 Hello and welcome and good evening on this first day of the week Monday evening. Thanks for joining us. I have a special guest with me today, the CEO of Times Television Network M.K. Anand, who's not just running a television media business but also recovering himself. M.K. I got to know only today that you tested positive for COVID. So wish you speedy recovery and thanks for joining us. I'm told M.K. is still in the hospital and thankfully he gets discharged but thanks for doing this for us. Thanks for having me over and COVID has been a good experience. So as many of you know M.K. does not need any introduction. M.K. runs one of India's leading television networks, the Times Television Network which is a combination of news and entertainment television channels. M.K. as some of you know has almost three decades of experience in the media and entertainment sector. He's a Times Group stalwart and his combined experience of working with the group spans over 24 years. So you can imagine you know the kind of strengths he's had in the BCL starting from print, digital, broadcast, he's done it all, he's seen it all. Under his leadership Times Network has been steadily expanding its portfolio and business. On the print side as some of you might know, Anand built the Times classified products in the 90s and later was instrumental in devising the maximizer which became the centerpiece of Times Group's ad strategy in 2002 for over a decade. Post that he joined UTV Global Broadcasting as the CEO and turned around their TV business following the Disney TV buyout of UTV. He became the managing director of the merge entity and ran the company for a few years before Anand took charge of Times Network as MD and CEO in February of 2014 and since then the network has seen spectacular growth in all areas. The channels they run are Times Now which has been a market leader for a good part of a decade. Eating Now, Movies Now, Romedy Now have risen the charts. Welcome MK, good to have you on the show. How's the recovery going? Very good, very good now. Thank you very much. It was a really long buyout at the reading. Thanks for jogging my memory. It's been really long and I've put 25 years with the group, actually more than 25 and it's been great. Corona, I've been in here in the hospital for the last 10 days and the initial three or four days was the average normal fever with a little dry cough and chills a little bit and very, very characteristic ache in the foot. This is what I think it was and fortunately for me after the first three or four days those symptoms went off. Apparently the symptoms completely go off in five days. It's a normal fever if you don't have other complications. In certain people and it is not the virus, it is your body whose reaction to the virus is actually the differentiator. In certain people apparently it triggers something called the cytokine storm which is a body autoimmune response which starts getting evident apparently and nowadays because we've already put in six, eight months, hospitals are really, really well equipped. These guys here Forties Balloon is I think one of the best. They started checking blood markers to see whether I will go into a cytokine storm and the cytokine storm is that day eight to day 12 when you apparently can have some sort of immune reaction which can hit your lung and heart or vital organs. In my case, fortunately there were no markers showing that. If it did then they apparently are able to manage that with steroids etc. My wife is actually in the next room. She had a little bit of up and down on the marker so they immediately put her on that but she's also out of danger and these 12 days the critical day after that I think they keep me, I think I'll be out tomorrow or day after and after that they've asked me to be at home for five days for protective quarantine for others and after that I'm out. I'm as good as vaccinated now. That's glad to know. Glad to know you recovered well. Let me ask you about the other recovery. How is business recovering from corona? Business actually, our business has done quite well compared to the normal, the numbers that I'm hearing about various other companies and I think in the news business, the other news channels, my other NDM members etc. I think even they have not been so badly off vis-a-vis last year. So we have fortunately been within a single digit variation vis-a-vis last year in the first half. So we're going to be closing September now in the next 15 days and we're looking like we'll be not more than 8-9% lower than last year and this is mind you, including election revenues which we had last year. So if election revenues were not there then probably we would have been equal to a minor more than last year. But that I think is not really representative of the industry. From an industry point of view, I think, and that's, we also had that very bad hit during April, May and up to June. I think when I'm speaking for the industry, television and advertising per se, I think we can say that September probably is the first month in which there is some signs of things being not as broken as they were even up to August. I wouldn't say that there is in a quarter two has been a recovery from an advertising or from a business point of view for the entire industry. Again, I'm keeping news out. We've had the benefit of news. So I think, and I'm also talking from the group's point of view as in our radio business, our print business, our movie business, our digital business. Overall, I think September, there is a recovery beginning, which we can see. And if current indications are going to hold, then I hope quarter three, we might be getting to a place where we are not broken anymore. From a very positive optimistic point of view, we all started the year with, at least I started the year with, I want to be equal to last year in quarter four, which some of us probably will be able to get to. But I think full recovery of this business into a pre COVID era, in my opinion, will take at least next year festival. But I think it's a good message of hope that things are getting back on track, eight to nine percent being eight, nine percent down from last year's number is not a bad achievement at all, given that, you know, if you compare like to like growth, then you're doing okay. That's true, but we are a little, as I said, we have been a little lucky. One is we have a large news portfolio in us. And news has been quite active, not just from a viewership point of view, not just from a drama point of view, but also from the point of view of a lot of banks, etc. have been wanting to participate in branded content and content integrated activities, which we've been, you know, pursuing a lot of initiatives. You might have also seen your, your so-called web based seminars and content presentations have been, I think, quite successful. And so with us, because I mean, after all, TV is another form of that. Besides that, we've also pivoted quite sharply and successfully in the last three to four years into subscription and content as a direct revenue source than as a secondary revenue source through ad sales. And that's something that strategically we had decided back in 2015, 16, when we, you know, went on a very aggressive, you know, subs development from a brand point of view to build that as a case. And for us, NTO was a good watershed moment. And where the consumers only got, you know, some kind of power to decide what goes into the 250 or 300 rupees that he spends. And we fortunately found ourselves, you know, being picked up quite, you know, popularly, quite frequently. And we were able to, we've been able to build a decent, you know, subscription business. And we also would like to state here that at least we believe, and we think that is the feedback that we are getting from the intermediaries, which is the MSOs and the DTH operators, etc. We are seen as a must take option, even by the intermediaries to make the base bookies look attractive. Times networks, English movie and English news channels are seen as a must take. So overall, all that put together NTO, post NTO, we have been, you know, we've been able to further that part. So subscription is an important part of our revenue. It was already last year. And this year, it has sort of held us at a time when at sales has been generally, you know, sort of collapsing like nine pins around us. This is subscription has helped us. And of course, as I said, news has helped us in our English entertainment and zoom businesses, of course, at sales has been as bad as, you know, it has been, I think we've been the worst hit category even compared to other categories. So that we are nursing them back to, you know, standing up on their feet as a fright now. And we are still working on that. That's good to know. I think the message I get is that versus behind us and depending upon how various broadcast companies play their cards, we should be able to get back into the, you know, growth zone next year onwards. Let me pick you up on one of the key things that has happened in the broadcast industry in the last few years, MK, and I prefer not to go chronologically. Let me pick up on one important aspect that has changed the broadcast industry and also helped you in many ways, which is the implementation of NTO. When, you know, the original NTO paper came out four, five years back, some broadcasters were against NTO. And there were a lot of misgivings about that. Even last year when it was implemented, it was a, you know, six month very big mess of the industry. But eventually what we've seen happening is a lot of broadcasters have seen subscription revenues go up, which is a good thing because eventually you can go and get consumers to pay for content. Your dependence on advertising is lesser. Content revenue is direct content revenue, as you called it, is more predictable. It does not change with the vagaries of economic growth necessarily all the time. So what is your take on NTO now with hindsight, with the benefit of hindsight, you know, one more than a year behind us, one and a half years. What is your take on NTO? And what do you think of NTO too? Because the government, the regulator is also pushing for implementation of NTO too. I think, you know, personally, conceptually, philosophically, I'm against NTO or any such, you know, tariff order. Consumer and business have a commercial relationship, have a have a competitive commercial relationship with, I think over 900 channels and so many players, there is enough competition for prizes to be controlled by the market. And I don't think is an requirement for any regulator to come with a tariff order. We are still talking about the tariff order in this business, after 30 years of liberalization and successive waves of liberalization. Unfortunately, this is an area which is still, and you know, I don't want to touch upon the other two controversial areas with, you know, prices still controlled, which is drug and drug as in medicines and fuel. Although fuel apparently is not, I mean, it is, you know, it's almost like controlled, but it is not. I think, you know, it's sad that after 30 years of liberalization, we still have some kind of a control or a tariff order for fixing prices of subscription. That is like saying that, you know, you will start putting a price on Coca-Cola or start putting a price on soap or start putting a price on any consumer product that you start availing. I mean, there is no price control on data, for instance. There is no price control on mobile phones. The same regulator is in that space. I think price control should be left to the market. So therefore, fundamentally, conceptually, I'm talking about, it is something that eventually should be not there. Having said that, I think the base thing that NTO, the so-called NTO-1 did last year when it came, boss, that it came and disturbed a very, very long inertia system, which was, you know, almost an unsaid norm of 250 rupees for television was there for the last 20 years. 20 years back, when you and I must have bought a shoe and what we buy the same shoe now or a car or some of them have gone down, some of them are gone up, computer, gold, but 250 rupees has been 250 rupees. Now, for better or worse, this change led to, for the first time, a break in that equilibrium. And that break in the equilibrium, you know, yes, of course, for the benefit of the customer because the customer got the power to decide what not to get and at least know what I'm paying for. And that is that way it is fantastic. Therefore, NTO is good. And that change led to some of the, and again, I'll talk to you from our point of view. And not just our point of view, I would even if I was to look at it as a student of the situation. I think because there was a stable equilibrium and because there were major players who were anyway sort of having an Adelaide model, and there was some kind of an old boys club there wherein within that 250 rupees, somehow all the broadcasters, the big four or five broadcasters had put their, you know, what they wanted to take out of fit and fixed it up. And there was only a little left there. And that was left for to be distributed amongst the, you know, the other players who were not the so-called GEC players who were the specialized broadcasters and who also took it upon themselves that no, there is no scope of getting any subscription. We will have to do advertising. I mean, even an HBO, for instance, or a Disney that I was earlier, which is internationally, these are non Adled players, they had to sort of do the Ad model in India and sort of go with that. Now, the good thing is with NTO, whether it is Turner or us, or even, and of course, Disney became stars, it's a different thing. But even if Disney was by itself, I think Disney would have made a better impact on itself. NTO would have been positive for it. So from that point of view, I think people started getting paid for what they were worth, which is good. And parity packages of these major four broadcasters, which actually look very, very similar from the GC's point of view, suddenly, and that is something that I calculated, because I thought that, you know, if you are a person who was a star home or a color zone or a Sony home, the likelihood feel not taking the other three, or at least not taking at least two of the other three is high, because you don't have multiple time bands or ability to watch three channels at the same time. And therefore, the optimization I think that has happened is that people started dumping one or two of the four major, which money has got distributed amongst a few of us, which I think made it look a little more logical than it was. Having said that, and having as I said, yes, we have, we've had, you know, and I wouldn't say that NTO gave us any bonanza. We've been working on the brand times now, the brand movies now, ET now, et cetera, and times network. I mean, you remember we used to be called Times Television Network, we changed it, we've sort of run a lot of brand work over the last four or five years. So when we presented the man pack last year, saying that, you know, here is something that you're the man of the house cannot do with, I mean, can not do without that, that made an impression and that, you know, 10 rupee pack that we put out there was value for money from the kind of channels that we were providing out there. And I'm very, very happy that we are one of the, I think we are probably the highest paid news bouquet. And that is, you know, my real, real sort of achievement in this, in this job here, because I think, you know, as long as news is going to be ad-led, you will have time spent dictate, like it is dictating, and content has the potential to go a certain direction, which can be, you know, overall in the long run, anti-society or social appreciation of reality or things that are happening around. And therefore, I think, if for us, it's a beginning, and I'm very happy that, you know, at least in the Hindi space, while we were discussing pre this, you were saying that most news is FDA, I want to correct you there. I think India Today group is not FDA. I think NDTV is not FDA. ABP has recently sort of moved back to pay. And I think the major broadcasters, if they all understand this as a first step, and then slowly start sort of, you know, charging a little bit for the news channel that they are putting out there. And I'm 100% sure the news channels that we have, I'm not just talking about mine, I'm talking about the news channels that we have, have millions of viewers, millions of viewers, and they're all very popular brands, all the brands that I talked about. And these popular brands, I'm 100% sure consumer will pay if they can pay for data, if they can pay for, you know, and they can pay so much for their phone connection. And that little money will grow into something substantial. And I want to be, you know, facing a day when we would be able to have a single, a news channel which has no ads, at least one channel amongst mine, which we should be able to say that, you know, this channel is paid for by the viewers and the journalists who are getting paid for are only responsible to the viewer and not to, you know, not to sort of making the viewership number look big. And because we are getting, you know, the hand that feeds is the advertiser with no disrespect meant to the advertiser advertisers have have finance have sponsored this industry for the last 100 plus years. Advertising is the reason that media has grown. But at a certain level, I think there is a need for us as industry providers, industry players to understand subscription as a viable mode. I also think that the regulator needs to step in here, the government needs to step in the ministry needs to step in, to understand the importance of news and how you know, there is this talk now about this, this current story, which is, you know, really broken all all bounds and sort of run away the SSR tragedy that that has sort of put in fact, there have been some PILs or the court has heard it and there have been statements out there that, you know, news needs to be regulated, etc. I think, you know, what needs to be done is that two things I think one is you need to not regulate subscription, you need to make it easier for subscription revenue to be earned by by news channels, at least at a regulation level, you should make it probably some kind of mandate needs to come that the industry should support the distributed industry should support and the consumer should understand that they should pay something towards the news channels, that is one. And the second thing I think in the western markets, if you see news channels are not measured by by TRPs, by TVTs, they are measured by reach. Timespan is not used in these markets. And that means that, you know, once you distribute a channel and your reach becomes the way, you know, you are and of course, brand scores, etc. or advertisers can have some other metric. If you are able to read the time spent as a metric from news, that also can lead to improvement in that space. So I think this reform is required. But the, you know, before we sort of ask the world to change, I think it would be a good idea for us to change. We're trying to change and we're very happy that we are successful in having a very solid subscription revenue base for our news channels. And I hope my competitors and other industry fellows also do that. Since you touched upon a very valid topic as far as the content of news channels is concerned. And as I was mentioning to you earlier, news content is now a mainline topic. It is a drawing room topic for consumers, for audience to sit down and discuss. And we've seen over the last few, I remember 15, 20 years back, you know, Go Stories run on news channels and it used to be berated no end. After that news has come a long way. We're doing serious content with Gravitas. But what has also happened alongside a lot of news content is today being accused of kind of pushing the boundary too much in terms of what should be acceptable to society, what kind of agenda is being run. You mentioned the SSR case, we've seen all sorts of coverage happening, PILs being filed. PILs in fact are being regularly filed in court now on around news content. What is your view on that? What is the view, for example, NBA also got together and created a self regulatory mechanism on news content. The government has been working with the NBA. What is your view on news content doesn't require to be reined in? No, I don't think the news content requires to be reined in at all. I think, as I said, the revenue model is fitting you to be creating content that gives you higher time spent in that as long as you are within the boundary of fact, as long as you're not lying, as long as you're not peddling fake, as long as you're strictly within the fact limits, the limit of truth. Your presentation style cannot be held against you. If somebody is dramatic, if somebody presents with a flourish, somebody screams, shouts, raves, rants, I don't think that can be held against that person. And I think anybody who is doing anything in a free consumer, free capitalist, consumer oriented product market situation like news is doing it because the consumer wants it. It is easy for a few people to sit and say this is not what the consumer wants. If that is not what the consumer wants, then why is it that the agency is able to put weekly numbers, which really reflect the fact. The fact is that it is appreciated. But as I said, again, it has to be within the very hard boundary of fact. It has to be within the very hard boundary of truth. You cannot have lies, fake or fiction be mixed into your truth to make it palatable, to make it more presentable. However, how you say that, what are you sort of, you know, how you're gesticulating? What is the tone of your voice? That is entirely something that I think you should leave it to the consumer and the presenter and not be a judge of that at all. Let me rewind a little M.K. As I mentioned at the start of the show, you joined, you took over the Times News Network in 2014 and the last six, seven years for the broadcast industry have been monumental in many ways. I remember early part of the decade, the government embarked on their agenda of digitizing the distribution industry. We shifted from time to bar, sometime in 2015, 16, and that's the time when you were really getting into your group. Time to bar was a massive shift for the industry in the sense of expanding the people meters, Indianizing, more Indianizing or Bharatizing as we call it, content on TV. And that really changed the way television networks produced content and positioned content. One of the things that I asked you earlier also was that Times Network was very well placed to kind of take advantage of this expansion of people meters and go out. Why didn't you do a Hindi television channel? That's a natural expansion of my portfolio. I would say business priorities have actually been mainly dictating that. But I can tell you that the change from time to bar or when I came in in 2014, we were just about getting ready, the industry was getting ready for that. We were, I mean, bar time was representing or at least covering about 40% of India's geography and extrapolating it on the rest of India. I think they had in the range of around 10,000 or 12,000 boxes. And now we are operating with I think 40,000 plus boxes that bark. And time used to be sort of only in six states with 0.1 to 1 lakh and others were all 1 lakh plus downs. Whereas today you have bulk of the boxes are in rural and which means that representation has gone so much more, which means that cable operators in all those zones become important from a measurement of what is that called a point of view. And therefore, we need to be in those places, etc. We adapted to it way back in 2014-15. We went from I think when I joined it was we had 300 deals, 300 deals out there with the MSOs and cable DTH operators. In one and a half years, we went to 3,000. So now it is in that green 3,000, two and a half to three and a half thousand distributed deals happen. And that therefore is an expansion of our network into every little place that otherwise would not have been there. So from that point of view, I think the expansion of bark led to the increase of television. If you see 2015 to 2020, do you know that the viewership of television in the same period that apparently 2015 is also the first OTT coming in, which is the topic of the discussion that we have. The first OTT comes in 2015. Between that time and now, television viewership has gone up by some 63%. The television reach has gone up by 23%. And time spent has gone up by 33%. From 3 hours something has gone up to 4 hours something. And the reach has gone up fundamentally because a lot of players like us have continuously increased their distribution willfully to get to be seen where the new boxes are going. And therefore I think it's been a fantastic move for everybody. And that has also sort of paid for in advertising because there has been an almost 10, 11% growth over the last five years CAGR in television advertising revenue. So I think it has been actually good for the television industry that bark came with this mandate of increasing the number of boxes. Although statistically, personally, if you ask me, I go by what my good friend, Elvie Christian says. I mean, his best example is that you don't need to take the whole blood to check a human being's blood. You need to just take a drop. So from that point of view of the sample, I think number of boxes is not so very important as long as the way the sampling has been done. And therefore, of course, 44,000 boxes definitely superior to 10,000 boxes. However, the sheer fact that it went rural has been a huge shot in the arm for television. But television, including us, we went rural at a time that, I think if this had not happened and times now had not gone or movies now had not gone to those places. Today, when digital came, they would have just leapfrogged on our head. People wouldn't even have known that times now or movies now existed in say some small market in the outskirts of Udaipur. So I think bark coming was very, very useful from that point of view. Indianization, Bharatization. Yes, I mean, does that do good for Indian languages? I think fantastic. I think not just Hindi. I think all Indian languages, regional channels have grown by leaps and bounds in the last three, four years. I want to sort of launch this one. But unfortunately, we have had our own share of historic things to catch up. We wanted to sort of quickly get into the digital space. Then we have had our famous 2016-17, which is events beyond the black swan events that everybody else has faced. And I think ASAP and this year probably would have been the right year. But again, the biggest black swan came and sat on our next in February. So I think sooner than later, we will be sort of on that in that space. Fantastic. That's good to hear. Let me ask you. I have two, three questions from this. So let me ask you the first one. It's a very relevant thing you mentioned about how the transition from time to bark happened and the expansion of people meters, the boxes, especially into areas which were not on the broadcaster's radar earlier, helped growth of television in the last six, seven years. What is the next big event or say if the TV industry were to similarly grow in the next six, seven years, what would be required? Does it require bark to now expand people meters from 44,000 to a lack, which they plan to anyway? What are the other events that can fuel the growth of the industry? Keeping in mind now, OTT is much stronger than it was, digital is much stronger than it was in 2015. I think the fundamental drive is now going to come from the production technology changes from the process changes that has already happened really nearly without all of us realizing in the last six months. I don't think going from 44,000 boxes to 100,000 boxes is going to be of great significance because that's only going to improve the calculations and it'll improve the smallest TG measurement, but it won't sort of at a fundamental level improve television distribution because I think that is more or less already done. I think with MPO one, there was a 3% drop in reach when the market adjusted, but because of lockdown, we have another 16% growth in overall viewership and therefore I think that a peak in my opinion, I think next year we might see a little decline once the lockdown is not there, people are going to be out, etc. So I don't think television viewership is going to continue to increase in the next five years as it has in the last five years. Yes, it will increase at the natural pace of growth in number of households in the country because we are still a growing population. Other than that, I don't think there is going to be growth coming from any such measurement universe related thing. I think the big growth is going to come from certain paradigm shifts that have happened in production technology, in collaboration technology, in working processes, in work processes which have happened during Covid when pushed to the wall. I think that is going to fundamentally improve the economics of this industry and the money that is going to get saved. I think it's going to get invested into better content, more content, more channels and I think it is also going to be timely that digital technology of distribution is going to sort of also help distributing more number of channels by all of us broadcasters and thereby increase, improve the variety of the portfolios that we are able to sort of put out there. I think that is going to be the first kicker that I am expecting in the next one and a half, two years. When you look at the data on India and compare it to the globe, I think we are about four or five years behind in terms of the digital to television situation with reference to mainline media and so-called new media. I think in 2023 also, according to the PWC report, we are not going to be where your western market, global markets have been in 2017. So we may be even five to six years behind them. So I think television is going to continue to be the trunk medium in the foreseeable future. I think and therefore we need to look at it more as able to pick up the benefits of digital and not really get scotch by digital over the next three years and therefore in my opinion, the margin that we are now able to free out because of this improvement in our processes, I think is going to become a very solid PT in the next two years. Is it going to put significant money on the table? I think so. Give us an example. What kind of work process improvement are you talking about and what kind of saving does it bring? I think first and foremost, technology adoption. Technology already existed. I don't think any new technology has suddenly happened overnight. I think everything like for instance, you and I are currently sitting and talking on a software that we were not fully conversant even six months back. Some of us may have used it but all of us were not using it. I mean today the average, the lowest common denominator in office is able to sort of, I think collaboration technologies like Microsoft Teams or Zoom are now becoming as easy to handle and ubiquitous as the email or WhatsApp. That is a fundamental change. That is a fundamental change. Second is this whole freeing people from traveling and working from home. I think that's a cultural change. I think a lot of us were held back not because this was not possible but because of the inertia of managers carrying. I wanted to do this two years back, one and a half years back. In fact, my idea was to by 2021 to have 30% of my workforce working from home. This is back two years, one and a half years back. In fact, I started it in Delhi with my digital team. 45 people were sent home and they started working from there and their productivity in fact went up. But when we actually went into this work from home in March, I actually checked with the HR team and I said that digital in Delhi must have fully adopted. I said, no sir, after that experiment we had called them back because we didn't know that it was supposed to be permanent. So that is the mind state of people. So I think that mind state change is what is putting serious amount of efficiency and I can only tell you this much. I'm seeing the last six months, the PNL has been able to let go of the clutches of around 8 to 10% of last year's base cost without compromising on quality of output. I can't say for others, but I can tell you my best example is Ichinau, which is a very busy channel, which is a channel which is continuously watched, which actually cannot go wrong. It cannot sort of go down because there are people who sort of put money on what we are saying. You will not believe that when I tell you this that we operate with about five to six people in office now and the entire team is at home. Everybody including the anchors, the entire production, other than those five people who are in office looking at the basic master control, everybody else is at home. And slowly but steadily, like for instance yesterday, I saw an interesting statistic, Shauneel sent me, said that six months back we were operating out of two centers. Today we are operating out of 37 centers across the country. People across the country, 37 centers across the country. HR has already started now recruiting people in markets, in places like Patiala and Guwahati and Sholapur with a view to having people working out of there not having to come here. That is the change that is happening and that cost itself, I think, is significant. Obviously in the first year or even the next year because I don't think the worst is what we have seen is the worst yet. I think the worst is going to be when this whole thing is over and then people take stock and a lot of business, I think will close down. There was going to be banks coming to terms with bad loans, etc. I think next year therefore is going to be as bad. So probably this year and next year, these savings will probably contribute to the PNL but going forward, I think that free resources is going to be a significant input on content development at a time that the digital appetite, the OTT appetite, is really opening up because people are also having a lot of time and the kind of content that I am seeing now is definitely more than and more varied than what I was seeing six months back or a year back or two years back. I think there is and that's the other thing that technology adoption also leads to technology adoption in terms of camera types, lighting types, editing software, presentation software, etc. That is also improving substantially and all that is going to actually probably give, I have a very simple belief and I have been successful till now. I have since 1990s, since 97 actually I'm dabbling with digital because I had to classify it and classify it was the first product which was hit by digital. So 97 onwards I am handling digital. That is the reason on my resume, I say I have been handling digital also because the first time classifies.com was designed by me. I handle little trend 2000 I think 2001. I have always seen that digital has only given equal to or more than what it takes away to the main line business. I think digital, yes it takes away consumers, it takes away advertisers, it takes away expising but you know if you only look at that and it's like looking at the glass half full, you should look at what digital gives you. Digital is improving your productivity, your creativity, your presentation, your cost, your distribution, your marketing ability, so substantially that if you were to not focus on that and only focus on what digital is taking away then you're going to be a loser. So I think the least that you can have is a zero sum game and if you're smart you can have a positive game purely by surfing on digital even when you're sitting in an old media brand. Let me ask you is it a zero sum game for legacy media brands because what has happened in the last five years? You have two parts to your business the entertainment channels and the news channels. Entertainment channels especially the English one, a lot of audience are shifted to you know watching content on OTTs, digital content and you know the global OTTs and Indian OTTs and so on and so forth because of the television channels have had it not easy so to say, viewership has kind of stagnated in many cases fallen, NTU kind of gave it another push downwards. The other part is that when it comes to news the sources of news have really proliferated and fragmented. It is just among us the number of sources from which one is getting news. Accepted that in India the time spent on TV is still lesser when you compare it with some of the western more evolved markets. Hence there is headroom for growth but the fact remains that digital is taking the consumers attention and time away which is eventually going to benefit the big guys, the Googles and Facebooks of the world who are able to consolidate and bring on table millions of audience whereas smaller place kind of get left behind. So is it a zero sum game? How do you benefit on the balance from digital because as you've seen in print the media industry is swimming against the tide when it comes to digital? So I think when I mean digital I mean the entire thing digital includes email to me. Digital includes this phone to me. Digital for me is computer it is technological technology aided digital transformation that is point of all. So I think I'm not talking about there are no big players there are only two players so I'm not talking about this duopoly that we are talking about. I'm talking about overall and I genuinely have seen that it has not been a zero sum game it has been a positive game for me right from the beginning because I think digital allows higher distribution more distribution cheaper distribution. Yes digital distribution is unprotected distribution to the extent that while you know we would like to be within walled gardens so that we can always have a ticket to it. Digital distribution you know makes your content you know go beyond that wall and then sort of spread all over the place and therefore get picked up by anybody and everybody. You know that's up to you how you're going to be sort of monetizing that or you know converting that to value whether it is by brand like for instance we have an eight and a half million twitter base on times now. Now is that good or bad I mean content which is going on to those eight and a half million handles out there people who are sort of looking at times now from there is not giving me any money but is that improving something for me. Yes now how do I do it that is where I need to bring in intelligence that how do I marry that you know medium and convert that into becoming a feedback mechanism for me from a brand point of view into creating a more stickiness on my content and make the content more conversational and more spoken about I mean if news are topic gets discussed on water coolers and in the parliament house it is also not just because of the news are at nine o'clock it is also because it is getting amplified across social media across so many places so we need to be able to sort of cut those right channels so we need to be able to have the right kind of creative jockeying of marketing plus distribution plus content to use these new mechanisms as they happen. Let me come back to another issue you mentioned when we spoke about the transition from time to bar can you know bars expansion of boxes people meters really given a very big flip to the broadcast industry there was a recent dictate from bark about the landing pages issue and that's again been a you know kind of a simmering thing for the last few years news as you know other domains in television is a very competitive you know vertical and there are players who have invested significantly in landing pages what is your view on the top of the business cycles so I think landing pages and the current order or current step by bark two weeks back is you know hostile I would say you know with all due respect you know we are one of the founders founding supporters of bark when we moved from time to bark and and we continue to sort of support bark bark is headed by an x times network CEO and we respect bark's processes and and I have sort of in private and public always sort of been a very staunch supporter of the statistical veracity and and solidness of the processes of bark and therefore I was a little surprised when unilaterally they have moved to sort of come up with this you know one one one dictate that we will remove landing page influence now let me sort of jog memory of everybody on this this group here and you you know to a few years back under severe competition in 2016-17 you know there was a lot of distribution level ground you know moves which were undertaken by the competition and we of course being a group which is you know a very very long legacy and brand and also a legacy of never playing below the table or under the belt practices you know have been at the forefront of you know being absolutely following kosher distribution practices now in that situation we saw that one of the competitors had time and again resorted to underhand tactics which were you know actually coloring the data at that time and you are aware of it this is May 17 onwards and as a and that was obviously tactics that we could not symmetrically replicate because that involved doing things that we would not do at that time we came up with this perfectly legal and kosher about the table practice of you know using landing pages as a mechanism to promote our channels now a landing page is like the front page of a newspaper of course the front page of a newspaper is very expensive but it cannot be said that oh you have all the monies so you are putting your full page front page ad nobody else's ads get seen so it is against competition but that kind of a argument was has been put forth by some players who obviously do not want to spend the kind of money that they want to be a very clear whether it is content or marketing or distribution we believe that the you know the proverbial key will be only as sweet as the kind of things that you put into the key so we did not want to sort of come short on that and we are also confident that whatever we put into it if we are able to come up with the right audience we will be able to sort of get that and make a margin on that and therefore we don't see any reason why a perfectly commercial business practice of improving your off-take like you have a supermarket shelf you have Colgate versus pep student and Colgate pays for the front shelf to put something pep student cannot come and say that okay you're paying too much and my my thing is not getting sold he has to bid against it and and and displace them so this was done by us and we have you know had you know this going on for the longest period now for the last three years and my my fundamental argument to that is the reach that is coming out of landing pages is not spurious reach unlike the reach that comes out of panel tampering because a panel tampering leads to reach which is not real reach it is only tampering that particular box that is getting measured and therefore it is to the advertiser of fraud because the advertiser thinks he's getting say 2000 or 4000 TVT's and the actual number would have been 1500 whereas in landing pages if you're showing 4000 TVT's it is 4000 TVT's now as far as the advertiser is concerned now you're hindus can lever you're putting an ad and the ad is appearing on a channel which is on a landing page you are getting that reach how does it matter now if bark is measuring what india watches for the sake of creating a metric for the indian advertiser to buy then bark has no business to come in and say anything about the landing pages that is point number one point number two like i said there have been certain philosophical conceptual leftist arguments that oh businesses that cannot afford cannot sort of this one and therefore there have been some kind of you know moves in the MIB and in TRAI etc to sort of talk about this landing page this was challenged and we actually had a case between us and TRAI and TD sat ruled in favor of that and TRAI has now challenged us in Supreme Court and as we speak this matter is subjudiced in Supreme Court in the meanwhile there is no business that these guys have here to suddenly sit and say that we have created this grand algorithm by which we are going to sort of take out take out the influence of spurious landing page influence i want to know how it is spurious and i want to know how is it that the advertiser who's getting a correct bona fide number of how much reach his channel is going to is going to get affected in a time where news is getting news itself is becoming entertainment and it's getting gobbled up by by by by entertainment this kind of mechanisms and this kind of motivated players like us are actually putting more money on the table to market news and make news bigger instead of you know loading that here is a player here is a here is a sort of central body and i don't know who there comes up with this sudden grand grand scheme so we are going to challenge that we don't believe that is right so we have we are sort of exploring our legal options in that so you were planning a legal recourse to this order yeah okay thank you for bringing it up i completely had forgotten about it it's a recent development and i know that you know it does impact the news television business significantly yeah yeah no because covid had actually sort of blunted me a little bit because in the initial one week i was a little you know working too much and then the doctors told me sort of not to be on calls so last one week in fact this is the first call after a long time that i'm putting on works right totally slipped my mind we are happy you're back fully in action so let me also ask you a related question to this mk carriage feed has been a you know big bane for the industry how do these developments impact carriage feed the landing page order nto is trying to push nto too where they've also put some you know a base channels in the bouquet where you know so the cable operator owns from both sides there's 165 rupees to be owned directly from free to air channels and plus also take care of me from you know paid channels how does it impact the carriage the ecosystem but because that really impacts the profitability and business viability of channels i think carriage fee in fact has been regularized it has been properly officialized by the nto because carriage fee is bona fide charged by operators now and to that extent carriage fee being being being regulated there you know just makes it clean and clear out there personally again if you ask me in the same vein as my original conceptual thought about the market being the right arbitrator i think there is nothing wrong in carriage fee if it is bad business sense then people shouldn't do it if it is happening i don't think you should blame the operator it's a very fashionable thing i've seen in every uh you know broadcaster grouping everybody sits and uh you know uh you know says people all sort of talk about carriage fee as some external monster created by a third party bunch of enemies no nobody would charge carriage fee unless these five people sitting in this room were willing to don't stop fighting to each other if they all decide that we don't want to fight with each other you don't need to pay carriage fee right like the best example is this dd dish dd dish is a classic case right now i mean they charge a certain amount and i think they're right in charging that amount they probably should charge more for that that amount uh is a new spending that all these people have got together and started paying right now if if all the operators got together and said we don't want to do it and everybody stopped doing it carriage that much carriage fee could have been saved it is carriage fee after all why don't they do it so i think it is a carriage fee is a healthy signal that the market is live and kicking and the amount of carriage fee that is getting paid by broadcasters is a direct indicator of the money that they might be making by advertising so i don't think there is anything wrong with carriage fee and i think uh the market is today uh at a new equilibrium post nto uh i don't think you know suddenly the the carriage fee uh stream has dried up because if i was a dth operator or a not a dth operator a cable operator if suddenly one large stream dries up i will have to sack people or sort of you know cut down some costs and none of them the most of them are listed none of them are like making handover fist money to that a kind of an extent that you know uh carriage fee is serious i think i think the market has found a new equilibrium let me know uh uh you know look at the future a little bit you've uh uh you've kind of uh invested a lot in uh both digital transformation of your business and also make your company ready for digital advertising putting content on you know digital platforms uh a lot of media companies in india have put money on the table but have not really returns seen returns coming from digital advertising digital transformation as you explained as one part of the business which all media companies have done but digital advertising has not really you know uh paid back uh in the sense of uh how much money has been invested what's your outlook on that because as we have seen the digital advertising pie is growing very fast but the share of that money is largely going into the two global players and it continues to grow for them whereas the other players have seen you know very minimal marginal growth a lot of companies have scaled back plans for digital investments so what is your view where is the future headed because eventually the fact remains that more and more consumers will continue to also adopt to digital while they continue to watch tv so i think i think uh you know this is a this is a global problem this is not a this is not a india specific problem these two players google and facebook are a bane for advertising models across the world uh and uh it's only going to get uh increased because uh i think uh globally uh i think they are currently and both of them put together about 20 to 25 percent let me see how much is it approximately uh i think 22 percent by 20 26 percent in 2020 and going to 30 percent of the world uh advertising and just these two players uh in india they are currently 14 percent going to 18 percent uh it is shocking when i saw uh the kind of money that is getting spent by group m uh in uh into into these two players and it is shocking to see the kind of money that the same group m spends or group group m spends come to the non-google non-facebook uh brands of whether it is news or entertainment it's shocking uh and and that i don't think is it is shocking as in it is like uh you know 50 crore 100 crore and 2000 crore 3000 crore no you know it's not it's not even 1000 crore 3000 crore or 500 crore 3000 crores i'm talking about so i think i think uh advertising beyond google and facebook i can very safely say does not exist at a scale that can support corporate professional media the way it currently is is is is structured i'm making a very very strong statement here the kind of money that is going into advertising in digital to outside facebook and google cannot support corporate professional media whether it is news or entertainment so it is in news and entertainment and media business's interest to pivot out of ad model one which means go into subscription model and pivot out of in some manner this stranglehold dopoly in terms of the distribution mechanism so whether it is uh disney trying to do disney plus uh or or or you know any any of these these players emerging i think some news companies have done it you've seen what new york times has done and you know india is perhaps not uh you know a equivalent example because you know the consumer here is not used to paying for news content as much you know entertainment content a lot of companies have made a push consumers have a little bit started paying news i think has been very undervalued and possibly if dare i say by news players themselves who've not really gone out and expected money uh that's the only way i mean like we discussed earlier i mean yeah that is true but but but you have to look at the new york times uh transformation model new york times has 1700 journalists it has more journalists than it ever had in its entire history and we don't we don't we don't you know we don't plan our products at least not right now our products whether it is consumer products like newspapers or television channels are optimized right now for your ship or readership which is an ad ad ex currency so i think i think uh we have three four years more which is a luxury compared to the global market uh we have three four more years to go before uh you know we start getting staring into a steeper precipice uh i think in that meanwhile uh i would uh you know sort of urge my my my industry colleagues and my own colleagues and what we are doing is to try and you know very quickly try to increase the depth of the content ability uh you know but the problem is also however that each brand is known for a certain uh certain nuance or a certain type of content now it needs to be seen how for instance a times now or a mirror now or an 80 now can be explored into uh the variety that for instance if you were a times of india or a new york times are able to sort of command now new york times has the advantage of the word times and the word new york and both are global and uh new york times sitting there uh looks at the globe at its market and not new york city or even the uss its market now i think that's what we need to do uh we need to be able to sort of you know deliver global products for a global audience and not you know just sort of look it didn't say that you know i will provide you ssr content or i will provide you india local content just because i am times now now obviously that requires your uh content process backend uh to be uh you know uh completely different from what it is right completely different from what it is right and that is where i think uh to me the greatest greatest opportunity that i'm seeing is this new work style that has happened uh i we have suddenly sort of uh you know getting used to uh absolutely working without meeting the person for the next last six months one year two years as we go forward and therefore i don't see any reason why i cannot have contributors sitting in lebanon or contributors sitting in uh you know in in the general or in or in or in uh in the us or in uh you know sacca and that is the opportunity and that i think is what uh we need to sort of because ultimately we need to be able to a brand uh brand becomes uh the the the thread around which uh you know you're able to uh you know arrange your the pearls and the pearls you need to now collect from across the globe who are your content providers and your uh content panels and i think i think journalism at not journalism i think uh content management at the central level brand level uh will move i think to coordinating guest coordinating contributor coordinating uh mechanisms enabled by technology uh assisted by ai journalism uh so that uh you know new and varied uh experts start contributing and you start speaking about varied stuff and genuine uh you know genuinely differentiated content i think new york times is very easy to say new york times is like you know everybody wants to become new york times you have to see the new york times approach paper that that paper itself is some 550 pages if you want i'll send it to you i've tried to read even the executive summary some 46 pages you understand so and that is the that is there are two two two uh papers that they have done one in 2016 17 and one reason to even get into the executive summary is a you know and it's they have and that is after actually doing so much it is not you know you start today and become tomorrow they've done it over six to seven to eight years now and i think in the process i think news brands if you want to monetize money on digital you have to invest now and be ready in the next three four years otherwise as you said the the opportunity will be lost and yeah it's going to be very difficult like it's happening across many other sectors of media unless you get consumer to value your content and get them to pay money you will always be beholden to other interests you will not be able to do the best quality of job that you want to do and it is unsustainable for business eventually over dependence on advertising thank you and there is there is a good move now one more point in australia which we are looking at quite keenly uh that they have been sort of there is legislation probably coming up where they're trying to sort of get the social media platform to share cash with news providers we hope that kind of thing happens but yeah i mean we need to pivot on i think first you need to change then only you can expect the world to change is the planning to lobby the government on that to get the government to bring in a law uh i don't think this uh you know it's a uh maybe i don't think we are yet there i don't think we are yet there uh let us see what happens in australia and as i said it is not yet the mature market it's i think we are at least five to six years behind and even at the pace of technological catch up that five to six years might translate to three years so in the next three years we should be able to you know if we don't sort of intelligent people like us are not able to sort of come up with a solution to this then we don't deserve to be and i am i'm pretty sure at least i can talk for times now as a brand is 15 years old i guarantee you it will be alive and kicking and as as vibrant in 15 years definitely and i hope i will be able to say the same thing about my sister brand which is 180 years old 182 and i'm sure they will also have plans to be there for the next 182 years i think one thing has become clear during covid people are gravitating more towards credible brands because you know there was so much misinformation being spread through whatsapp and other social media channels that the only news or content piece of content you would trust or believe in was that came from a credible credible brand and i think that's opened the vista of opportunity yes or established brands to kind of take advantage i think as i said in the beginning you be within fact within truth and and you know rest will take care of it so we therefore in fact during covid we started this whole thing called fighting fear with facts i mean our lead campaign during the period is fighting fear with fact and i hope we will sort of continue that as a position for the network as a whole so fact and credibility is what is going to be you know our our only parachute as we are violently going to be thrown out of this you know flying plane now and i think it will hold us in good stead i mean all that we need to do is to sort of learn how to maneuver in this and we probably will land up in an even better place than we were earlier that's what i think before i pick up audience question we are already over time let me ask you one last question you spent as i said at the beginning 24 years in the industry i'm not going to ask you what happened 30 years and 25 years in times yes 25 years 30 years in total 25 and times i'm not going to ask you next 30 year outlook because technology is changing too fast but let's look at the next 10 years for the broadcast industry we are sitting in 2020 2030 what do you think will be the shape of broadcast industry i think broadcast industry would have melded and and fused with the with the you know digital OTT because i think you know digital i mean television is already digital because the content was already digital it is an you shoot it and you store it and it plays out the only difference between television as we know it right now and new will be the fact that right now it is linear one-way unilateral in the future it's going to be non-linear two-way communications the moment two-way communication starts happening with better bandwidth and that'll happen it's a matter of next three years this way or that way we will go 5g once 5g happens i think you will have to two-way talking television and tv will meld and fuse with with OTT i think you know when i look at times now for instance of the future i think i will have the option of five or six different breaking news at any point of time yeah and i will have also different states news playing out and on the same topic if i want the connected news and then when you look at the page it actually is what is netflix right now so i think i think all channels each single channel each single major mega brand will become an OTT with its own repository with its own linear and non-linear and i think that's the product mechanism i think it's going to become a much larger industry a much much much larger industry than it is right now because i mean that's the way media has been globally and i think india is very small you know in terms of both subscription and advertising even that correction to get to even a china level in terms of the per capita you know you will look at this industry going up by 10 to 15 times i think in the next 10 years huge headroom humongous headroom humongous headroom and growth but yeah but i think a lot of pessimism right now in the industry in the economy general society overall but i think it's a matter the worst is behind us next two quarters growth will come back jobs will come back employment will start picking up again i think so i think so i think so i think so it's like saying that if you buy stocks in 2020 and what do you expect for those stocks to be in 2030 it is a blind man's guess unless the economy folds up and and sort of india becomes you know the indian ocean indian whatever stock that you pick in india in 2020 will be at least three to four times in 2030 whatever i guarantee you that similarly media i think will do even better at the overall level at a stock level media i cannot see that fantastic that's a very optimistic note to end your remarks mk before we go i'd like to pick up a couple of audience questions we don't have much time but i'll pick up a couple of them there's a question which which says you spoke about distribution and going to rural areas how does this impact carriage fee you partly answered this but does going to larger areas also significantly increase carriage yes yes yes the first impact in 2015 when we decided to go uh you know distributing to markets that we were not distributing was to spend more simple the the company was not spending earlier because it was conserving the funds the moment we realized that we have no choice we started spending but what i'm trying to say is that spending however was not a waste it increased the brand it increased the you know the the footprint and eventually we were able to monetize higher yes it starts with increasing uh carriage spending distribution is spending whether it is carriage you want to make toothpaste and sell tomorrow you will have to put a van out there right it is spending you'll have to spend okay next question uh this is about content cost on english entertainment channels since nto has impacted the english entertainment space significantly as content cost especially movie cost started coming down uh there have been some uh instances in fact movies have been the biggest impacted category in the nto uh one uh unfortunately uh other than us and uh probably hbo uh both of us had uh small sized packs i mean turner pack was 10 rupees and times pack was also 13 rupees and the smaller pack was 10 rupees and these two packs were sold uh right in the first week first month etc however in the case of star sony and z which were the other three players who had english movies their priority was to sell their base pack which was to sell the 49 rupee pack first and then sell the 79 rupee pack and the english movies were in the second tier because of which in the initial phase there was a significant drop in uh reach of the overall genre so while times uh channels and hbo did not lose reach more than 25 to 30 to maybe 35 percent uh the the star sony and z channels lost reach by almost 70 to 80 percent in the initial phase that led to almost a sort of uh uh kind of a you know some kind of a drug shock to those people so for about six months i think there was no uh i think the the whole whole category lost steam in terms of advertising which led to uh some of these players probably stopping to renew and maybe the conversations back to the vendors were quite pessimistic till now uh i think things would have improved by now had it not been for covid because covid led to another bunch of problems in the first quarter so the uh i mean if i was a vendor bad time for me as a buyer uh you know it has given us much needed relief because i think all of us had outbid each other and taken the price up by two and a half times i think compared to what i found it when i joined here uh you know the prices the total spend had almost gone up three to four times uh during that phase and i think it's come down by about uh at least 30 percent uh which is welcome and i think it's more feasible probably some more correction required but uh hopefully the business is looking better now uh or will look better as of right now to be honest with you my current business everything else is done well including zoom uh but our english entertainment channels are still sort of uh yes not finding favor that category is going through tough times last question how are you leveraging synergies between digital and tv with more people working from home uh were there any challenges that you faced absolutely none i have i'm proud to say that we are 1250 people i don't think about that 15 people including me here have basically got affected by this because we have been the first in this country we went in i think around march 10 per 13 uh fortunately because i was traveling in the last week of february to africa and back and when i crossed aditababa airport i saw the the stringent you know measures in that airport compared to uh the bombay airport at that time in i'm talking of end february and apparently aditababa is uh is is uh china's gateway i mean africa's gateway for china mainly a lot of chinese come to africa via there and uh that's uh that actually led me to thinking that maybe in a month or so we will have this problem but you know it happened a lot before that in fact yeah actually it happened in a month but i came in and i told my team to go in for a sort of uh you know you do those uh those those those uh drills you know you do the drill fire fire drill kind of a thing so we started with the drill we did not actually go into a lockdown with the lockdown we actually said we'll do a one week drill and work from home so that we'll know how our systems are able to cope up all the networks etc that's how we started in the second week after holy immediately we started and uh you know fortunately unfortunately we continued and we've also in fact already told our team that uh i have already announced to them december 31st and right now on this call i can announce to them that definitely till march 31st i do not want anybody to come back and uh right now we operate with about 200 people out there about 50 on the field and 115 in office and that too two shifts to 75 people at any point of time at home and 75 people uh in office so in reality 75 plus 50 about 125 people out of 1250 people are only working from office the rest of 90 percent of people are at home and we are beautifully managing there was no technology glitch uh initially that 10 days that we were doing the drill we were able to uh do a lot of uh you know corrections whatever required and we were able to sort of move forward better fantastic on that note thank you mk uh for joining us especially in the current state i i wish you are back at home tomorrow and your family also recovers very soon look forward to seeing you in person and uh you know your recovery is very important for your company as well as the overall industry i'm thankful that so many people joined us and watched you live uh with that uh thank you for joining us and have a good evening i hope to see you for the next webinar and before i go let me remind you there's a series of webinars coming up on exchange for media tomorrow we have a webinar on search advertising uh with our partner in movie from four to five p.m so whoever is interested or wants to know more about search advertising please join in till then stay safe and mk recover soon see you soon thank you thank you now well thank you everybody for spending your time with me thank you very much take care