Exclusive | Dr. Roy and Vikram Chandra in conversation about NDTV Prime

NDTV, known for its excellence and consistency in the news media journalism business introduced India to its first 2-IN-1 channel - ‘NDTV Profit & NDTV Prime’. On the 2-IN-1 channel, NDTV Profit, in a fresh association with The National Stock Exchange of India will operate from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM on weekdays and will offer viewers in-depth and credible business news and analysis during market hours.

From 5 pm onwards on week-ends, the channel will sport a brand new avatar – NDTV PRIME, which is in association with MICROMAX. The new logo of NDTV Prime clearly reflects the partnership between NDTV Prime and MICROMAX and new programming. The promotional campaign for NDTV Profit & NDTV Prime features Shah Rukh Khan in a double avatar reflecting this duality based on the concept of ‘Work Hard Play Hard’

Team Adgully is in conversation with Dr. Prannoy Roy, Co-Chairperson, NDTV and Vikram Chandra, Group CEO, NDTV who shared a few insights about the new, unique and first of its kind initiative and more. 

Adgully (AG): Share with us the basic thought and the process involved in the making of NDTV Prime

Dr. Prannoy Roy (Dr. Roy): NDTV Prime is built on the idea of having ‘double prime-time’; it would call for high prime-time in the business hours and high prime time in the evening where you would have everything apart from stock market and business. We had started working on it about two years ago, but the programming and conceptualising began about six months back.

AG: Shed some light on the idea of having pre-sponsored shows on the new channel. Also, how do you see the split or growth of audience on the channel?

Dr. Roy: Of course it is one of the first channels to have almost all shows pre-sponsored. Most of these deals are for 1 year each, however, some deals will have the sponsors from about some months to about 3 years. Our lead sponsor Micromax is with us for 3 years and we shall be definitely looking forward to renewing our deal with them. Well, there are two things. Firstly both the channels are not the same on the content chart and also not at the same time, so I believe it won’t split the audiences. Secondly, I see the morning band as the sub-set of the evening band. A lot of young men in the stock market want to things like technology, automobiles, seek advice on property etc, along with entertainment. I think in the evening you will see at least 10 times higher viewership than the morning; and then some of those 10 times will reflect in the morning band as we will be available in many more places. So, I am certainly expecting double viewership even in the business hours.

AG: Most of your shows on NDTV Prime are in-house productions, so are spends in that area relatively low?

Dr. Roy: (laughs) When NDTV does in-house production, most gets spent on that show, as our DNA does not allow us to go down on the quality scale!

AG: On the general news front, what is your take on the quality of news reporting happening today?

Dr. Roy: Honestly, I like to see most of the things that are happening around me. I sincerely believe that we are the most vibrant, hungry and intelligent bunch of journalist compared to any country in the world. We are argumentative and questionable and do not take anything that comes our way. We do lag a certain discipline, because of just one factor. We need strong defamation laws, so that if I defame somebody, I should be punished bringing in the discipline to stop shot, which we do not have in India. I feel that it will hurt you in the short run, but if its not done, media will loosed its credibility. At the same time, I feel that as self-regulation does not work and that the government should not get involved in it, so it should be the judiciary who imposes certain amount of defame punishment.

AG: NDTV set up NDTV-Hindu. When we are currently looking at digitisation where a lot of impact comes from the regional and niche channels, are looking at that sphere as well?

Dr. Roy: Not at the moment, though we are looking at many things, but not NDTV-Hindu as off now. But our future will really be around our digital platform ndtv.com. It is growing by 40 – 50% a year, the only non-loss making website and expect huge innovations in that space in the near future!

AG: What was the rationale behind launching NDTV Prime? With this launch are you looking at a new TG?

Vikram Chandra (VC): We wanted to give our audiences everything under one umbrella. We did not wanted them to get a hang on 3 4 more channels from our bouquet. The channel is targeted at the 25+ urban male and will offer an interesting blend of ‘specialty bands’, which will showcase through the week across genres such as Technology, Auto, Property, Education & Careers, Entertainment and Comedy. Among the Big Ticket shows on Prime is – ‘Videocon d2h Ticket To Bollywood’, a reality show which will give the two lucky winners an opportunity to star in a Bollywood movie.

AG: Any specific reason behind targeting 25+ urban male?

VC: Actually, 25 plus male have limited shows to watch as per their needs and demands hence the focus is towards them but the channel’s content strategy is such that a lot of women will love it. The idea is simply to give all the categories and genres which a large amount of people would love to watch in one single channel. As it is a human tendency that for example if we have a tech channel, no one will watch the entire 24 hours, there will specific shows to watch and same is the case with other genres so why not give all that in one platter.   

AG: As we all can see, all the genres have been slotted in one channel.  Share with us the content and programming strategy that you will follow and how will digitization impact the channel?

VC: With digitization; the best thing that will happen is the fact that a lot of niche genres are going to attract a lot of attention. Some channels with genres like property, auto, tech etc are expected to gain attention hence we thought instead of coming with some channels from our bouquet and paying more carriage fees and audiences paying subscription charges and getting into distribution charges, let’s have one master channel which will cater to all the possible needs and demand of our audience.
 
AG: Shed some light on the sponsors bit, how easy or difficult was it to grab their attention?

VC: Well, the channel is not even on-air but look at the list of the sponsors we already have on board and that answers you question in a positive way. Some of the sponsors namely are: Videocon d2h has come on board for ‘Ticket to Bollywood’ while Croma is the overall Technology Band sponsor. MRF is on board for the Auto Band and Supertech continues its association with the Property Band.

AG: What are you plans and strategies as far as ad-cap regulations are concerned?

VC: Well, we will have lot ads on the channel as there are sponsors on-board already. We would be avoiding cluttering our channel with ads. We are relying more on sponsors. As we have already pulled out of TAM and we do not have TRPs hence we do not have ad-revenue model. We have already met our ad-revenue target with the sponsors we have. If we get ads that’s good if we do not have that’s also fine. Having said that, as of now we are not so keen towards getting advertisements and sponsors but yes going further down the line ads will kick in and that too in a big way. 

AG: The buzz about the channel’s revamp has been in the air since a long time. What was the reason behind the delay?

VC: The only reason behind the delay was getting all the right key sponsors on-board. Once that got done we were ready to launch. 

AG: Shed some light on the marketing plans to promote the channel. Since you are an old hand in the business, how are you looking at leveraging other channels from the bouquet to promote Prime?  

VC: There will huge buzz about the channel and the promotional campaign for NDTV Profit & NDTV Prime features Shah Rukh Khan in a double avatar reflecting this duality based on the concept of ‘Work Hard Play Hard’. All our channels will be heavily promoting NDTV Prime. We already have the two page advertisement in Times Of India.

AG: NDTV and its other channels have a strong digital presence. How are you looking at building the same for NDTV Prime?

VC: Ofcourse Yes and we will be utilizing all our massive digital presence to heavily promote NDTV Prime too.

AG: Looking at the changing dynamics of the news and media industry, how has NDTV made its presence consistent and what were the key strategies that made you do so?

VC: We believe in working with very strong editorial guidelines and for us quality of content plays an important role. We don’t believe in expanding our bouquet to much more than our audience’s handling capabilities rather we believe in expanding our content that can cater to the needs and demands of our consumers.
   
AG: What is the roadmap that you have charted for NDTV going forward?

VC: We will be focusing at enhancing our digital businesses. Also frankly speaking, NDTV profit historically has been our big worry area. From last few years we have been losing out a lot of money on this channel. The strategy behind this is simply to take what was our loss leader to convert that into our flagship channel. And now with kind of response we have got from our sponsors we are quite positive with our step.