Real in search of a niche

Real, the new kid on the Hindi General Entertainment Channel (GEC) space, pitched it as India’s biggest reality show. But when Sarkaar Ki Duniya ended its four-month long journey on Friday last week, the only person who was laughing all the way to the bank was Puneet Mishra, the winner of the Rs 1 crore prize money.

The GRP, or gross rating point, of the mega show was a poor 0.2. For comparison, look at the May 30 grand finale of Zee’s reality show, Dance India Dance, which notched up a GRP of 5.5. A GRP is the sum of all rating points for a channel or a show over a specific time period.

Real Global Broadcasting, a joint venture of Turner International and Miditech of the Alva brothers, was banking heavily on Sarkaar where 18 Indians were asked to transform a rural island under the scrutiny of an autocratic ruler. But the experiment obviously didn’t click.

Cumulatively, Real has managed a GRP of just 12 (Source: TAM Peoplemeter), which means it is still in the least watched category. Though the reach has increased from the initial days, it still remains way below that of its peer group. NDTV Imagine, for example, had done much better in its initial days with 55 GRPs, while Colors created a stir in July last year, notching up 81 GRPs.

This is despite the fact that Turner, which already has a distribution joint venture in India, Zee Turner, will pitch in with distribution support. That gave Real easy access to cable and satellite homes.

So what went wrong with the new experiment targeted at the neo Indians: the urbane, upwardly mobile and aware consumer of 15 to 34 years who speaks Hindi? The channel also wanted to be clearly differentiate from its established competitors and therefore steered clear of the high-voltage saas-bahu serials.

Real’s Director Sunil Lulla, however, says the channel is on the right track. He thinks the new format (“real stories which provide joy and are aspirational”) takes time to grow on viewers. “We are not chasing a pole position, but do wish to grow the franchise with distinctive programming. Real has performed reasonably well in our target segment. With time, we do believe Real will grow," he says.

It’s true the channel has managed to pull in advertising from some of the biggest brands — State Bank of India, Coca Cola, Colgate Palmolive, Bharti Airtel and Hindustan Lever. A media analyst says even though the GRP is low compared to other entertainment channels, the fact is that the numbers aren’t small in absolute terms. Around 17 million people watched the programmes on the channel in the first week of its launch.

Besides, advertising rates were lower than other channels — enough reasons perhaps for Real’s advertising volumes to record an increase to 83,000 seconds in June from 6,000 seconds in March.

Some of the advertisers say there were quite a few interesting shows on the channel like Vicky Ki Taxi where unusual stories unfolded in the unique setting of a taxi, with taxi driver Vicky playing the role of a reluctant messiah. The channel is now getting ready to launch new shows.

Real executives also say such only-reality show channels have worked abroad. “It’s just a question of one of the reality shows clicking. The rest will follow,” they say. That could well be true as a third of the total television advertising of Rs 9,000 crore flows into the Hindi GEC space, but it’s equally true that advertisers are not known for their loyalty for long.

So for Real, it’s now or never.