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South
Side Saga
The South Side Story: A ‘reality’ check Esha Madhavan  The
year 2008 brought in a whole new identity for the Southern media. With
three Indian Premier League (IPL) teams from the region taking off, the
media here had never been in greater frenzy. It captured a major share
of all the action and drama of the maiden season of the IPL, along with
the rest of the country. The year also saw a giant leap of reality TV
trend in the Southern media. Reality, confined to the kaleidoscope of
dance and music shows, has set the Southern homes abuzz and introduced
the concept of weekends for the first time among the great mass of the
so-called conservative South Indian middle class. Just as the dramas got
more real, so did reality get more dramatic. After an eventful turn of
events, the truce between the Maran brothers and Tamil Nadu CM Karunanidhi's
family set the ball of 'politics of media' rolling back once again. The
Southern market emerged bigger, better and brighter just as international
and national media conglomerates extended their empires here. In print the event that altered the balance of power in the Chennai English newspaper market was the entry of The Times of India in Chennai. As an immediate fallout of this, the market leader for long, The Hindu, finally brought down its cover price and fortified the Chennai market with an array of supplements. Telugu daily, 'Andhra Jyothi', became the first language newspaper in Andhra Pradesh to introduce all pages in colour for its Kakinada edition and got projected as making quite a history in the realm of Telugu dailies. Deccan Chronicle witnessed some action in the print space with the launch of its business daily, Financial Chronicle, in Chennai and Hyderabad. And it pepped up the middle of the year with further action by launching its Bangalore edition in keeping with its aim to consolidate its presence in the South. DNA too went South with its Bangalore edition. The television space also drew the maximum amount of attention with its mega soap of important events happening throughout the year. ZeeTamizh, a 24-hour Tamil GEC from Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (ZEEL), went on air during the festive season of Dussehra. Thereafter came the much anticipated JV between Jupiter Entertainment and Star, which finally got inked after all the speculations that had gripped the media fraternity even since Rupert Murdoch visited India earlier in 2008. This apart, the Tamil tele space began its first experiments with the niche domain with Kalaignar TV and Raj TV launching a 24-hour music channel each - Isaiaruvi and Raj Music, respectively. The news domain down South saw an overwhelming amount of activity with Suvarna News (Kannada), Jaya Plus (Tamil), Raj News 24x7 (Tamil) and Kalaignar's Seithigal (Tamil) getting launched. The Telugu TV space got its first women's channel, Vanitha, while Asianet launched its Telugu GEC Sitara. In comparison, radio remained relatively quiet, barring a few smaller cities getting their own FM stations. Both Club FM and Radio Mango got their first FM stations launched in Kochi. Kerala-based Muthoot Group entered the media space with talk radio Chennai Live. When it comes to the news making events in the advertising space, the year 2008 has to be dedicated to the unquestionable dominance of the business by the DTH players all over India. Chennai-based Sun DTH made news by giving away a hefty Rs 120 crore mandate to McCann Erickson and appointing Mindshare Chennai as its media AoR. Some other high value businesses that merit mention include Publicis Ambience bagging the Rs 50-crore creative duties of Consim Info; Rediffusion Chennai getting the Rs 20-crore creative duties of Lotte India; Cavinkare awarding the Rs 10 crore creative duties of its Fairever brand to G3, part of Grey Worldwide; and, Deccan Chronicle appointed its creative duties to any agency for the first time, signing on Maxus to handle it. Other major developments worth noting include Ananda Vikatan signing on Mindshare as media AoR, Consim Info (BharatMatrimony) appointing Media Direction as its media AoR, Malayala Manorama launching integrated marketing solution unit 'Junction K', Creativeland Asia venturing into the South region, Lintas Media Group (LMG) entering the Kerala market by bagging the Rs 15 crore business of the Manappuram Group of Companies, and Publicis Groupe's Digitas expanding base in India with its second agency in Chennai. The media story would not be complete without the mention of some of the awards that took off for the first time in South and also some that revived the old glory. The first ever Tamizh Awards from the Advertising Club of Madras had the advertising industry abuzz in the South. Kannada television channel Suvarna initiated the 'Suvarna Kannadiga' Award and Iasiaruvi launching the Tamil Music Awards. The Southern media made it into the international record books as well, with Zee Kannada's record-breaking handkerchief chain making it to the Limca Book of World Records and Big FM Chennai's Dheena RJ talking his way into a new Guinness World Record. With the pre-launch works of several TV channels underway, South is sure to witness an eventful year ahead in 2009 as well. Zee Ghantalu's probable launch in January 2009 will be one such event the year is going to start with. With Hyderabad set to host the 62nd World Newspaper Congress and 16th World Editors Forum in March 2009, South is sure to become an international hotspot as well. |
