A massive shift in Uday Shankar's “TV is dead” narrative

Roughly about six months ago, a story headlined “Inside Uday Shankar’s grand plan to kill TV” in the business daily Mint caught the attention of the media and entertainment industry.

Shankar was then building JioCinema on the back of the digital rights of IPL and it was natural for him to ‘kill TV’ to achieve what he was tasked for.

Also read: India is a market of and, not or, pitches Viacom18's Kevin Vaz at Ficci Frames

Little did Shankar know that a few months later, he would be forced to change his narrative from “either/or” to “and”.

Cut to today. With the merger announced last week, Reliance and Disney are no longer competing.

Shankar built Star India businesses including Hotstar as its CEO for over a decade. Now, all those businesses will be under him again but as the vice-chairperson of the combined entity.

He will have to nurture the TV businesses of Star and Viacom18, having over 100 channels after about a year.

While JioCinema + Hotstar put together will be pitched against the might of YouTube in India, Shankar himself is going to stand corrected when it comes to the “TV is dead” narrative.

From “either” the TV “or” the digital market, Shankar is bound to change his narrative to the TV “and” digital market.

As Reliance is known for scale and profitability, it has achieved the former with the merger.

But at the same time, it will require a transformational shift in the media and industry sector to make money given the massive investment in sports tournaments.

The state of the M&E sector is not rosy at all. Even as it has been growing by 8% or 9% annually, the sector is stuck between USD 35-37 billion.

About 8-9 years ago, Shankar in his keynote address at Ficci Frames said that the sector could be USD 100 billion. As of now, the sector is happy at USD 37 billion.

Soon after the announcement, the industry leaders told BestMediaInfo.com that the Reliance-Disney merger would accelerate the growth of the sector exponentially.

The first and foremost task at hand for Shankar will be to correct the television ad rates riding on the power of the mammoth network of channels.

Currently, the ad rates on TV are very low compared to Western countries, given the huge population in India. But with this consolidation, Viacom 18-Disney Star will be able to control higher ad rates, earn profits, and invest in the market, eventually benefiting the whole M&E industry.

The is no denying that it would be a tough task because of the earlier benchmarking and advertisers’ consistent attempts to suppress TV ad rates due to falling TVRs plus the narrative of “who is watching TV these days”.

The second big task at Shankar’s hand would be to bring the cost of media rights down heavily which he is accused of escalating to an unaffordable limit.

While much will depend on the base prices set by BCCI and ICC, the absence of competition with deeper pockets is expected to cut the cost at least by 50 per cent compared to today.

Info@BestMediaInfo.com