Times Network firms up leadership position with Times Now HD & Mirror Now

Times Network, the broadcast arm of The Times Group, has unveiled its plans of expansion and innovation for their leading General English news channels, Times Now and Mirror Now. With Mirror Now reaching to 365,000 viewers per week within just 5 weeks and Times Now leading the general news category week by week, is geared up for another successful year. 

Mirror Now launch 

“When we launch something we are very clear that it has to be consumer led. That is the difficulty because putting a channel together and sort of creating a tamasha is very easy because nowadays people do that in 4-5 months,” said MK Anand, MD and CEO, Times Network, while conveying the positioning of Mirror Now. “We are not trying to launch just another English News channel because we believe that too many exist. And, therefore, when we got into this, we wanted to do a channel which has a specific position and relevance. If we look at movie channels from our stable, we have not just launched them because we have library. We have launched them with specific positioning, clear consumer proposition and very clear look and feel. As we go forwards, we have very clear filters of what not to run on the channel. ‘What not to run’ becomes a difficulty. We have to engage viewers of all types. To get the right people, to optimize our FPCs, content filters etc was taking a little time.” 

Mirror Now is something which the network was mulling over since September 2016. Commenting on the reach of the channel after 5 weeks of its soft launch, Anand noted, “We have been able to steadily get the reach numbers of the channel go up. If we look at the weekly reach of English news channels, Times Now operates at around 700-800 thousand viewers per week. The other three channels (India Today. NDTV and CNN) operate between 450,000 and 550,000 (SEC AB 22 plus I billion plus) per week. Our target is to get to 500,000. That’s our base target. Times Now last week was at 695,000 and India Today was 650,000, NDTV – 593,000, CNN News18 was 618,00 and we have been at 365,000. We would steadily climb over the next one and a half months or so. By the end of this quarter I think we should be in a reach level of equal to any of these three channels. Our distribution push, marketing and our content selection, FPC planning is to ensure that we are in that zone. So, we are clearly launching a proper sized English channel with reference to reach.” 

Shedding some light on the content of the newly-launched channel, Anand said, “On Mirror Now Faye (Faye D’Souza ) talks about things that are directly important to English viewers like women safety, educations, housing, infrastructure. We believe that Times network has served the English viewer of this country. We reach out to about 10 crore viewers almost every month out of the 21 crore cumulative viewership of the English total broadcast of this country. By that logic and reason per say, we are probably talking to most Indians who are leading India. Besides the business objective behind that, we are talking to these people since we have the attention of these influencers. We believe that with our news channels we have an added responsibility and an opportunity to set the agenda for this country.” 

He added, “While we said the political, social and global agenda was set through Times Now, ET Now talking about India emerging as an economic superpower, after one and a half to two decades of liberalisation, we believe income have started growing up. But our lifestyles are completely limited by our infrastructure.” 

Faye D’Souza, Editor, Mirror Now, added here, “We are not here to show a tamasha. We are here to bring up an issue and raise policies. I don’t want people to come and yell, but find solutions to the problems that exist in their neighbourhood. Our objective is to promote citizen participation in a large way and make a difference on-ground.” 

Mirror Now is a channel committed to making lives better for the people of the nation each day. Being a purely consumer channel, it is differentiated by its content. Discussing the everyday issues of life, from crime and corruption to roads and traffic congestion and to grave issues like women’s safety, Mirror Now aims to demand accountability from powers that can drive improvement. 

Mirror Now, with its flagship show ‘The Urban Debate’, has made relentless efforts and driven results for the betterment of people. Editor Faye D’Souza’s distinctive news reporting with the ability to simplify complex concepts with ease has made every news story impactful. 

With an aim to mobilise, initialise and actualise the plans, Mirror Now takes into consideration the citizen’s opinion to look for an opportunity for action and ensures accountability at all levels. Mirror Now strives to work on the agenda for change and works towards giving better living conditions to the citizens of the country. 

The channel has already started making the difference that it set out to make with a lot of results driven through impactful stories exposed on the channel. As viewers relate to stories that have close proximity to them, physically and emotionally, Mirror Now is currently at 3,65,000 viewers per week and promises to will soon reach the ideal average viewership per week required to stabilise a channel (450,000-500,000). 

The marketing plan for the channel is primarily led by television, print and main platforms on digital with outdoor. The plan is divided into three phases, first being the announcement of launch of Mirror Now. In the second phase, sampling will be carried out, including all digital initiatives and the final phase will consist of engagement with the audiences, analysing the impact and results will be declared. 

All new Times Now 

With ‘Times Now Next Level’, the network plans to strengthen their leadership in the news space as the most cutting-edge, exciting, engaging and dynamic news destination in the country. A channel that is constantly reinventing and redefining news presented in the country, with the ‘Next Level’, it promises to give its viewers an innovative, immersive and involved experience. Shows like ‘The Newshour Debate’ and ‘India Upfront’, which record maximum viewership in prime time are a proof of the consistent and growing leadership of the channel. Whether it’s the super expose of the Hurriyat ISI link or #MallyaGate, Times Now has been striving to give hard hitting and exposing news that can have a huge impact and justifies its brand statement ‘Action Begins Here’. 

The leadership at Times Now has also seen a tremendous change in the last few months, which has enabled them to achieve sustainable growth despite growing competition in the news space. The elevation of Rahul Shivshankar as Editor-in-Chief is an effort by the channel to up the ante and scale greater heights. While veteran news anchors like Navika Kumar and Anand Narasimhan are equally contributing towards this aim, the channel’s initiative to reach out to newer audience with the telecast of ‘The Morning NewsHour’ in Hindi, speaks volumes about its expansion plans. 

To enhance the viewer experience, Times Network recently launched Times Now HD. With differentiated content, the network endeavours to provide its viewers with supreme quality of high definition television while maintaining their crystal clear clarity of thought and quality of news reporting that Times Now has been known for over the years. With close to 15 million followers on social media, the channel engages with its viewers by giving them up-to the minute news across all social media platforms. The Times Now App also gives the viewers a chance to stay updated on major breaking stories while they are on the go. 

Times Now, with 3D VR newsroom and a virtual studio, enhances the viewers’ experience. With a 360 degree view the network presents the future of news reporting with a cutting edge technology. Concepts like ‘Snapwrap’ and ‘Picture Book’ helps the viewers keep a track of all the news throughout the day at a glimpse with pictures onscreen. ‘News Day 360’ gets 5 critical developments on the two biggest stories of the channel whereas ‘Top10’ gives 10 important highlights to the viewers while they are hooked on to the main story. From connecting with viewers on-air to online, Times Now is changing the face of newsroom reporting.  

On the sidelines of the two successful channel launches, Adgully caught up with MK Anand to know more about the audience segmentation for the three channels and the road ahead for the English News genre. 

Now with three channels (Times Now, Times Now HD, Mirror Now), how is the audience segmentation happening?
Between Times Now and Mirror Now, the latter will talk about issues which are connected with you – the ‘Indian’; while Times Now, the larger channel, is about issues concerning ‘India’, be it politics, economic and foreign relations, defence situations, etc., from a very specific story point of view. Issues such as women’s safety, schools, education, civic issues, better environment, traffic, infrastructure will be covered by Mirror Now. Thus, there is a very clear content level differentiation. So, a person can easily get two different experiences and hence, can choose both. 

With reference to the differentiation of Times Now HD and Times Now SD, as of now it is a viewing technology distinction, because the viewing experience in HD is obviously different. But as we go forward, since it’s a parallel stream, the potential to put certain content would be optimised to the rarefied HD audience. This means that there could be certain shows which would be in line with what the top-end audience requires. For instance, we could put a few international shows in the morning, afternoon and late night, which the HD audience may want to know beyond just the Indian news. 

What about cannibalisation of the audience base?
I don’t think audience cannibalisation is something that we should worry about. It’s a small category and there is requirement for all of us to grow it. Yes, from a share point of view it will cannibalise. But English viewership and English news viewership per say has been expanding over the last few years because of improved distribution and high amount of aggressive activity in this space. Therefore, we believe that more channels will mean more viewership. 

At a market share level, yes, it’s like saying that Maruti once upon a time was an 85 per cent share company. Today, it’s at 50 per cent market share. But does that mean that the number of cars sold by Maruti now is less than what they sold 20 years back? No, now Maruti is selling 10 times the number of cars they sold 20 years back. That’s what we are talking about. I don’t think it’s cannibalisation of viewers, market share levels will change. Times Now, for instance, has had a 45 per cent market share over last so many years, while the remaining 55 per cent market share has been divided amongst the other players. Obviously, as we see more action and with channels like Mirror Now coming in, while the absolute number of Times Now will also go up, the share will not remain at 45 per cent. It will have to come down.

Where is the English news genre headed today and what are the factors driving the genre?
Distribution is taking this genre forward, taking it to homes where it was not present earlier. That is fundamentally the most important thing. Secondly, India as a high-on-aspiration country has not arrived yet. Many Indians are still in the climbing stage – like in SEC or NCCS, DEC. English channels and English content are very important means through which people look up to people who are higher up than them on the social ladder. Human behaviour, social class movement is always on the basis of looking and learning. English content in terms of entertainment, news, etc., is a peek into the world of people who are hierarchically at a lower level in the socio-economic classification and view these media options as a means to see what is happening. Thus, there is this whole voyeuristic initial tendency, which is then made a part of people’s own culture, which is when enculturation happens. So, English consumption and digitisation are the two things that are driving the viewership. Advertising, of course, is not a function of only that, it is a function of the economy itself. As the economy improves, there will be better and more quality brands that are going to be pushed. That will make English broadcasting more and more a space to be in.