One question, which bothers everyone in TV industry in India, is - Do audience watch channels or a property? Actually both. The impact of this viewing behavior, on both viewer ship and revenue, is very different.

When viewers watch a specific property, it is by appointment viewing the holy grail of broadcasters and media planners alike. Agencies vie to buy airtime with the purpose of building all-important reach in their respective target group and they are willing to pay a price premium [much higher than market CPRP (Cost per rating point)], thus providing channels with higher realization. These property brands, once created, allow the channel to earn much more in succeeding seasons/episodes as the equity has already been built and the initial investment will be recovered many times over. But, few properties achieve appointment viewing. For most part, viewers watch channels, something like default listenership for radio stations. In this situation, the media buyers are buying to achieve frequency and hence the costs for airtime is at best equal to or lower than the market CPRP.

Therefore while marketers across channels constantly work to get the investment mix between channel and property right, one question begs an explanation - why have there been so few property brands created in India so far?

In today's general entertainment channel space there are very few successful property brands - Indian Idol, KBC, Jassi, and perhaps few more. Not many properties have been able to hold the collective consciousness of viewers. The question then is, when everybody loves these properties like viewers, broadcasters, advertisers, and media community then why they are so few of them. Surely, with so many channels in the Indian television landscape, we should be creating many more.

The truth is that these brands are experiential in nature and hence great content creates premium brand on television. To create a great experiential brand, what is imperative is a great creator.

And these brands were created by the best creative talent of those days.

The two key factors are; one the movie industry was hit by home-video revolution. The single screen theaters were suffering and the whole economics of movie business was in tatters, secondly television, though monopolized by DD, was providing a platform to reach the masses and get rewarded appropriately too.

But thereafter, the advent of multiplexes led to a renaissance in the movie industry and as a result attracted the best talent back to movies. The economics of the industry improved and it was in a position to provide resources for talent. This reversal of fortunes between television and movies has created a sharp contrast between the two in terms of quality of content and impact on the psyche of viewers.

So, the question facing all general entertainment channels today is what will bring the best content creators back on television. To attract premium talents like Karan Johar, Farhan Akhtar, Shankar, and Aamir Khan to perhaps direct or create good television property, what we need is budget. Therefore, the resultant question is where will the money come from?

The fact is that the business of television today is at the crossroads. Channels have to shell out huge amounts as carriage fees, which more or less negate the subscription fees model. Further, television advertising value is pretty low.

This imbalance needs to be addressed before channels can embark on the journey of building power properties again. Revival of television is dependent on the ability of the industry to achieve a high revenue realization for both subscription as well as advertising. While faster digitization will help but the need of the hour is for the television industry to come together to fight for abolition of carriage fees as well as get a correction as far as advertising value of its airtime is concerned. The creation of powerful property brands on television therefore is dependent on building a robust economic model, which allows both creativity and wallets to flourish in equal measure. The views expressed are that of the writer and does not represent the views or the position of the company.