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IBF meets to implement blacklist on defaulting ad agencies

Submitted by ITV Production on Sep 15, 2001

The toothless tiger is attempting to bare its teeth.

The Indian Broadcasting Foundation - a representative body of a small but powerful interest group of broadcasters - is currently meeting at Sony Entertainment‘s offices to reportedly decide on a ban of three agencies - McCann Erickson, HTA (Hindustan Thompson Associates) and HTA Fulcrum (handles the Hindustan Levers account) - for payment defaults.

The attempt is to play a role like that of the INS which blacklists agencies that play truant as far payments to member newspaper organisations are concerned. Once the agency is placed on the blacklist, other INS members are supposed to cooperate and not carry any of their ads.

The three agencies are reportedly in default of upwards of Rs 3000 million accumulated over the last three years.

The IBF is likely to announce the first of the blacklists today. Of course, it will be up to the member broadcasters to comply with the ban.

IBF meets to implement blacklist on defaulting ad agencies

Sep 15, 2001

The toothless tiger is attempting to bare its teeth.

South Indian music channel Southern Spice launched in Mumbai

Submitted by ITV Production on Sep 14, 2001

News Headline

Southern Spice, a South Indian languages-based film and pop music channel, was officially launched in Mumbai today. The channel has been "on air" for the last three months and plays the music of all the four regional languages in the south.

Southern Spice is headquartered in Chennai and beams a mix of Tamil (40 per cent), Telugu (30 per cent), Kannada (10 per cent), Malayalam (10 per cent) and English (10 per cent) - in a random mix. Anil Shetty of ARMD Media (the firm managing all aspects of the channel - including programming and promotion) explains the reasoning thus: "Music channels are not about about appointment television. It‘s all about frequency of viewing."

‘As to why the channel is packaged in English, Shetty says that is the only way to bridge all four languages.

On the programming front there are nine daily shows currently running ans two weeklies. This number will eventually go up to seven, according to Shetty.

Among the shows on air are Phone-Tastic, Say To Play, Reach Out (all three interactive), FIR, I-Me-Myself, Time-Out, Hot Hotter Hottest, South Full, Reach Out, Loaded and Fast Forward.

Southern Spice is promoted by Fortune Media Private Limited, a company floated by the Martin Lottery Agencies Ltd, one of the largest bulk distributors of lotteries in the country. Santiago Martin is chairman and managing director of the company. Martin Lottery is associated with the state lotteries of Bhutan, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra.

The lottery link is very evident in the channel‘s decision to to have a daily live relay of the Bhutan lottery from 3 - 4 pm.

With an initial capital expenditure of Rs 50 million, and running costs of just under Rs 10 million a month, the money sunk into the project so far is roughly Rs 90 million.

When queried as to when they expected to break even, Shetty says the channel is looking at a 30-month gestation period.

On the distribution front, Shetty says 95 per cent of the cable & satellite universe in the southern states have been covered, 80 per cent of Mumbai, 75 per cent of Delhi and 100 per cent of Calcutta. So far 3,000 set top boxes have been distributed across the country, he adds.

Simply Spice is beaming off NSS -703 as a free-to-air service. The channel is being uplinked from Singapore.

Technical Specifications:
Satellite : NSS - 703 57? E
Downlink Frequency : 3888 MHz
FEC : 3/4
Downlink Polarisation : Horizontal
Symbol rate : 09766 Kg Symbol/sec
Free-To-Air

IBF, TAM and Intam come to an agreement on ratings

Submitted by ITV Production on Sep 14, 2001

News Headline

It was a meeting that was most talked about - one that would help smoothen, ease and clear some of the issues relating to viewership ratings. The Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF) - the representative body of the satellite television industry - the research agencies were supposed to attend and come to some resolution.After all you can‘t continually keep badmouthing a system which measures how viewers are responding to your programmes.

The meeting happened today. Among those who attended included the research agencies‘ representatives, Sony Entertainment Television CEO Kunal Dasgupta, SABe TV vice-chairman and MD Markand Adhikari, ESPN India MD Manu Sawhney, Star TV CEO Peter Mukerjea, Zee TV broadcasting CEO Sandeep Goyal, Discovery chief Deepak Shourie, Eenadu TV‘s I. Venkat, BBC‘s Vinod Bakshi, and Sun TV‘s Sharad Kumar.

And a decision was taken that nobody amongst the attendees would sing to the media. Communications around the TRP issue would be centralised with one source, the IBF.

According to sources, however, the research agencies took great pains in presenting how they planned to restore confidence in the ratings, what measures they were taking to prevent security leaks, and ensuring better representation of viewers on the sample.

Sources reveal that broadcasters and the research agencies agreed on a few issues. Thirty per cent of the panel in each city would be renewed annually - so that within three years one will have a totally new panel. This apart, the research agencies have agreed to totally revamp their panels.

Hear out IBF executive director Bhuvan Lall for the official line: "Tam and Intam presented their findings around the TRP affair. Genuine concern was expressed about the leakages which have to be investigated. They have agreed to revamp the panels in four to six weeks in conjunction with the other stakeholders. The systems will be strengthened."

Stay tuned for further updates.