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`BBC is losing its monopoly, not its pre-eminence' -- Mark Young, Managing Director, BBC Worldwide

Vinay Kamath

Mark Young, Managing Director (Europe, Middle East, India and Africa), BBC Worldwide, was in Chennai recently to attend the inauguration of the Asian Media Institute. A unique aspect of the institute's programme is a television journalism course run by B BC Worldwide, the first of its kind in South Asia.

It will subsidise the course initially. Four courses of 10 weeks each will be run every year with a maximum of 12 students in each course, with half of these reserved for those enrolled in the one-year journalism course run by the Institute. BBC will cer tify the successful candidates. It will also offer two scholarships annually.

Young, who joined the BBC in 1993, is a qualified cost and management accountant and apart from the broadcast media, has experience in publishing. Young spoke to Catalyst on the BBC presence in the Indian market as well as its efforts to reach out to a y ounger and wider audience. Excerpts:

Is there anything for India or BBC World in the revamp announced recently by the BBC chief Greg Dyke?

No, everything he spoke about was only for the domestic services, the vision for future in terms of extension of our channels, BBC1 and BBC2, which we already have, and creation of BBC3 and BBC4. There will be children's programmes on at least two of tho se channels.

Dyke had announced a substantial increase of 30 per cent on the programming budget; doesn't that cover BBC World?

No, BBC World is operated separately. We are trying to take money out of administration and put it into programming. So over the course of next year, we'll put in an extra 100 million into BBC1 and BBC 2 and consistently improve our programmes for the ne xt three or four years, create more programmes for the extra channels coming up.

From the parting with the Star platform late last year to now, can you recap the strides BBC World has made in its marketing effort?

Yes. Star gave us a great foundation in India for the first five or six years. We have been having our own advertising infrastructure for just over a year, and we felt we needed to do that to really increase the critical mass of advertisements we were de livering to the channel.

We have some great programmes on World, actually the only `opt' we do anywhere in the world is the 10 pm strip, now going for three years - House Full (a great audience-puller), news programmes, Hard Talk is very popular. Distribution is rising consiste ntly, viewership is difficult to measure, but we feel it continues to rise.

The level of advertising we take has increased significantly, brand count has gone up, volume of air time we sell, especially in prime time, is strong and so World is working well.

With Star gearing up on news and CNN broadcasting to India, is BBC losing the pre-eminence it has with the Indian audience?

No, it's not losing pre-eminence, it's losing monopoly. There is nothing wrong with that, it keeps everybody on their toes. In most of the markets in the world, we compete against CNN, we also compete with domestic news providers.

BBC World and CNN offer international news to a much greater extent than most of the domestic news providers, I think there's room for all of us here, there certainly is room for two international news channels.

We differentiate ourselves from CNN because we believe we present what we call a truly international picture as opposed to an American perspective and we aim to be the most in-depth.

What about fresh programming for India? India-specific programmes are telecast only for an hour everyday now.

Yes, we are consistently looking for new programming for that particular slot in the schedule. There is fantastic recognition for them and the advertisers love them as well. The programmes consistently bring an audience into the channel, important both i n their own right and also because that audience stays to watch the news.

Are you planning any expansion of these slots, to make them longer?

We haven't got any plans to make them longer. When we started them three years ago, it was very definitely a 10 O' clock pitch, very specifically targeted at the audience that was going to be available then and it has worked to that extent. It takes a go od long time to plan a new slot and I wouldn't expect to launch a new one in the near future.

It was reported that the demographic profile of the audience was slightly older but that it is now shifting to a younger audience. Is that correct?

That was one of the aims of the 10 pm slot. The audience for a lot of programmes now are, broadly, younger than that for news. News is not a big ratings winner among younger audiences, and so if you want to attract them, you have to use slots like that.

The Asian Media Institute in Chennai is an initiative to get in touch with younger people who are building careers, there's always this feeling that BBC is very well known, but do they have direct access is the question.

Why have you taken up this initiative in India? Is it because India forms the largest Asian audience?

India is an important market. BBC has been here for 60-70 years, on radio and television, yet is sometimes perceived as a distant brand, and this is one of the initiatives that I want to develop to bring the brand into India. The 10 pm strip is made in I ndia, for the Indian audience. Another element of the initiative to make the BBC brand live in India rather than have it beamed into India.

What about the perception that BBC programmes are all intellectual, serious and factual as opposed to being showy? On that count, you may lose out to a younger audience.

BBC World is an important part, but, I hope, only a small part of the way in which we are going to move forward in the next few years. BBC World is an information and news channel, it will always carry such programmes, and even when we look at programmes outside news, we're looking to inform and, to an extent, to educate, but certainly to inform and that brings about a style to each of the shows that we have got to link in with the brand.

But, over the next couple of years, the brand is going to be associated with kids' programmes, light entertainment programmes, documentaries, programmes that look and feel like the best of popular documentary programmes from anywhere in the world.

They won't be made here specifically but they would be presented much more aggressively and much more coherently over the next two or three years.

If you look at the Tara channels in North India, you get a much broader perspective of what BBC programming is - still factual but the brand is extended into learning and documentaries. In the next six months, you will see launches for kids' programmes o n various channels, with Doordarshan and commercial channels.

So you will be a content provider?

Yes, but the brand will be very specific, it will be associated with us.

So will you work with other channels like DD, channels on other platforms?

Yes, we license programmes to other channels. We have done so with DD, Sun News, Tara, Basu's four channels. You will see quite a lot of our bigger programmes come in; although they are being licensed to other channels, they will come in as BBC programme s. We fulfill a need for high quality programmes which are made for the UK and be able to provide programmes of real international quality relevant to that audience.

The new initiative has become evident over the last six months and will become increasingly so... we are also going to make and sell to other broadcasters.

Would you also look at producing programmes if someone commissioned you?

Our plan at the moment is to work with independent production units and to develop programmes for the local TV networks and in time, if we can get a critical mass of local production, then there's no reason why we shouldn't develop our own production inf rastructure. But, at the moment we are happy to work with local independents.

Does the rest of the world get to see the India-specific programmes?

India Business Report is international, depends also on when there are international stories, mainly aimed at the Indian audience in Asia, South Asia mainly.

Mastermind is clearly India-specific, it doesn't travel; Question Time India is specifically for South Asia, Hard Talk India travels, but Travel Show, the old Wheels, there is no reason why we can't sell them overseas in future, to get India known around the world. There are a lot of Indian channels now in the UK, Europe and America which are looking for programme providers. We may well start supplying.

What about language programmes on BBC World for a larger audience?

We have looked at our strengths and believe it is news on television. When you go into a local language, the expectations are that the news agenda is more local as well. For an international news broadcaster, that's a difficult rubicon to cross. Our stre ngths are fantastic international news, we are going to concentrate on that. We have no plans for local language news on television as we stand.

Do you plan a digital feed?

All satellite feeds worldwide are gradually migrating to digital from analog. We will, like every other broadcaster in India, I suspect, sooner or later, migrate. All have long-term contracts with PanAm Sat or whoever. There is no burning need to migrate , but the aim is to reduce the cost of distributing our signal around the world, and put more money into programming. We will put the investment up on the screen and not in the sky; we will, at some point migrate to digital.

Cable operators need technology to invest in digitised feed, one is not sure they would want to make that investment.

That's the issue we face everywhere. We have digitised a number of our feeds both for World and for Prime, our entertainment channel in Europe. We don't want to digitise and lose distribution. We need a strategy to ensure money we save isn't overtaken by a loss of audience. But, everybody is moving to digital and we have to move with it.

Would a large portion of your revenue in the South Asian region come from India?

It is difficult to say. Most of the advertising is based in India, and aims at South Asia. India is the predominant audience in South Asia, it's where the majority of our distribution is, and that's where most of the advertising is focused on. But, we ha ve good distribution in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh, all important to delivery of the advertising proposition as far as the advertiser is concerned.

Do you plan promotionals for new programmes?

Obviously, there is a need to communicate programmes to the audience. BBC World is a brand being marketed; there are a number of programmes on BBC World, therefore we prefer to market it as a unitary brand so most of our money goes in relation to that;

a lot of time and effort is spent on the 10 pm strip, we are marketing it as a concept, not necessarily as an individual programme, but as `a great programme on India, made in India, by BBC, then tune in at 10 pm'.

We're a lot in touch with the local cable guys to make sure you know what is on BBC World, on offer. Now there is a standardised schedule which is much more rational, people understand that.

What about the FM radio tie-ups?

BBC has a massive heritage in programming and development of radio broadcasts. We would like to work with FM radio to promote the BBC brand. Since the licences have been awarded, we are now talking to the 2-3 major groups which have got the majority of t hose licences, and I hope we'll see extension of the BBC brand into commercial radio.

What kind of programmes would those be?

Principally music, until news and current affairs are allowed on FM, if that ever happens, which most people believe will be, but not yet.

To recap, you are licensing to other channels, you will produce kids' programmes, light entertainment programmes. What else?

Game shows, sitcoms. Our documentary programmes are difficult to remake here but we can adapt our children's and light entertainment format relatively easily and many of them in their English language incarnation were well-known and well-loved. So, I hop e we will be able to develop that as a successful strand.