WELL DONE KENDRA'S

Kendras grow, but DD Metro flounders
New delhi: doordarshan’s flagship metro channel continues to flounder from one disaster to another. ever since the auction of its prime time slots came a cropper, the prasar bharati mandarins have tried every trick of the trade to wean the major producers back to their network but with little success. anil baijal, chairperson of the prasar bharati corporation, admitted as much when he said, ‘‘we had to remove the floor price in the earlier round as it was too low. we are now inviting proposals directly from producers and have already received several offers.’’ the sponsorship fee from the new rate card for the 8-10 pm slot comes to rs 18.50 crore — which works out to rs 1.5 lakh per half-an-hour slot. earlier, doordarshan had fixed a floor price of rs 75 crore for this same time slot. last year, dd metro succeeded in almost doubling its revenue with most of the moolah coming in from its tie-up with hfcl-nine gold. officials admit that this year they foresee a sharp decline in revenue for the same channel. by contrast, doordarshan’s regional kendras seem to be putting their act together. despite the proliferation of private regional channels, doordarshan’s viewership and revenues in the regional kendras are showing an upward incline. viewership of doordarshan’s marathi channel rose by 300 per cent in 2000-2001. viewership in the bangla channel has risen in an equally spectacular manner with it continuing to trump eenadu bangla, alpha bangla and tara bengali in this state. the story is being repeated in their bangalore, thiruvanthapuram, hyderabad and jalandhar kendras where the last year has seen a surge in terrestrial and satellite viewership as confirmed by the latest television audience measurement (tam) surveys. ‘mumbai is the most hotly contested territory in india and we are presently competing with six private marathi networks. yet, our viewership in c&s homes has gone up from one million to 4.8 million homes,” declares mukesh sharma, director of dd’s mumbai kendra. how does he explain this turn around? “we worked on our strength. we showed 20 hours of live telecast and beefed up our concentration on interactive programming,” is sharma’s confident reply. in 1999-2000, the calcutta kendra viewership had plummeted down to three per cent. however, the tam reports for june 3-9 2001 show dd bangla is being watched in 80 per cent of individual homes and 77 per cent of c&s homes. its closest rival, eenadu bangla is trailing with 33 per cent and 72 per cent in individual and c&s homes respectively. dd bangla went a step ahead of dd marathi and showed 100 hours of live telecasting. the widely watched, hour-long, debate amongst political leaders has been extended, by popular demand, to one-and-a-half hours,” said bishwanath das, director of dd’s bangla kendra. why has metro failed to put its act together? tlang thanga, deputy director general, metro, is reticent to talk about metro’s lackadaisical performance. “we need sponsored programmes. we cannot run this channel without the help of private producers,” says thanga. by saying this, thanga could well be letting the cat out of the bag. one of the key reasons for the turnaround of the kendras has been to pump in more inhouse programming. ashok jailkhani, director for dd jalandhar maintains, “during the last year, we deliberately moved away from showing punjabi pop music repeats and started focusing on programmes rooted in the village ethos. let me tell you village-related programmes pay because advertisers are flocking to take up slots.” radha namboodiri, director of dd thiruvanthapuram kendra confirms this.”our biggest strength is our diversity. the fact that the kendras earnings have risen substantially means advertisers are interested in us,” namboodiri said.
SOURCE:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Kendras-grow-but-DD-Metro-flounders/articleshow/1320725351.cms