Our ad inventory is full as advertisers have shown faith in us: Joy Chakraborty

Zee Media Chief Business Officer Joy Chakraborty has clarified that the news network has not pulled out of the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) but has only gotten its rating suspended for the time being till its grievances are taken care of by the audience measurement body. In an interview with e4m, Chakraborty also spoke about the impact of the rating suspension on the network. He also touched upon the issue of doing TV + Digital ad deals to take advantage of the combined reach of both mediums.

Excerpts:

Why did Zee Media pull out of BARC ratings?
First of all, I want to make it clear that we have not withdrawn from BARC. We have just suspended our ratings from BARC. While BARC continues to measure the viewership of our channels it is not being released. We believe in the BARC and it is the currency based on which trading happens. Having said that, we have asked a few questions to BARC and are waiting for them to revert. We have asked BARC: 1) What is it doing about landing pages? 2) What is it doing about the television universe revision, and 3) What are they doing about the old pending cases? We are waiting for answers to these questions. We have sent them a reminder last week. We are constantly following up with them about these queries.

There is a view in the industry that the decision to suspend ratings has been taken due to the MIB order which prohibited you from uplinking channels through KU band satellite.

That matter is sub-judice, therefore, I don't want to comment on it. But as far as suspending the ratings for our channels is concerned, we have been planning it for a long time even before I joined (in August). So it's not a knee-jerk reaction rather it was a well-thought-through decision that was taken after a lot of deliberations. We have been contemplating this move for a long time and we did it when we felt that the timing is right. The reason for the rating suspension is simple: our flagship channel was getting affected. We were clearly in the Top 3, now we are down to number 7 or 8. How is that possible? When we do dipstick studies with a sizeable sample size, we are clearly in the Top 3. We are a well-distributed channel with good placement on all networks then how come our viewership share is declining? There has to be some explanation for it. I accept the point that we had an anchor who left us, but he was hosting just one show.

What impact did the suspension of BARC ratings have on Zee Media's ad revenue?
Many broadcasters want to suspend their ratings from BARC, but they were worried about the business loss during the ongoing festive season. I told them that advertisers will support us if we have confidence in ourselves. After the suspension of BARC ratings, I led from the front and I was with my team in the market. Today, our ad inventory is full as advertisers have shown faith in us. Of course, there are corporate clients who can't buy inventory on our channels because they need ratings for audit purposes. There are a lot of Indian corporate clients who are supporting us. One needs to understand that the news genre is bought for B2B marketing and not B2C. Advertisers who do B2B marketing know the worth of our channels.

So, are you saying that there was no impact at all due to the BARC rating suspension?
I won't say that but what happened is that we worked extra hard during this phase to ensure that we have backup clients. We have always been leaders in filling inventory and the number of clients. We also offer our network strength to clients. A lot of clients are not coming because they have a mandate that they cannot come on a channel that is not measured but we have found alternatives. Life has been tough but as the saying goes, 'When the life gets tough, the tough get going'. Apart from FCT, the news genre also has Non-FCT (L-band) inventory which doesn't come under measurement but clients are still buying it.

The landing page continues to be a contentious issue in the news genre. What do you think is the way forward?
A lot of people say that a landing page is a marketing tool. What is a marketing tool? It means somebody makes me aware, but the choice of buying is mine. But in the case of landing pages, viewers are being forced to watch a particular channel. Viewers cannot move away from a landing channel for a specific duration due to commercial deals between broadcasters and distributors. What we are saying is simple: Let the landing page be there, but don't report it.

Many stakeholders have raised concerns over the degrowth in the news genre. Why do you think is the news genre shrinking?
When BARC resumed the reporting of viewership data for the news genre after a gap of more than a year, there was a 20% drop in news viewership. There are no clear answers from BARC as to why the news viewership is seeing a dip. I know for sure that news gets consumed a lot both inside and outside homes. The out-of-home viewership for news is quite high. Lower viewership only helps advertisers since they do Cost Per Rating Point (CPRP) deals. Apart from TV, news also gets consumed digitally. We are doing quite well on digital, so it really baffles me that Zee News has slid so much.

Has the decline in viewership share impacted the ad rates of news channels?
When you are advertising on news channels you are not wasting your money. News as a genre is grossly under-priced. If you look at news specifically, we are grossly under-utilised due to the sheer amount of out-of-home viewership that we get and which doesn't get captured by BARC. IPL gets this premium pricing also because of out-of-home viewership.

You have spoken about integrating ad sales for TV and digital properties. What is the progress on that front?
We are integrating TV and digital ad sales for a few verticals. WION (World Is One News) is the first channel where we will do integrated deals. It has a very high digital viewership. Although the viewership of this channel is small, it attracts premium viewers. We are also thinking about integrating the government advertising business. These are the first steps being taken to integrate TV and digital ad sales. TV + Digital will deliver a better return on investment (ROI) for clients and us.