Promo Planning of KBC 2

This analysis is limited to the on air promotion of KBC on Star Plus and does not include off air promotion or network promos run on other Star TV channels.

The programme promotions of KBC started from16th May 2005; in total 3660 promos were run on Star Plus till 5th evening garnering a GRP of 3513 in Mumbai and 2709 in Delhi (CS4+ Amap).

Running a post campaign evaluation on this campaign we clearly see that that high-pressure campaign delivered results as the cumulative ratings reached 86 at 1+ in Mumbai and 82% at 1+ in Delhi. The cumulative ratings for Mumbai at 10+ were 60 and for Delhi it was 48 at 1+. Figure 1&2 clearly demonstrate the high priority that STAR Group has awarded to promoting the programme to the masses.

Figure 1 Mumbai CS4+(Amap)

Figure 2 Delhi CS4+(Amap)

Figure 3 Cumes for Mumbai CS4+ (Amap)

The scheduling of the promotions was done in such a manner that it does not eat into their most lucrative prime time slots and of all the promos aired 56% of the promos were in the three dayparts viz. 2AM to 6AM, 6AM to 12PM and 11PM to 2PM. The efforts was on accumulating audiences from all dayparts and pushing them to sample the programme. The prime time slots were used judiciously and 10% of the promos were aired between 8PM to 10 PM and another 5% were spread out between 10PM to 11PM. Same was the case of Weekend Vs Weekday Promotions with each day of the week getting between 12 to 16% of the promotions. Table 1 gives out the exact spread of their airing across various days.

Table 1 Spread of Promos across weekdays

Weekends got a slightly more weight as compared to weekends for two primary reasons viz. weakness of Star Plus during weekends and the show itself was planned for a weekend entry.

The first four weeks (Wk 20 to 23) were used to increase reach and take it up to 63% and the last four weeks were used primarily to build up the frequency. Keeping the recency theory in mind the advertising pressure was much higher than the first four weeks.

With all this investment in precious airtime KBC 2 was ready for a mega launch and the next section will demonstrate the opening that the show took in the first episode.

The Launch of KBC 2

KBC 2 is one of the most hyped up launches of the recent time and it makes interesting reading to see how it has impacted viewership behaviour across cities of Mumbai and Delhi and also the Hindi heartland of MP and PHCHP.

The response in all the markets on the day of launch was indeed great as huge number of viewers sat down in from of their television sets to sample the Big B and the biggest show launched by Star Plus. Unfortunately it also meant a clash with Star Plus’s own sister channel Star One and the Great Indian Laughter Challenge. Other television channels have laid out a fare. Sony Entertainment Television promised Marriage of Jassi and Arman on Friday and Devdas on Sunday. Another competitor in the shape of Cricket on Ten Sports too was round the corner.

The weekend viewers never had it so good.

Weekends programming was never too strong on any of the mass entertainment channels and historically movies ruled the roost. All this is now changed with every mass entertainment channel now trying to woo the weekend viewer who has sacrificed its weekend commitment to be with in front of their sets waiting to be charmed by cricket, the Big B and the Badshah (Devdas) of the silver screen.

A key learning of this exercise is:

Competition is good for the television industry in the long run for three primary reasons:

1. It drives various channels to invest more resources into programming and quality.
2. Good quality programming keeps the audience interested in the medium.
3. Audience interest keeps the industry alive by garnering good ratings and advertising rupee; the major revenue source (Till addressability comes in) for television channels.
   

Starting with Delhi where all the action happened and the viewers toggled between Big B and Cricked sampling the Badshah (Devdas) for a while. The audience flow graphs tell a tale wherein audiences moved between Ten Sports, Sony and Star Plus. All in all an interesting weekend for the media watchers, professionals and academicians like me.

Looking at the television usage figures of individuals for the last 12 weekends (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) we see a distinct surge in the 9 PM to 10 PM slot (Fig 1) the television viewership for this time band is the highest on Friday, Saturday and Sunday in the decreasing order. Sunday being the least preference day for television viewing, Friday belonged to Star Plus apparently due to extension of its popular weeknight shows; Saturday and Sunday belonged to ZEE TV in this particular time slot.

Star Plus started preparing its scheduling strategy much in advance and to give KBC a good lead in audience extended Kasauti Zindagi Kay to Friday and Launched Ba, Bahoo Aur Baby at the 10 PM slot to give it a good start assuming that the lead off audience of KBC will give it a higher than average start.

Figure 4 People Using Television (Amap)

With all the preparation Star Plus launched KBC 2 on 5th August and it was on air till Sunday 8th August. It did indeed do a whole lot of good for the weekend television consumption (combined with cricket) and as Fig 5 indicates the people using television figures for this week were considerable higher than the last twelve week average (Table 2).

Table 2 CS4+ PUT figures (Amap)

The most prominent increase is on Sunday as KBC was coupled with Indo West Indies match that incidentally India won and it did go to the last over for a decision to come about.

Figure 5: PUT 9PM to 10 PM (Amap)

KBC (Ratings) across the country

The programme in its second avatar has clearly caught the fancy of the Hindi heartland with the exception of HPCHP, but the huge sampling that happened during the first episode clearly settled down with the third episode in almost all the markets with Delhi giving the biggest thumb down to the third episode of the programme. The reason could be the interesting cricket broadcast on Ten Sports as the people using television figure has not declined on Sunday the 8th in Delhi but Ten Sports has managed to garner a clear lead over KBC in terms of reach figures. The next week figures will tell a clearer picture whether the drop was due to cricket or the viewers did not find the KBC in its second avatar very promising.

In terms of audience flow Fig 3 exhibits a clear drifting of audiences between the cricket match and KBC in both Mumbai and Delhi. In Delhi only 52.1% of individuals stayed with Star Plus as compared to 61.4% in Mumbai but there figures were lower than August 5th figures. On August 5th Episode the percentage of people staying with KBC on a 3min slices basis were 75% both in Mumbai and Delhi.

Figure 6: Audience Flow in Mumbai on 7th August

Once again whether its because of the cricket match or the ace from the stable has failed to deliver its hyped up launch will be clear when the second weekend episodes are aired. Clearly in the two top metros the years gone by have had an impact both on the acceptability of the format as well as the time poverty of the audiences.

In all these years media has got fragmented and so have the attention spans which the media formats aggregate to sell to the audiences. In the Hindi heartland the ratings show that the charisma of Big B still works and it will be interesting how they react to the future episodes of the programme. One trend is universal that the show could not hold on to the opening numbers, at least during the next two appearances.

Figure 7: Audience Flow in Delhi on 7th August

Impact on Hindi Mass Entertainment Channels

Table 3 Change in Ratings on KBC Days (9PM to 10PM)

The effect that KBC has had on this particular day part (including ad breaks) and resultant impact on the Star Plus ratings is there to see, but Sony Entertainment Television has managed to retain its ratings for this time band where ZEE TV has been impacted the most. On 7th August Devdas saved the day for Sony, but there was no such respite for ZEE from the Cricket match that was being played on Sunday 8th August.

Reach of KBC

In the first three episodes KBC managed to cumulatively reach 33.1% of all individuals residing in cable and satellite households. Converting this into numbers would mean 31 lac viewers of age 4 and above.

• First episode garnered a reach of 21 lacs individuals
• Second episode added on another 11 lacs
• Third episode added 7 lac viewers
  

Generating this kind of reach with the first three episodes is indeed an end product of three month of marketing activities by the STAR India group.

Ratings of KBC

Figure 8 Delhi CS4+(Amap)

The sea saw graph (fig 8) shows the programme and break ratings for the one-hour time slot and also the decreasing ratings from 1st till third episode. As written earlier the drop in ratings has been most pronounced, but if we look at the ratings as compared to the last eight-week ratings there is a huge jump in the ratings for this time slot. (Table 3). The jump is more than 200% for each of the episodes.

A similar trend, though less dramatic is visible in Mumbai where the downward trend is visible but not so pronounced. But the overall trend is that the ratings are moving downwards. The drop on Sunday can be attributed to the cricket match and Devdas but the drop started on Saturday itself.

Figure 9 Mumbai CS4+(Amap)

Market Share

Other measure of success of a programme in a given daypart is the market share that gives an indicator of the relative success of a programme with regards to the other channels.

Table 4 Market Share in Mumbai (9PM to 10PM)

As is clearly visible Star Plus is the biggest gainer of the market share but the Sunday shares drop quite a bit from the peak Friday figures, where as ZEE is the biggest loser as its market share hit rock bottom on Sunday.

Genres

A closer look at the market shares (table 5) of six top genres of channels reveals the fascination of Mumbaikars for cricket. In the nine weeks prior to the launch of KBC the market share of Mass Entertainment channels dropped from Friday to Sunday and that of Hindi Movies increased.

Table 5 Mumbai and Top 6 Genres (Prior to KBC)

Market Share 9 weekends (CS 4+ Amap)
	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Eng Movies	2.3	1.8	2.5
Hindi Movies	8.6	12.5	19.0
Reg	11.7	7.5	9.3
Hindi News	6.7	6.6	6.6
Mass	32.9	31.6	26.4
Sports	2.5	5.2	3.1
Total	64.7	65.2	66.9

Table 6 shows the impact of KBC wherein market share of Mass entertainment channels shoots up from an average of 32.9% on nine previous Fridays to 48.4% on the day KBC was launched. All this happened at the expense of Hindi movies and regional language programmes. Sunday too the market share of Mass entertainment channels was higher than the average. When compared to previous two days the market share dropped mainly due to a 10% increase in market share of sports channels riding on the back of India’s victory over West Indies. The match ended at 9:50PM and this is amply reflected in the increased market share of sports and decreased market share of hindi mass entertainment channels.

Table 6 Mumbai and Top 6 Genres

Delhi

The situation of weekend viewing in Delhi is similar to Mumbai apart from regional channels that are less prevalent in Delhi due to Hindi being the primary language. Sunday belongs to Hindi Movies (table 7), as was the case in Mumbai. The top six genres together commanded almost 60% of market share.

Table 7 Delhi Top 6 Genres (Prior to KBC)

Again the opening episode of KBC on Friday 5th August, 2005 changed a lot of this. The combined market share of top six genres went up to 77% on that day and remained high at above 70% for the next two days. The major gainer was sports genre that cornered 22.6% of market share on 7th August.

Table 8 Delhi Top 6 Genres

Looking at table 7 and 8 for Delhi and combining this with the audience flow graph (fig 7) we can clearly see that the major reason for the declining fortunes of KBC in Delhi has been cricket and this also demonstrates another fact that Delhites are more dedicated to cricket than Mumbaikars. The biggest loser in the bargain was Hindi movies in Delhi as it lost 10% market share on Sunday 7th August, 2005.

Looking Ahead

The analysis will be updated next Monday when we will have two weeks of KBC and some definite trends will be visible in terms of the appeal of the format and the anchor and audience verdict will be clearer.

© Ravi Dixit 2005