Here's more!!

aCompetitive advantage : Moving on , their competitive advantage though imitatable, has to be their Human resources and thus the creativity that emanates from them. It becomes difficult for other organizations to recruit and retain such employees as they are known to put to display “a unique form of emotional catharsis” post which “creative juices start flowing” thereby rendering masterpieces like the Alien story. These people achieve such ‘flow states’ as Daniel Goleman defines it, with easier and frequent regularity than ordinary mortals inhabiting the planet. But these gifts of god may be inept as far as social niceties are concerned!!! Even though I am sure that the sequence of my writing doesn’t strictly constitute a Business Plan nor a Situational audit, I continue with this display of my unintelligent,infrequent creative bursts for the benefit of these very News channels that I am discussing about.

Entry strategy and Positioning : Before you ascribe their viewership to the ‘First mover advantage’,I may bring to your ‘attention’ (diminishing though!!)to the real market creator in the form of Aaj Tak. While Aaj tak remained restricted to displaying exaggerated version of humans n their quirky dealings and subsequently ceded turf, there were these channels who had till then already specialized in this and graduated to higher beings—again literally n figuratively. These talked about “Ravan’s(The villain in the epic Ramayan) ma in law s residence’ when other channels were busy talking about Bollywood villains and Politicians, about “alien n cow” when others focused on Hrithik’s performance in Koi mil gaya and on random rumoured -to –be UFO videos.

Case study : My personal favourite is the Alien and cow case: The piece shows an Alien(almost jadoo like)strolling the earth for some much needed meal and god-o-god finds an unassuming cow which gets whisked right away. The Alien for starters is also fluent in Hindi and gives an exclusive interview to the esteemed news channel reporter who for the benefit of viewers had unearthed the mystery that has only been speculated about hitherto . At the end of the ‘torture’ is a search by the distressed owner of the animal who all the way curses his plight but never manages to find the cow!! No wonder that people like Piyush Pandey(a Creative) and Prahlad Kakkar(an Ad director) rightly believe these people are breathing right down their neck!!

Market growth strategy : Moving on to funnier things, I attempt to invoke Mr. Ansoff’s aid (The person has devised a useful matrix to aid businesses decide their market growth strategy)to help me chalk out a possible diversification strategy for these channels. I am sure this is at the risk of inviting chagrin from my friends who by now would be dead sure about my famed intellectual abilities. Here it goes : These channels should start defining their business as that in “Entertainment” and not just News. I am sure doing that would put them in strict competition with Disney which also views itself as an “entertainment provider” that makes people happy. And so does brighten its chances of an International foray to challenge Disney’s might!! Only that these “news channels” evoke feelings closely mimicking distress and with days of increased exposure, alienation (from people around!!) and mental depression. Diversification strategy: 1. Into Comics-they should view themselves as those entrusted with reviving Comic reading among children. 2. Content provider for Stage plays n theatre –Apart from ‘ commercialising’ theatre and getting more money into it, this may force stalwarts like Nasser uddin Shah to do some self introspection and probably inspire him to add a new dimension to his acting skills.

Finally, they should at the earliest call up an IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) expert so that the “mind blowing idea(s)” that generate/s content for these channels do not get replicated and thereby get confined within our country .This would help spare us the embarrassment that the TV audience of other countries might generously afford, if these channels do get beamed on their idiot boxes. Ever that is!!