These days when you walk into the offices of Sony Entertainment Television in the television suburb of Andheri (W) in Mumbai, you can feel the charged excitement in the air. The network's headquarters is a hubbub of activity. The salt and pepper bearded CEO Kunal Dasgupta has a perk in his step.
His network is in fine fettle, revenues are up. SET has just delivered the highest rated show in Indian Idol and is gradually gnawing away at market leader Star Plus' almost monopolistic viewership shares. And finally, he has just finished a well priced acquisition of a niche channel Sab TV and has added a leading sports television channel in Ten Sports to his cable TV bouquet. No wonder Dasgupta is gung-ho and cheery as a whistle. Indiantelevision.com caught up with him over two meetings to get the lowdown on Sony.
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What is the programming focus at Sony? In terms of dress, language, dialogue, we are shaping India's culture. Consider Jassi. She is the icon of almost every north Indian woman. In the case of Indian Idol, tune into FM radio, you hear a lot about our participants. A station had a quiz asking listeners to name the Indian Idol finalists and callers could name all of them. It was a rare instance. We are not western. We have become a part of Indian life. |
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How do you tread the fine line of not going the way of the other channels? In my opinion, Sony was the only channel that really grew in the GEC category. The overall market has grown around 7-10 per cent. We have grown 30 per cent upwards in ad revenues. Star's growth actually slowed down drastically. Our figures show that Star had a 15 per cent drop (in growth). They created Star One to try and topple Sony. And you know it went nowhere, while we went places. |
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What contributed to the growth at Sony? |
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Why the reliance on international and reality formats for Sony's shows? |
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Why launch another musical show in 'Fame Gurukul' so close to 'Indian Idol'? |
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Don't you think that viewers will feel they have had too much of music reality shows? |
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Did 'Indian Idol' make money? Yes it did. It helped become a driver of other programmes like Jassi, CID. Additionally, Idol the second time round is going to take off like a rocket. |
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But their ratings are not skyrocketing? |
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Will you continue with older shows such as 'Kkusum', 'CID'? |
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Hasn't the competition reacted to your moves? |
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What will you do now with Sab TV? |
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Are you planning to go south? |
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Why did you hire Tarun Katial in programming? |
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Why have you not got into distribution like Star and Zee? |
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Your views on the news channel rush? |
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One Alliance. How is the bouquet faring? |
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The Ten Sports deal. Will it not eat into your revenues? |
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Will you buy it out at some point? |
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What are your predictions for the World Cup? Has the cricket acquisition made money? Before that 2005 is going to be also a big year for us. We have Fame Gurukul, Idols 2. We are going to maintain growth at the pace of the industry. We are pouring in investments. Setting up new channels, the results of which will be reflected not immediately but in the not too distant future. |
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Internationally, how is the Sony network faring? |