Exclusive | With India Direct we strengthen our focus on India: BBC's Egan

BBC World News has announced a season of programmes focusing on India to air in February next year (2014). As the country looks towards its next General Election, the news series - India Direct will delve behind the headlines, going beyond the tales of a growing middle class and extreme poverty to bring audiences insight on this growing economic and global player.

The Country Direct seasons give BBC audiences around the world the opportunity to see everyday life in one country. Through BBC World News programmes like Fast:Track, One Square Mile and Working Lives, the BBC's vast network of journalists explore the issues faced by a country and its people – from the economic opportunities and challenges to living life at every level of society; from its traditions and history to future plans and innovations. Recent seasons have focused on Singapore, Vietnam, Croatia, Mozambique, Canada, Georgia, Ecuador and Qatar.

Adgully caught up with Jim Egan, CEO, BBC Global News to know what makes BBC stand apart from others, the India Direct series and more.

Talking about what BBC has been doing globally and the television and digital initiatives, Egan said, “It’s been 22 years for English language global news and sports channel operations and bbc.com which has been in its current form since 2007.”

To highlight the reasons as to why BBC different and distinctive from the competition, Egan said that there would be three of them. “In a nutshell, our geographic coverage, multi-lingual strength and multi-media strengths are the three things that differentiate us from others in the market”.

Explaining each of the reasons Egan said, “One of the oldest reasons is that we have been working around the world in more than 70 countries and journalist present in around 100 countries and that is something we think is just as important as it was when we started. Although with online access to information and news the number of people working in an organisation doing original (on-field) journalism is going down, but we are committed to maintaining our network of international correspondents around the world; because we believe that the advantages of first hand eye-witness accounted reportage is something important to us as it was earlier. Hence the brand campaign we are running this year is called ‘Live the Story’, since that is ideally what we want to say – not just being an aggregator of people’s news, but writing it first-hand”. Adding further he said, “Secondly, language expertise is another advantage that we hold. We currently operate in 27 languages around the world, apart from English. While this is not just mere news translation in 27 different languages, but we have journalist working in various parts of the country, with enhanced translation techniques which enable the journalist to network and connect them in much better ways, rather than just be the same information in different languages. It is original journalism that is networked in each language. Thirdly, it is getting serious about multi-media. Our focus is to integrate multi-media platforms to serve our news, where online and offline mediums work alongside each other like radio, television and digital, which not many organisations focus on. We also have a keen focus on integrating out user-generated-content in our social media activities. We have about 5 million followers for our app BBCWorld and last week, we were the most re-tweeted news source on Twitter, which is twice as big as our nearest competitors.

Speaking about the revenue growth and plans, Egan said, “BBC currently targets 40% revenue growth over five year period of our business plan. This year is a heavy investment period, but I see revenue to continue to grow. While, BBC is a public organisation in the UK, we are commercially financed internationally”. Explaining the revenues system at the organisation he said, “About a third of the revenue comes from TV subscription revenues (money paid on the satellite platform), about a third from TV advertising on BBC World News and the remaining is from advertising. Off all three components, each is growing at different rates, but I see digital advertising probably is the one that is growing most quickly, though the trends keep variating very often.”

An elated Egan also stated that the subscription business at BBC is growing consistently. “­­Though pay TV market is growing significantly world over, we have reached 30 million homes in India, which a fourth of the pay-TV market. While the digitisation process in still underway in parts of the country, we are happy to see the penetration increasing gradually.”

Egan also said that India has been and continues to an important market and a source for growth for the news giant. Alongside India, countries like Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia continue to be rapidly growing markets in Asia. The last year has also seen significant break-through in the USA, following the news giant’s tie-ups with Time Warner and ComCast.

The India Direct season is expected to run across two weeks from 8 February 2014 and will include. Speaking about the same Egan said, “The India Direct series is a way we are looking at strengthening our focus on India”. The series will run for two weeks from 8th February 2014. It will include.

Working Lives – Ahmedabad - Rupa Jha, of the BBC’s Delhi Bureau travels to Ahmedabad, the largest city and former capital of the state of Gujarat. In Working Lives, we meet Ahmedabad residents from across the economic spectrum with very different jobs and social positions. From a space scientist to a slum litter picker, from a manufacturing magnate to a toiler in one of the city’s textile plants, we see what life is like at the extremes of the Indian experience. But Rupa also meets those in ‘the middle’ whose earning and consumption patterns are the lifeblood of India’s economic boom.

One Square Mile – Pune FC Tim Samuels, a confirmed football fan and award-winning reporter travels to Pune, one of India’s fastest growing cities with a burgeoning manufacturing and entrepreneurial sector. He visits Pune FC, in India’s premier league, meets the players, and their Dutch manager and goes to a premier league match. Tim learns who watches football and hears about the sport’s allure in a country traditionally enamoured with cricket. He also meets another football team, one made up of dalits, who can only aspire to the big time.

Talking Movies – India Special - Tom Brook will present a special edition from India. We will be looking at the antidote to Bollywood, the new wave of Indian cinema that has an independent sensibility, as well as the renaissance in regional cinema: Bengali and Punjabi films, and the impact they’re having on the industry. And we go to an old-fashioned movie theatre in rural India to meet the typical Indian filmgoer and explore the relationship between Indian cinema and the millions who watch it.

Fast:Track - Presenter Rajan Datar will be roaming across India for a special edition of the travel news show. He will be in Mumbai to report on its growing nightlife; as well as looking at how technology is changing tourism, and visiting the city’s first theme park, Adlabs Imagica. Then it’s on to Kochrab Ashram in Ahmedabad where you can live like Gandhi for a week. Moving to Goa, Rajan meets volunteers of Clean Up India, before visiting the coast of Karnataka to ask if it can be the new Goa. And in light of recent incidents, Rajan will also explore how safe India really is for female travelers.

The season is also expected to carry a special edition of India Business Report and to complement the on-air output, audiences will be encouraged to dig deeper into the country with dedicated online content on BBC.com.

Media
@adgully

News in the domain of Advertising, Marketing, Media and Business of Entertainment

More in Media