Sunday, Sep 21, 2003
Sunday, Sep 21, 2003 |
| Southern States | ||||
|
News:
Front Page |
National |
Southern States |
Other States |
International |
Opinion |
Business |
Sport |
Miscellaneous |
Advts: Classifieds | Employment | Obituary | Southern States
-
Andhra Pradesh-Hyderabad
By V.Geetanath
Provocation for such a drastic step is said to be the "arbitrary and unilateral" hike in telecast fee of 10 per cent and to be paid with retrospective effect from April 1,2003 by the Prasar Bharati recently. Private producers and marketing agencies met here on Saturday and decided to follow their Karnataka counterparts and adopt the strike strategy to register their protest. Telecast of the 29 daily and weekly sponsored serials was already stopped in the DD's regional kendra of Bangalore since September 12. And, if the strike takes effect here the telecast of 13 serials would be stopped abruptly. The public broadcaster has also increased the free commercial time (FCT) by 10 seconds - 160 seconds for the daily serials and 130 seconds for the weekly serials, which has put the marketing agencies in a spot. "We will run into heavy losses. How are we expected to pay telecast fee for episodes five months ago? When we haven't been able to sell the existing FCT running into thousands of seconds, how can we deal with the extra FCT?" asks the head of a marketing agency. If agencies are jittery it's because of market has reached a plateau, according to television industry pundits. "Market expansion has not kept pace with the proliferating number of channels with everyone sharing the same piece of cake," says another marketing personality. It is not to say there are no takers for DD. Despite cable television, DD is still the numero uno in the afternoon slot (2.30 p.m. and 5.30 p.m.) and the channel is considered a "safe bet" with assured returns. Television industry people fear that the telecast fee hike was a "cover" to collect service tax, which was also to be increased from five per cent to eight per cent. In this scenario, marketing agencies have put forth some demands to be met by the Prasar Bhararti like enhancing utilisation of the "banked FCT" - the FCT which goes into the backburner due to lack of advertisers. Presently, DD restricts the usage of such backlogged FCT to only 50 per cent because of the fear that the episodes would be swamped with advertisements rather than the story. "Due to this restriction we are unable to use the banked FCT even when there is a demand," explains a marketing manager. Agencies are seeking approval of daily serials to about 390 episodes from the current 260 for which the permission comes, first for 130 episodes and increased later depending on the TRP ratings. For the weekly serials, they are seeking approval for 26 episodes from the current 13 episodes. "If we get approvals beforehand we can plan out our `banked FCT'. It also takes a minimum of six to eight episodes to get a serial on the TRP ratings for a week and by the time you get the viewership you have to run back for an extension," he says. To add to their woes, the Prasar Bharati's marketing division has started not only giving 25 per cent discount on the tariff (Rs. 16,500 for 10 seconds) but also 30 seconds of bonus spots for the Government organisations in the programmes of their choice. This the agencies feel is nothing but poaching into their "popular" serials. Increasing in the credit facility period is another demand being put forward by them.
Printer friendly
page
News:
Front Page |
National |
Southern States |
Other States |
International |
Opinion |
Business |
Sport |
Miscellaneous |
|
|
|
The Hindu Group: Home | About Us | Copyright | Archives | Contacts | Subscription Group Sites: The Hindu | Business Line | The Sportstar | Frontline | The Hindu eBooks | Home |
Copyright © 2003, The
Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of
this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of
The Hindu
|
