Riding high on the ICC World Cup, Set Discovery reaped a harvest of $120 million (around Rs 4.8 billion) in 2006-07.
The challenges, though, are stiff this year as flagship Hindi general entertainment channel Sony TV is floundering. But direct-to-home (DTH) revenues will start kicking in substantially as subscribers have doubled. And the cricket play is not over yet.
The One Alliance, Set Discovery's brand, has recently added three news channels from TV Today including Hindi market leader Aaj Tak. It is also planning to form regional bouquets with presence in Tamil, Telugu and Bengali markets.
In an interview with Indiantelevision.com's Sibabrata Das, Set Discovery head Gurjeev Singh Kapoor speaks about the distribution company's interests in bidding for Ten Sports and HBO as they come up for grabs while chalking out its expansion plans.
Excerpts:
Will Set Discovery manage to retain its last fiscal revenue of $120 million in a year where it doesn't have strong cricketing properties? |
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But Ten Sports admits that not having India cricket will affect their ad revenues this fiscal. Won't this same logic extend to distribution? |
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Will Ten Sports not slip out of The One Alliance after the term ends in March 2008, particularly after Zee has taken a 50 per cent stake in the sports channel? |
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Why didn't Sony bid for the ICC World Cup, if it is crucial to have a cricketing property to push distribution bouquets? |
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Which is why Sony bid and took the New Zealand cricket board? |
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Sony was in talks to distribute Neo Sports. Did it fail because Neo was asking for very high minimum guarantees? |
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Set Disocery has recently signed a pact with TV Today Network to distribute Aaj Tak, Headlines Today and Tej. Will Aaj Tak help you to push Sony TV, which has weakened its position, and Sab TV in the Hindi heartland? Our bouquet will have pay channels in every genre. We already had NDTV as the leading English news channel; and with Aaj Tak, we will now have the leader in the Hindi news segment. |
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How much of an upside do you see in revenue terms? |
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Is The One Alliance planning to add more channels? |
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What about forming regional bouquets? Along with the regional channels, we can push our national bouquet more aggressively into these markets. |
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Will more existing channels go pay as carriage fee shoots up? |
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The telecom regulatory authority of India (Trai) has asked for a la carte pricing from broadcasters in non-Cas (conditional access system) areas. Do you see this contributing to more carriage fee? |
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Why has Sony moved the Tdsat (Telecom Disputes Redressal and Settlement Tribunal) against the Trai tariff order for non-Cas areas? And for whose benefit is this a la carte rate for? How the hell does the consumer benefit as technology won't allow for a la carte choice of channels without a set-top box? If the Trai tariff order for non-Cas areas goes through, it will be a disaster for the broadcasters. It will send bad signals to a new channel wanting to come to India. |
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Aren't broadcasters also unhappy with the progress of Cas? For the first time, all of us came under one roof to foster Cas. But what we realised is that MSOs were in a way curbed by the last mile operators who did not want Cas. We are concerned about the low penetration of set-top boxes. There was the T20 World Cup on ESPN Star Sports, India won the championship, and it was live and exclusive. How in a Cas market, there was no big upside? This defeats the purpose of Cas and leads to a lot of questions. Besides, Trai came out with a particular reporting format, but we haven't got anything of that from the MSOs. We have no choice but to knock at the doors of Trai. We want the sector regulator to intervene. |
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Why aren't broadcasters joining hands with MSOs to market for set-top box penetration? We are willing but the MSOs have internal problems. The last mile operators see a bigger threat from digital cable rather than DTH. |
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How do you see new entrants impacting the market? |