Penblunt & Hogwash

Truth stranger, than... well....'Truth'

Penblunt

Those who profess that their profession is to protect and uphold truth… make their money by lying.

I am talking about the TV channels.

Everyone is on top.

Tamaso ma jyotirgamaya… and satyameva jayatay and all that… that is for their kids to learn by rote.

They tell the advertisers that they are on the top and feeling lonely… “It feels lonely at the top,” as the cliché goes.

But if everyone is at the top, what is the bottom line in this industry? How long will the hoax stay alive?

Game’s up, guys, and CAS has done it. One ‘pay’ news channel has already spouted abuses at CAS and said it was migrating into the Free To Air arena because of the stupid, inefficient CAS thing. Other skeletons will shortly be up and walking in the frontyards of TV channel offices soon.

All because of CAS.

A friend of mine, a bombed out scribe who is somehow trailing the last part of his career masquerading as a media specialist, tells me that the subscribers in the CAS mandated areas have rejected pay channels.

Let’s get this clearly understood.

Under CAS the subscriber gets only those channels s/he pays for, along with some other Free To Air channels, because their owners (like DD) do not want subscribers to pay, but have a different revenue model.

CAS has given the subscribers the choice, dictatorial powers to say which channel they prefer, but also, CAS has inbuilt software called SMS, or Subscriber Management System.

This means that each set-top box has a chip in it. This chip, while stopping the subscriber from viewing channels s/he has not paid for, also notes everything that every single set top (STB) boxe does.

It notes every time your TV switches on a particular channel and how long you watch it, and hence a collective pool of data from SMS of each of the STBs could clearly show… ahem…. the truth about which is a popular channel.

And that is happening, shattering myths about channel popularity.
See, when the initial days of cable TV came, the broadcasters (channels) said the cablewallahs and the multi-system operators (LCOs and MSOs) are “under-declaring the number of households they are catering to.

The latter would have to pay a certain amount of money for each household the channels are showing, hence, to fleece the channels, the LCOs and MSOs are hugely fudging the exact number of households they are accessing and keeping the lion’s share of the subscription revenue, the channels said.

It was not far from the truth at all, one must say, for most LCOs were rogues.

So, the broadcasters wanted an addressable system, where things would be transparent, including exact number of households that are viewing the channels.

Meanwhile, advertisement revenue had to be garnered and the channels showed the data of a certain TAM organisation, which had a few thousand boxes to sample the 70 million cable TV homes and tell the advertisers where best to put their clients’ monies.

That TAM is a sister concern of a certain broadcaster, mind you, and that particular broadcaster stayed on top most often. TAM got to be accepted because there was no other organisation doing similar work and, you know, when lies are uttered a hundred times, they seem close to truth.

But it is different with CAS, the addressable system that the broadcasters wanted and are now so desperately trying to shoot in the leg now, because with CAS, satyameva seems to be winning.

The primary data from the SMS would immediately show, if nothing, how many households from the mandated CAS areas in southern climes of Bombay, Calcutta and Delhi have opted for which channels.

It has, my friend the bombed out media specialist masquerader says, and that is a revelation for the advertisers, a damaging indictment of the claims of the channels as to all of them being at the top and still feeling lonely!

And there is more to come.

The ‘universe’ as the term now goes, meaning number of households, in the mandated CAS areas of the affluent southern climes is small: a total of 15 lakh. The government is on the verge of extending to the entire areas under these metros, which would expand this universe to about 80 lakh.

If the affluent of the metros have largely ignored the pay channels, I do not expect their suburban cousins to settle for more pay channels than their richer brothers.

This is why many broadcasters now want CAS to go, or stumble and perish, or some miracle to make it vanish.

Because truths that are not controllable by them are dangerous for business!

They sure are creating pressure on the government, but the people’s pressure… 80 lakh to start with, and then millions from other 35 cities soon to be declared CAS areas, is something even the most corrupt politician would be unable to ignore.

Come to think of it, it is not the red vanguards of the janata but a bourgeois government that has unleashed people’s power!