When News Viewership Is High, Either There Are No Ads Or No Advertisers: Avinash Pandey
Covid 19 has not only confined us to our homes, it has also changed our content consumption preferences.
If we look at the latest content consumption data, it's the news genre that is getting maximum eyeballs. And rightly so, since everyone wants to know the latest update about corona, lockdown and everything else linked to it.
As part of the exchange4media webinar series, Avinash Pandey, CEO, ABP News Network recently spoke on “Building Brand Connect Through News Channels During The Times of Crisis”. The webinar was moderated by Dr Annurag Batra, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, BW Businessworld and exchange4media Group.
Speaking about the spike in news genre over the last few weeks, Pandey said that in Covid-19 times everyone wants to stay updated.. And while there are numerous whatsapp forwards giving us news, the ones gaining popularity are credible news outlets.
“It's about the authentic source and on news TV you see the reporting Live. Our network has grown by about 300 per cent and we see the trend continuing even now when the situation is a little bit settling down”, said Pandey.
While TV viewership is setting a new record of sorts, the irony is that advertising revenues are plummeting. The spike in viewership is not showing in ad revenue or ad volumes.
Explaining the complex dynamics behind this low advertising and high viewership ratio, Pandey said that during covid times, when all the economic activity has stopped, it was difficult to even think that any consumption will happen. He added that at the end of the day the main purpose of advertising was to drive consumption.
“News is such a business that when the viewership is high, either there are no ads or no advertisers. For example when 9/11 happened, for 72 hours there was hardly any ad on television.. And when 26/11 happened for four to five days there were hardly any ads shown.”
“Having said this, there are advertisers who think that advertising is not just for today but also about building an audience which will consume the product later. Hence some brands invest in communication during the difficult times too. They come out stronger and that is why many brands are still advertising”, stated Pandey.
The ABP News CEO accepted that advertising has undoubtedly gone down and another factor at play was fewer advertisers and many news channels.
“Advertisers are bargaining in the marketplace and hence rates have not gone up the way we expected.”
“For news channels the cost of doing business has also gone up because we have to make sure our employees are safe as they are putting their lives on the line”, he added.
When asked if he saw news as public service, Pandey said that profit alone should not be the guiding force behind business.
“If your sole purpose is to make profit then you are in the wrong job. Profit comes if your purpose is to see somebody's need. Our purpose is to tell people the truth and inform, educate and entertain them. Because of this purpose the audience consumes our content every single day.”
He also underlined that no news organisation should be treated as a PR department for any government., whether state or centre.
“It is also in the interest of the government to know what is going on in the market and society and that is what all credible news organisations do”, explained Pandey.
Elaborating on the public service aspect, he said that ABP News has played its role.
“More than 75 hours of promos about covid prevention have been run on our network and we must have made 20 different kinds of promos in the last 40 days. All this requires a lot of investment from the network side.”
Being on the Board of directors of the News Broadcasters Association (NBA), Pandey also highlighted the supportive role that the NBA was playing in these tough times.
He said that the NBA has done a lot of intervention in the last 45 days and written to the I&B minister that payments to Prasar Bharati be waived off for the next three months.
He also added that the NBA stood by the network strongly when one of its reporters at ABP Majha was arrested and later granted bail.
“As far as protecting the truth and protecting our right for free speech is concerned we are all together. I'm happy with the level of cooperation we all are having from the NBA”, said Pandey.
When the ABP Chief Executive was asked about TRAIs recent recommendation to overhaul governance structure of BARC, and whether the government should interfere at all, he said, “My personal view is that the government should be out of this business. There should be freedom for people to exercise their business. However we have seen globally that when the regulator is weak, businesses have not improved. “
“As far as BARC is concerned, nobody will have any doubt that we have the most competent guy at the top right now--Mr Sunil Lulla. The board has accomplished members and it is not easy to run a system like that. I think it is upto the BARC Board and the industry stakeholders to look at the details of TRAIs recommendation”, said Pandey.
“We should ask, who went to the government? And why? “, he further added.
Speaking about how the news TV media will shape in the coming time, Pandey said that the heaviness of the production will go away. He also said that we will witness the rise of different types of content in the mainstream media than we have seen earlier and distribution platforms will also radically change.
