical. Are they totally accurate? Not necessarily, but ratings are the only currency of measurement we have. This number dictates the value of the on-air inventory, and hence the ability of the channel to earn advertising revenues. Advertising is bought based on past trends and forward projections over a 4-8 week period. Ad sales deals are extremely dynamic, uniquely linked to channels, their past and current performance and advertisers make their decisions on the basis of target audiences and season. A lower weekly GRP number doesn’t necessarily mean an immediate dip in revenues, but over a quarter and year, lower GRPs will translate into lower revenues.

Advertisers like predictability. That’s why shows with steady ratings such as soaps always command the highest revenues over time. Movies are unpredictable, but have repeat value. Expensive, celebrity-led format shows can go either way, but are great for public relations (PR) value and differentiation, and help in locking large revenue deals that spill over to the staple programme offerings as well. Advertisers buy eyeballs. What matters to them is the quality, quantity, consistency and involvement of the eyeballs being delivered, not the cost of delivering them.

For a fiction show with a 2-plus rating, the average price for a 10-second spot on a mainline Hindi GEC is about Rs46,000. At 3-plus, this becomes Rs80,000, at 4-plus, approximately Rs1,15,000 and at 5-plus, the cost of a 10-second spot could cross Rs1,50,000. A half hour show, that rates 5-plus, with an available inventory of 6 minutes (operating at 12 minutes per hour) could earn a GEC Rs54 lakh at a gross level. For celebrity-led format shows, this figure could triple or even quadruple.

For a broadcaster, a low cost-high rating show is the ideal ‘laugh your way to the bank’ situation. But this is easier said than done. Typically, low-cost shows mean daily soaps and some cheap and cheerful formats. This means that barrier to entry to these genres of content is also low. This allows a lot of such shows to get made, the market suffers from a surfeit of me-too’s and poor differentiation which results in audience fatigue and lower ratings overall.

TV shows in the United States, to which critics love to negatively compare our content to, are in a very different space. Between weekly shows, seasons, better production values, higher spot rates and premium subscription revenues, they are able to produce very high quality content. In recent years, US television content has broken genuine new ground while Hollywood often remains stuck in a formulaic rut. In India, it’s the opposite. Bollywood breaks new ground while GEC content remains stuck in its own formulaic rut, and the incumbency advantage rests with the leader.

Meanwhile, big change agents stare us in the face, affording opportunities to Star Plus and its rivals alike.

* Digitization will result in a catchment area of 50-75 million direct-to-home/digital cable homes. These homes will represent the upper middle crust of a giant mass audience. They have grown up with the first generation of satellite television content and are hopefully ready for the next.

* TRAI regulation on inventory, capped at 10 minutes per hour. Taken to its logical conclusion, inventory caps by genre effectively reduce airtime available for sale, increase prices and hence revenues, and allow introduction of premium, ad-free content that is priced higher for subscription via the addressable, digital home.

* Improved rating systems that capture better the distinction between digital and non-digital homes, between content genres and between audience types. The rise of competitive systems promises to elevate the quality of measurement overall. ?

* Concerted effort to introduce new genres of general entertainment content, co-existence of the daily soap and the high-end fiction genres, to deliver premium viewing experiences and hence, premium eyeballs. There is a real opportunity to create distinctive fiction programming, in addition to the one-size-fits-all content.

* Finally, there is the rise of online video and smart, mobile devices that threaten to become the favourite go-to screen instead of television, especially with younger and wealthier audiences. This could become really disruptive, but it is still early days. For now, the television business and Star Plus is safe, and thriving.

The writer is the former CEO of Star TV (India) and Turner General Entertainment Networks