He is credited with having stitched some lucrative deals for NDTV --- rather it’s said that the so-called one-sided deal that NDTV had with Star for content on Star News for five years was a combination of his ability to draft agreements and talk foreign partners into deals and NDTV promoter Prannoy Roy’s charm and credibility. In certain quarters, he is also described as the merciless corporate honcho who leaves no stone unturned to achieve success.
Whichever way you look at it, Sameer Manchanda is a go-getter, easily moulding himself according to varied situations. A Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, he has been with the television industry since 1984 --- NDTV to be precise --- and has seen major stages of evolution in this sector. He has considerable and varied experience and expertise in distribution, strategic and financial planning, capital structuring and restructuring, funding, business valuations, mergers and acquisitions, collaborations and joint ventures.
No wonder, in 2005 the entrepreneurial bug bit him when Manchanda set up Global Broadcast News Ltd along with Television Eighteen Group promoter Raghav Bahl, TV18 CEO Haresh Chawla and managing editor of NDTV Rajdeep Sardesai. He was also instrumental in formulating and finalizing the alliances with CNN and Channel7.
In a rare interview with Indiantelevision.com’s Anjan Mitra, Manchanda, the joint MD of GBN (managers of English news channel CNN IBN and its Hindi sibling Channel7), looks at the industry, peers into the crystal ball for the changes taking place, the challenges ahead and what makes him tick.
Excerpts:
What's the big picture in the television industry as you see it? We will need to be ready for all these. For example, mobile video is going to be a big thing in India too in the near future. At a time when all these things are poised to happen --- and happening --- the biggest challenge for any management is to figure out ways to cope with technological advances. In India, there are over 100 million mobile phones, over 100 million TV homes out of which approximately 60 million are cable and satellite homes. Just look at the consumer power of these various platforms. I see this as the future. Any management that could figure out ways to make its content consumable worthy for people on such different platforms would be the real winner. In the next five years, I foresee Indian media companies scaling up their operations. |
||
Do you foresee multi-billion dollar Indian media companies, especially broadcasting companies, coming about in future? As India globalises and broadcasters scale up operations, in the next five to six years we could see several multi-billion dollar media companies in India. |
||
How is Global Broadcast Network, managing CNN IBN and Channel 7, gearing up to take advantage of the developing scenario? Second, as a news company we decided not only do we have to be present in the English space, but also in the Hindi segment. For this we decided to go the acquisition route for Channel7. From a management perspective, while CNN IBN is on a growth path --- our ratings have been good --- Channel7 gives us presence in the vast Hindi market. In future, we'll launch more channels, but getting Channel7 up there with the big boys and increasing its market share is the big task ahead of us all. |
||
|
||
How do you want to consolidate your position as a company? As a bouquet of channels, over a period of time we'd go pay to exploit the various distribution platforms. When that happens, we would also tie-up with one of the existing distribution bouquets (Zee Turner, Star, and One Alliance). |
||
When will the group channels actually align with an existing distribution bouquet? |
||
Would that mean both CNN IBN and Channel7 become pay channels? |
||
Has GBN given up altogether an option of foraying into non-news segment of TV broadcasting? |
||
How much of the expansion will depend on technologies like CAS and DTH proliferating in the Indian industry? |
||
How would you describe the present distribution scenario? You are considered a wiz in that field having, reportedly, done wonders in your previous organisation, NDTV? Distribution will also play a key role as the TV business goes forward with newer technologies and platforms coming up. Whether a TV channel needs to be on all platforms, whether podcast is good for only news and not entertainment, whether long term deals are good…questions like these would have to be asked by a management and answered. At GBN, we have decided that our channels should be on all platforms and available everywhere with the final aim of building up a rapport with the consumer in whichever way he wants to consume news. With India presently facing bandwidth problems where one TV channel is less clear than the other on a cable network, for example, it's very important to be available on other platforms too. It's all about building relationships with consumers, distribution partner(s) and clients. |
||
Though you said the company is planning to join hands with an existing distribution partner, there are reports that GBN and TV18 Group would like to build up a distribution team of its own. Comment. Star, One Alliance and Zee Turner have built up an expertise in the area of collecting money and the feeling at GBN is that we should go along with it, even as an in-house team works on affiliates and relationships with them. Both can be complementary to each other. |
||
You mean to say the in-house distribution team would just concentrate on building relationships, while the actual work is outsourced. Seems a bit strange to me, but what do you feel? That's how the Indian market has developed so far and we are not here to change things overnight. Our distribution team may help a foreign client, which we are doing. We have just signed up to be the Indian agent of Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), an infotainment channel with large doses of news and travel shows. We don't mind forging relationships with such foreign channels. |
||
Did GBN pay carriage fee when it launched its first channel? |
||
Would GBN go in for CNN-type of licensing deals as it expands its portfolio? |
||
|
||
Was it a tough task integrating the working of Channel7 with the group? |
||
How did GBN/TV18 Group zero down on Channel7 for acquisition? |
||
What's the next stage for Channel7? |
||
From a management perspective, do you foresee any trend emerging in the mass Hindi news market? |
||
As subsets of the TV business, what are the other revenue streams being tapped by GBN? We have signed a non-exclusive pact with a telecom major to make mobile handset-enabled content and feel that such relationships with other telecom companies would bring in substantial revenue over the years. I also feel the company needs to have a separate division where people think and make customized content for various delivery platforms. It's not easy to encapsulate 30-minute news bulletins into one and two-minute capsules. All over the world, people are experimenting and so are we on various aspects of this business like which content will work on mobile TV, for example, and what will not. |
||
What percentage of the overall revenue do you think is likely to accrue from such subsets of the business? |
||
What sort of investment has gone into GBN up till now? |
||
As the management head of a young company what's your priority --- the topline growth or would you rather watch the bottomline? It's too early to comment on the topline growth, but it's picking up and doing better than our expectations. By the time we complete a year around January 2007, as a company our financials should be healthy. Unless, of course, something very dramatic happens with the economy and it goes into a tailspin over the next six months. |
||
When do you think the company would reach a breakeven point? |
||
What made you get into the entrepreneurial mode? Was it lack of due recognition at NDTV where you spent almost two decades engineering lucrative deals for the company? Moreover, the equation and mix was just perfect to try taking advantages of the changes happening in the Indian industry. Rajdeep (Sardesai) brings in the editorial strength, I bring in the business acumen, while Raghav (Bahl, the promoter of TV18 Group) and Haresh (Chawla, the CEO of TV18) bring in the group synergies and infrastructure. It was a combination of like-minded people. Let me make things clear that it was not that NDTV was giving me a short shrift or not agreeing with my vision. NDTV is a fantastic company. It was pure entrepreneurial spirit where one wanted to chart out one's own path and take some risks. It has worked fairly well till now and let's hope that in future also it does so. |