Bbc Radio Pumps Up Ad-Spend Volume To Take On Tv Channels

The BBC World Service (BBC Radio) has decided to take on television channels in its bid to increase listener base in South Asia. The premier radio service has been facing a drop in its listener base, especially in the metros.

It has decided to increase spending for promotional marketing world-wide with the share of South Asia also going up substantially. South Asia has been earmarked as one of the growing markets where BBCs listener base has to be expanded more aggressively.

November onwards BBC World Service will start advertising its various programmes on BBC TV to strengthen the publicity network, BBC World Services international director for marketing Alan Booth said. The step has been taken in view of the fact that there is more competition from television, especially in the metros of South Asia.

 

Booth, who is here to attend the regional meeting of BBCs marketing and sales division, said that BBC World Service has to position itself in front of TV audience as a medium which is as attractive even while giving more background on issues compared to TV.

Out of its 143 million listeners world-wide, 57 million listeners are in South Asia This figure has to be built upon aggressively, according to Booth.

As part of this plan to make radio more fun, BBC World Service has drawn up a blueprint to create time bands and programmes which will attract additional listeners.

In South Asia, BBC radio will start a series of programmes on the lines of breakfast TV from 1998.

Eighty per cent of audience who watch BBC TV do not generally listen to BBC radio and this market has to be tapped to justify the huge grant-in-aid that the British government gives to BBC World Service, Booth said.

In South Asia, BBC radio operates various language service like those in Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Urdu, Nepalese, Sinhala, Pashto and Burmese.

Last year, British Broadcasting Corporation had decided to strengthen its operations in India and South Asia region as part of its massive restructuring operation world-wide which included a major cost cutting exercise and retrenchment in other parts of the world.

At the time of restructuring at Bush House, the then South Asia chief of BBC had told Business Standard, There will be some job losses owing to the cut in the British government funding. But the South Asia region will not get affected much by the restructuring and cost-cutting exercise as it is a high priority area.

The operating budget for World Service broadcasting (excluding both capital spending and the budget of BBC monitoring) is planned to be 4.1 million pound less in 1997-98.

When the impact of inflation, areas of new spending like FM broadcasts and provision for redundancy payments are added to the slashed budgetary provisions, the gap between last years and this years budget has been estimated to be approximately 12 million pound.

BBC has also committed to finding 5% savings amounting to approximately 6.5 million pounds for 1997-98 and aiming for 750,000 pounds of extra income to offset the costs of relatively lower priority programme service.

Move to have ears of listeners in South Asian metros