MTV Networks India is eyeing growth through acquisitions, be it in the area of local language TV channels, radio, print, production facilities and digital media. And to exploit the MTV and Nick brands, the company is setting up two revenue streams: digital new media and consumer products.
After Alex Kuruvilla quit MTV Networks India, MTV Networks Asia Pacific president Frank Brown has taken up the task of finding a CEO and COO to handle the company's ambitious growth plans. In an interview with Indiantelevision.com's Sibabrata Das and Manisha Bhattacharjee, Brown talks about the company's focus areas and how he feels it is strategically poised to "boom as the market in the music and kids' space booms."
Excerpts:
MTV Networks is finding it difficult to scale up revenues. How do you plan to speed up growth in India? |
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MTV launched a soap for the first time on the channel as part of the drive to boost organic growth. Was it a mistake? |
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Will soaps not surface on MTV again? |
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Is it commercially viable for a music channel in India to invest on soaps or non music content like Channel [V] did when it wanted to position itself as a youth brand? You have to be careful on how far to go and how to do that in anything that actually takes a lot of your budget to develop; you build it out and there comes a natural equilibrium. What we are not to do is to say that we going to be a general entertainment channel, spend loads of money, and make these expensive shows only to find out later that the advertising revenue hasn't changed. You need to be careful and draw the balance as you put in creative ideas to press for organic growth. |
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Where do you see Nick today? |
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Surely you can't say Nick has had a successful run in India? |
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But competitors are putting in place more than one channel to aggregate audiences. Cartoon Network has Pogo while UTV is planning launch of two more channels in this space. Won't you feel handicapped to wrestle with just one channel? In the case of Cartoon Network, Pogo was launched more as a flanker channel; and as fragmentation takes place, Pogo is expected to take away share from that. The idea of offshoot channels from the main product (like we have Nick in the US) is viable in markets where there is a big enough audience with heavy spending power to drive in revenues from advertising and retail business from the brands. I think it is too early in India to have that model work here. It is better to have one strong channel rather than three weak channels. |
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Is the space getting too crowded? |
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What makes you bullish about India? |
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You have been in talks for long to sell programming blocks of Nick to other channels. Have you made any progress? We are in number of conversations for block for Nick with various partners. There is no rush in these things. We want to make sure that we work out an arrangement with our partner that is a solid win-win situation for both of us in the long term. |
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As far as acquisition goes, what are the areas you are looking at? |
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Are you not pursuing the acquisition of Southern Spice (SS) Music? We are not pursuing talks now. At the moment, it is on hold. But this does not necessarily mean that we will not open them up again. |
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Are you eyeing exploitation of content on mobile devices? |
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Do you still believe merchandising and licensing can become big in India? |
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Will there be any organisational change to keep pace with such ambitious plans of the company? We have been looking for a chief operating officer for long. And after the exit of Alex Kuruvilla, we are also looking for a chief executive officer. The COO will be responsible for day-to-day management, while the CEO would focus more on strategic development, new launches, acquisitions, joint ventures - more on scale development side of the business. |
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Do you think Vh1 has come late into the market? |
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Are you planning to get more channels in, particularly with direct-to-home (DTH) throwing up new opportunities? We are looking at a lot of ideas, including some potential channels for DTH. We are eyeing the launch of new genres of channels. We would like to explore some original channels in India and then probably use it as a test case for launching in other markets. |