'IPL may not find viewers', says agencyfaqs

When the Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI) announced the formation of a Twenty20 league late last year, it created a furore. Everything about the game seemed larger than life, whether it was the prize money of Rs 35 crore (the highest ever in the game’s history), or celebrities buying teams, or the unabashed players’ auction.

Starting April 18, the IPL tournament will go on air on SET Max on prime time, 8-11pm, on all days and 4-7pm for two matches. Initially, it was thought that the IPL telecast would be bad news for the general entertainment channels (GECs), which usually air their strongest properties 8pm to 11pm. Now, however, with the IPL matches about to start, this line of thought is not as confident as before.

The hype and hullabaloo
It’s an undisputable fact that the BCCI has managed to create a property that is making waves, despite the existence of a similar format promoted by the Essel Group, called the Indian Cricket League. From a renewed interest in the game among cricket lovers to the accompanying media blitzkrieg, the IPL was welcomed with much fanfare. In fact, SET Max, the official broadcaster, has humorously positioned it as ‘Manoranjan ka Baap (the Father of Entertainment)’.

However, media observers such as Kajal Malik, vice-president, Interactions, a Lintas Media Group agency, believes that though the IPL is enjoying vast media coverage, it has failed to leverage mass media. She is of the opinion that in a game like this, mass media will play a crucial role. What has been running on mass media is the IPL campaign by the BCCI and SET Max.

“I don’t see the franchises leveraging mass media enough, considering that the team campaigns haven’t really kick-started,” says Malik. After stealing the thunder from the ICL, the BCCI is taking the concept to a bigger level with bigger players, but that hasn’t translated into bigger hype, apart from the media coverage it is enjoying, she says.

‘My India’ missing
In spite of the initial excitement around the tournament, media observers are almost unanimous in their opinion that the one thing that the IPL teams lack is Team India spirit. And the lack of this critical aspect of loyalty and nationalism might create a few roadblocks for the IPL’s popularity. Since there is no national pride involved in this game, it seems uncertain which team the audiences will root for. Though cricket ignites passion, this one may not, because there is no Team India to which the audiences can relate. After all, it is national pride that has made cricket and its heroes.

Hence, the most challenging job for any of the team owners is to drive and excite the audience. Unless they are given a solid proposition, the viewer has no reason to be passionate about the game or the teams at this point of time. And sadly, the franchise owners have only about 10 days to ignite passion among cricket lovers.

In fact, the team owners are trying hard to create fan followings for their respective teams, but considering that the tournament will go on air on April 18, it’s probably too late. Each team has appointed an advertising agency to handle its marketing communication, complete with team anthem, team mascot and merchandise. Nevertheless, there is no clear knowledge about the teams, except for a few senior players; media observers believe this could go against the IPL.

The IPL is riding on a totally new concept, Twenty20, which, it is believed, will bring ‘club culture’ into cricket. “How much passion a club team will ignite in the audience remains to be seen,” says a senior media planner.

And when it comes to converting the same to television viewership, Praveen Tripathi chief executive, Hansa Consulting, predicts that it certainly won’t have the same effect that an India one day match would have. “When there is an India match playing, the entire nation watches. When there is a Chandigarh versus Kolkata match, one would expect the whole of Punjab to root for Chandigarh and the whole of Kolkata to root for Kolkata. And that’s a small fraction of the country,” he explains. He is of the opinion that people in most cities will cheer for their own teams.

Overall, the effect will be less than that of a one day match with India playing and more than a one dayer without India playing.

The IPL is expected to attract two categories of viewers – diehard cricket fans who watch cricket as a sport whether India plays or not, and amateur, cricket illiterate lovers from the cities which are playing. But again, this won’t add up to the whole of India. However, Tripathi hopes that if the cricket matches become more than just sport and have entertainment value added to them, they will be bigger hits.

Fight for the remote
Media planners also foresee a possible fight for the remote by family members in single television households, which are in a majority in India. The regular GEC viewer will now have to vie with the avid cricket fans at home. But everyone agrees that it is almost impossible that all homes will be tuned in to cricket all 44 days because most women can’t abstain from their daily dose of drama for that long.

“It will be hard for her, as that’s her ‘space out’ time after a hard day’s work and, being quite engrossed in the happenings in the serials, she looks forward to the next episode,” says Sandeep Lakhina, managing director, India, West and South, Starcom. He believes that even if some women have to give in to the IPL, they will watch their serials on the afternoon repeats, which means the afternoon viewership may pick up.

Prem Kamath, vice-president, marketing, STAR India, sees no reason to worry. “We are talking about two entirely different viewer experiences here,” he says. “The 8-11pm slot on GECs is ruled by daily soaps, which have been going on for long and have a big following.”

No doubt these programmes have built a relationship with the audience on an ongoing basis and the audience comes back to watch them every day. However, the hype and expectations around the IPL will lead to an initial sampling. “But on the whole, I don’t expect the GECs to be affected by the IPL,” says Kamath confidently.

Malik supports Kamath’s view. “The current stronger programmes don’t have too much to worry about, at least initially. Weaker programmes which are already on a slide will see viewership getting fragmented,” she says.

Viewership pattern
The IPL will garner varying viewership, depending on a variety of factors such as team composition, intensity of the match, etc. Malik believes that if a team’s composition is a little stronger with recognised players, it will command higher viewership. Lakhani predicts that matches featuring the Mumbai and Delhi teams might get higher viewership since these metros form a large percentage of the TV audience. He is obviously of the opinion that support may be led more by “my favourite player” than by city.

The most interesting match is expected to draw a TVR of 3.5, and the others, around 3, which is much lower than that garnered by any of the shows on STAR Plus on prime time.

GECs gearing up
According to media analysts, the GECs are gearing up to face the IPL challenge. STAR Plus has Kya Aap Paanchvi Paas Se Tez Hai?, the show hosted by Shah Rukh Khan, which will go on air from April 25. It has launched another show called Joh Jeeta Wohi Superstar, a singing reality show, which will feature popular contestants from all the singing contest shows held till date across channels. Both these shows are weekend shows. Meanwhile, to boost its long-running saga, Kyunki… Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, the channel has got Smriti Irani, the original Tulsi, back on the show.

While Kamath denies that any efforts are being made to strengthen the weekday prime time offerings, Lakhina believes there is s strategy in place. “I have a feeling that STAR, Zee and others may shift some of their prime time programming to avoid clashes with the IPL,” he says. Zee already has Rock-N-Roll Family, which is a dance based reality show featuring families (three generations) and being judged by actors Tanuja, Kajol and Ajay Devgan.

On the whole, the GECs are taking a wait and watch attitude to the IPL platform. The consensus is that while this year, the IPL might manage to attract sports enthusiasts initially, it may not manage steady viewership over a longer period of time because of the already established properties on GECs. Perhaps it will be a different story next year once the game and teams are better known. As of now, the GECs have no reason to worry.

A winning brand is everything

Over the past week we have been treated to a national outpouring of pride as the world champion Springboks have paraded the Webb Ellis Cup around South Africa. Today Cape Town is the last stop.

Politicians have been quick to piggyback on success, but it's understandable. Winning the World Cup is good for a country.

You can't begrudge President Thabo Mbeki donning a Springbok jersey, launching a million camera flashbulbs as he supports the Class of 2007.

Of course, politicians routinely remind us of rugby's duties to society. While we celebrate victory, a sporting miracle when you consider all the outside factors at play, we are told of the responsibility to transform the game.


One black player in the starting XV in the 1995 World Cup winners, two in 2007. At that rate we would only field an all-black champion Springbok XV in 156 years.

So, you can see where the transformers are coming from, but the Bok bus is not a vehicle fitted with "L" plates, it's the F1 of the sport. Testing of talent has to be done at the structures below.

However, amid all the comments attributed to the politicians, who say we "mustn't make the same mistakes as the last time (1995)", let's just cast our minds back to 12 years ago and where we were in our sport.

Was winning the Rugby World Cup a mistake? It created such a positive domino effect on other codes. Which is also why we should not tinker with a winning brand. And the Springbok is just that, in name and performance.

It's reason number 967 why merit must be the only selection criteria at the elite level of sport. You want the best 15 Springboks taking on the All Blacks in a World Cup final; anything less and you're on a hiding to nothing.

But back to 1995 and the feel-good effect. In the months after Francois Pienaar lifted the trophy and thanked "43 million South Africans" an inspired Bafana Bafana won the African Cup of Nations.

What some might have forgotten is that Bafana Bafana were officially named Fifa's best movers of the year and reached the dizzy heights of 19th in the world. Yes, 19th. Today they're in 83rd place, and 17th in Africa. Those stats are worth reading again.

Why has our national football team slipped so alarmingly? The same politicians who are banging on about transformation in rugby should be pointing their cannons at soccer and asking why it has failed South Africans. The Bafana brand is so low they want to change its name.

Then again, rugby is a soft target. They argue the Boks don't reflect the demographics of the country. But which national team does?

With 2010 looming the politicians should be asking why soccer, by far the most funded in the country, and with the richest administrators, has slipped so much.

Think post-1995 too and the effect it had on our Olympians. In her autobiography Penny Heyns talked about the Boks and she's not even a big rugby fan.

But in the months that the Boks ruled the world, and Bafana Bafana were at their peak, she broke the world breaststroke record and then won two golds at the 1996 Olympics. And marathoner Josiah Thugwane won men's marathon gold too. A winning spirit is infectious.

The Boks have allowed us to dream again. The next African Cup of Nations and the Olympics are next year.

Thanks to John Smit, Jake White and others on the Bok bus, our other sporting talent believes. To dismantle these winners now when they are approaching their peak would not just be a disservice to rugby's world champions.

It would also be a disservice to all those other codes and individuals aspiring to be the best.

A daring new Brand image

KATY Brand may be television's hottest new comic talent, but she stops laughing the moment I mention the recent re-eruption of the debate about whether women can be funny or not. And specifically, why more of them are not being funny on television.

"Ah, the old 'gender glasses' problem," says the 24-year-old, rolling her eyes. "The more you talk about it, the more it becomes a problem. You end up giving women an excuse not to try. Comedy can be intimidating but it is intimidating for men, too."
That's me told.

You might think comedy would be all the more intimidating if, like Brand, you are a lapsed "fundamentalist Christian" (her phrase) with a figure that could politely be described as Rubenesque. But Brand's confidence in her own talent has led to a meteoric rise.

Having only begun performing what she calls her "insane monologues" - pin-sharp take-offs of celebrities intercut with acutely observed characters of her own creation - in comedy clubs in 2004, she now has her own vehicle, Katy Brand's Big Ass Show, and is being promoted as ITV's answer to Catherine Tate. "I tell people I'm Russell Brand's estranged wife, and I've gone into comedy to win him back," she deadpans. "Or sometimes I tell taxi drivers that Jo Brand is my mum."

Like Catherine Tate and the Little Britain duo, all of whom she admires, Brand delivers a gloriously monstrous form of 21st-century satire. In her view, this is a country obsessed with celebrity, body fascism and shopping, and she skewers it with a cruel wit that is part Swift, part Viz.

But it is her inspired spoofing of stars that sets her apart from the likes of Tate. There's Kate Moss as a naughty school bully, conspiring in the playground with Sadie Frost and Stella McCartney. Or Kate Winslet as a neurotic housewife, vacuuming the walls and struggling to turn on the oven in an increasingly desperate bid to appear "normal".

Best of all are her musical send-ups, such as Amy Winehouse slurring her new single, Booze on My Face, or the pop-reggae tune Banal, which mercilessly punctures Lily Allen's aspirations to working-class cred. "I can't help it if I grew up on a council estate..." Brand trills, "well, I walked past one."

She has a particular animus against Allen, it seems. "I just have a bit of a thing about very posh kids pretending they aren't posh. Be fine as you are, stop pretending you are something else," she says. But she is plainly delighted by the fact that, when Radio 1 played Banal, many mistook it for the real thing.

"Scott Mills played it without saying it was me and more than 20,000 listeners texted in thinking it really was Lily Allen. One even said it was 'a return to form'. Louis Walsh loved it," Brand cackles.

She denies that her parodies are cruel, insisting that she lampoons only the wider, weirder fringes of celebrity life.

"I just try to latch on to a particular comic aspect. The thing I like is the gap between what stars are actually like and the constant press package being rammed down your throat. So you have Jennifer Aniston going 'I'm fine', and you want to say, 'Jennifer, how can you possibly be fine, you were married to Brad Pitt and he ran off with a minx?'

"Stars are constantly weaving a web of bullshit around themselves and if you keep building this web eventually the spider is gonna eat you."

One of the delights of her job, she says, is that she can read the likes of Heat and Grazia and claim it is research. "I genuinely enjoy reading those magazines," she says. "Of course I feel a bit dirty, but in a good way. If all you ate was Pot Noodle it would be bad, but occasionally it is fine. What I'm always doing is waiting for a story to reach critical mass - like Angelina Jolie living in the jungle for six months - then trying to write the mental version of their story."

Mention of Pot Noodle draws me into delicate territory. If comedy is intimidating to women, television is notoriously hostile to those who are anything more than rake-thin, and Brand is, shall we say, considerably larger than most of the celebrities she impersonates.

"I have never let it stop me doing someone," she smiles. "I've never thought I can't do a character because I'm not thin like her, and sometimes the physical contrast adds to the comedy."

Her size can even be an inspiration for wit. One of Brand's non-famous characters (until she gets taken up in playgrounds, at least) is called Caroline "Little Treats". In one delicious sketch, Caroline and her chums sit in a pub calculating how long they have to spend in the gym if they share a plate of chips or a small glass of wine. The camera pulls back to show every other woman in the pub doing the same mental arithmetic.

"I've done it myself," admits Brand. "I've been there, I've had that conversation. What I do in my comedy is find the ruts you get into and beat them to death."

Given her brash self-assurance, it's surprising to find there was little in Brand's past to suggest a career in entertainment. Her upbringing was nice, normal, middle-class. Admittedly, her trumpeter grandfather Geoffrey Brand worked with Paul McCartney and played on a brass version of Yellow Submarine, which might suggest a certain propensity towards humour. And Brand's earliest memory is of listening to endless tapes of The Goon Show in the car from home in Buckinghamshire to rain-sodden camping holidays in Cornwall.

One summer, however, when she was 13, instead of camping with her parents, she went away with friends who were evangelical Christians. By the time she returned, she had become an enthusiastic convert and, much to the bemusement of her family, started going to church five times a week. "Maybe that's the only way to rebel when you've got liberal parents," she suggests.

She worked hard at the local comprehensive school and earned a place at Oxford to read theology but gradually became disenchanted with religion.

"After about a year, I realised it was mostly rubbish and that things are never as simple as they seem when you are 13."

So she spent most of her time at Oxford doing plays and musicals. When she graduated, however, Brand did not want to perform and went into television production. "I thought to myself 'I'll try to do something else and if I don't miss it that'll be great', but I kept bumping into people from university who said they'd always assumed I'd be a performer, so I just gave it a go."

Now, she says, she looks at a room full of 300 drunken strangers and just thinks "bring it on".

Brand is already a part of the comic fraternity. She dated controversial comic Reginald D Hunter for 18 months and, though they separated, he remains a friend and gave her the title for her TV show. She and her old chum from her Oxford student days, Katherine Parkinson, are also writing a radio comedy show.

The danger of the move into TV and the wider fame it brings is that Brand runs the risk of meeting the people she is lampooning. So far this has happened once: "I've only met Charlotte Church. We were both drunk and I said, 'I do you!' She said, 'As long as it's funny I don't mind!' The last thing you can do is get grovelly and pathetic, but I'm genuinely not trying to savage anyone." Well, not too much, anyway.