By Simran Sabherwal
It’s been an eventful year at Reliance Broadcast Network Ltd (RBNL). For starters, its FM network 92.7 BIG FM changed its positioning; the television arm ended its agreement with both CBS and RTL, and RBNL also delisted from the bourses. Looking ahead, Tarun Katial, Chief Executive Officer at RBNL, says the company will continue to bet on its content backed by innovation and deliver value to advertisers both in the Radio and Television space
BIG FM, arguably India’s largest FM Radio network from the Anil Ambani owned Reliance Broadcast Network Limited (RBNL), took “a big leap on the radio business last year”, according to Tarun Katial, Chief Executive Officer, RBNL. “From the time we launched to now, we haven’t seen the kind of success that we saw last year, in terms of our product, ratings and revenue linked to that,” says Katial. With a major portion of the advertisers’ money spent on the measured markets (Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata), he believes that the radio broadcaster is accountable and responsible to deliver quality audiences to the advertiser. With this in mind, BIG FM “embarked on a rejuvenation programme” of content to enable it to stand out amidst the clutter. Extensive research in music and content was undertaken to understand consumer preferences, post which BIG FM decided to position itself as a “retro” station in Mumbai and Delhi, regional + retro in Kolkata and focusing on regional contemporary in Bangalore. This move seems to have paid rich dividends for the network, as Katiyal says, “In the last 18 months, our ratings have grown three or four times, if not doubled in most of these markets. Today, we are the leading radio player (No. 1 or 2) in every single market. Not only have our ratings gone up, but the entire radio category has grown.”
Katial credits this response to the content format coupled with celebrity talent, such as Annu Kapoor, Neelesh Misra, Talat Aziz, Sabyasachi Chakraborthy (in Kolkata) and CK Chandru and Dayanand (in Bangalore), who have helped fortify the content positioning of being inspirational. On whether a shift to retro has changed the demographic profile and lost a connect with the ‘contemporary’ youth, Katial says that BIG FM does well even among the youth. A listener of retro music himself, he calls the music of artistes such as Asha Bhosale, Kishore Kumar and RD Burman youthful and timeless. He believes the move has in fact worked for advertisers, as a large percentage of the Adex is spent on the 25+ target audience - the same group which tunes in to the radio station. He adds, “We have invested heavily in consumer-centricity and building on consumer insights, not on our perception of what the consumer wants or what we want the brand to be. We try and find out how we can appeal to the largest common denominator available amongst the consumers.”
ADVERTISERS & INNOVATION
The station has seen an increase in not just the number of advertisers but also in advertiser spends, and Katial says that the company will continue to invest in content and innovation to build loyalty and increase stickiness (the average stickiness has gone up from over three hours to 5.5 hours a week in Mumbai). “We sell for at least 40-50% premium of what we were selling earlier and have nearly doubled our prices over the last one year. Pricing should be linked to performance. The time for transparency and accountability in Radio has come and as our performance moves, our pricing should move,” states Katial. With Radio now being looked upon as a medium of reach rather than frequency, he adds, “Agencies now hold themselves accountable for the way they allocate spends on radio stations. They are starting to move from perceptionled planning and buying to a numerical accountability-led planning and buying, which is what has seen the shift both of pricing as well as volume towards us because we are committed to delivering a certain number to them month-on-month, week-on-week.”
With innovation being the buzzword at BIG FM, the company has developed a three level strategy – consumer insight, brand insight and platform - and has in place a dedicated 50-member team to build solutions for its clients. Katial says, “The intersection of these three is what we really believe works for our client.”
Not just advertisers, consumers too are looking for innovation and different formats. According to Katial, consumers have moved beyond plain vanilla engagement and caller interaction. “Consumers have moved from frivolous, youthful RJs to having mature conversation over the air. We actually replaced some of our RJs with slightly older RJs. Consumers have moved from the cacophony of Radio to mature conversations,” he observes.
LOCALIZATION IS KEY
On the Television front, RBNL ended its three-channel joint venture with American television network, CBS. This was followed by RBNL buying out European broadcast major, RTL’s stake in the male-skewed action channel BIG RTL Thrill. Katial says, “Last year was a breakthrough year for us on Television. We decided our clear focus and strategy on Television and decided we are going to own and focus on intellectual property and proprietary content that we own and want to build from.” He mentions that he took some bold measures and decided to go with local channels and local content rather than international channels and content and did exceedingly well.
With three channels in the RBNL bouquet - BIG Magic, a national channel, regional channel BIG Magic Bihar & Jharkhand and BIG Thrill, the focus is now clearly on being local. BIG Magic, which started out as a Hindi GEC catering to the Hindi heartland, is now a national channel. Though its focus is still HSM, it has also changed its proposition and is positioned as the ‘one stop destination for humour’ – a comedy channel for the masses. The intent is clear – taking on family comedy entertainment channel SAB TV. Says Katial, “SAB TV is the leader in that space and we are obviously the challenger. I hope to get close to them by the end of the year. There are lots of learnings we seek from what they have done; that plus an added element of consumer insights and we should be able to create something that can compete well in the marketplace.” With its agenda set, BIG Magic has brought on board Uditanshu Mehta as Creative Director, who in his earlier assignment led the programming function as part of the core team at SAB TV. Mehta was also instrumental in changing SAB channel’s positioning from an entertainment channel to a comedy channel. “What we have been able to do is turn our channel into national, taken a challenger position in the comedy space and the kind of results we have got is very encouraging. We have done well in our core markets and we want to spread our wings across metros and some other geographies now,” says Katial.
Looking at the regional entertainment channel, BIG Magic Bihar & Jharkhand, the company has tried to build on local insights, content and consumers and built a production base in Patna to feed content for this channel. Katial claims that the top three shows in Bihar are currently on the channel, despite strong competition from ETV and Zee TV. “We beat both of them week-on-week in the Bihar marketplace,” he says.
RBNL is also betting big on its ‘male’ and action/entertainment channel, BIG Thrill. The channel will introduce local original content next year after it airs its current bank of international content. Says Katial, “International content is becoming expensive and fragmented. Being a rental model, you don’t own any content and if you want to grow as a broadcaster, you need to put your money where your mouth is and play local content and build on intellectual property and propriety content and we are happy to go down that road.”
TACKLING DISTRIBUTION
Distribution has always been a major challenge for RBNL and the company has worked on plugging the loopholes in this space. With contracts with Airtel and Tata Sky now in place, Katial says, “That completes our entire spectrum of DTH operators. Both the national channel and the Bihar channel are now available with every single MSO.”
Looking at the overall Television business in India, he says, “We are very well segmented compared to anybody else: comedy on one side, crime and thrill on the other and geographically focussed on Bihar.” Talking about profitability, Katial says that while the Bihar channel is “on the cusp of break-even”, the company will continue to invest what is required for the national channel for another year. He believes that the channel will be “very comfortable” by the end of next year.
BIG PRODUCTIONS
RBNL’s Television content production division has created profitable properties - BIG Life OK Now Awards, a monthly ranking award for film and television music, and BIG Star Entertainment awards – an award property that encompasses television, dance, music, sports and films on the same platform every year. According to Katial, while BIG Life OK Awards helped bump up Life OK’s reach considerably, the BIG Star Entertainment awards has been the number one rated property across channels for the last four years. Looking ahead, the company is in the process of creating intellectual properties and also investing in a creative script shop to help channels and producers with great ideas.
Feedback: simran.sabherwal@exchange4media.com
