May 08, 2007
Tracking Television Networks
 Television networks in USA evolved out of radio networks and three major networks dominated the television scene till Fox Broadcasting Company came by in 1986. As a run up to the launch of fourth television network in USA, News Corporation starting in 1985, bought Twentieth Century Fox for US $575 million and six television stations owned by Metromedia for US $1.65 billion. Apart from a debt of close to US $2 billion to fund these acquisitions there were announced plans of setting aside US $100 million for programming and Fox executives were looking at a five year horizon to turn up operating profits.
In the words of Murdoch
“What I would say about television is that certainly so long as there are networks, and probably with or without networks, television is going to increase its share of the advertising pie. Now whether advertising pie is going to increase as well is an open question”
Broadcasting April 3, 1986
In 1993 and 1998 Fox Broadcasting Company spent unheard sums of US $395 million a year for acquiring broadcast rights to National Football Conference Games from NFL and upped its bid to US $550 million when the rights came up for renegotiation in 1998.
There are times when new entrants change the paradigm of doing business and News Corp has used the combination of movies and sports to reign in the younger audiences to its fold in both US and UK markets.
Channel Networks* in India
In a short time India too will be witnessing the launch of a few new challengers to the existing television networks with NDTV Imagine, and INX Media announcing their plans.
Looking at some Indian Television networks and the interplay amongst them, we are beginning to see some trends already. This issue of Oxygen looks at four Channel Networks viz. Sahara Group, Sony Group, Star Group and Zee Group since January 2007 and their channel share – ratings till 1st week of May.
This analysis also brings out the impact of cricket on channel share of these groups, all of which have a mass and a movie channel driving the group. The mass channel being very predominant in the case of Sahara and Star Group whereas the movie channels of both Sony and Zee Group contribute significantly to the overall numbers of the group.
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Figure 1 : Channel Shares (Ratings) of Four Channel Networks
(NWE India, C&S4+, 24 hrs Avg.) |
Star Group started the year with a 12-point lead over Zee Group and the difference was down to 2% in the first 7 days of May 2007. The sharpest fall came in the month of March 07 with Sony Group driving on the back of prime time cricket broadcasting picked up share at the expense of the Star Group. April saw the bounce back of both Zee and Star Group with Zee Group rising at a faster pace than the Star Group and closing the gap in May.
The convergence of Star Group and Zee Group is very stark in the 0200 to 1900 timeband and this was unaffected by the telecast of ICC World Cup on Sony Group channels (figure 2)
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Figure 2 : Channel Share (Ratings) of Four Channel Networks
(NWE India, C&S4+, 0200 - 1900) |
Figure 3, clearly shows the changing trends that were effected in the first 4 months of 2007, Sony Group pulled both Star Group and Zee Group down in March, but the bounce back of Zee Group in April was more pronounced.
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Figure 3 :Channel Share (Ratings) of Four Channel Networks
(NWE India, C&S4+, 1900 - 0200) |
As is visible the introduction of new networks is likely to keep the pace of change going. For more on this, keep watching this space.
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