A business full of characters

In 2000 when I told my editors that I wanted to cover media and entertainment they couldn39t get it Why on earth would a hardcore business reporter want to write on films and TV serials There were endless jokes among colleagues But I was fresh from a fellowship in CambridgeI had seen what good solid analysis of the business of media and entertainment was about in the UK market and I wanted to do the same It combined my MBA and experience as a business writer with my fascination with everything to do with the media businessu00a0 Amusing Media is largely an ownerdriven personality led business This makes it great fun to watch It is a fascination that not too many analysts and business writers will admit to Most hide behind a veneer of contempt for anything to do with the media and entertainment MampE industry So soaps are routinely lsquoregressiversquo film stars are dumb Hindi movies are passeacute and so on If we followed what the media writers and critics said then we would be a nation of righteous intellectuals watching documentaries every day and reading serious books But the media business is about so much more It is about the process of creating that right book or script or film that connects with the right audience and makes money It is about creativity and its distribution Or as consultants would say about content and distribution That is the first reason the MampE business is such a fun place to be in It mimics in many ways telecom and IT with a huge creative element thrown in You need large distribution infrastructure mdash DTH cable or multiplex chains mdash in place to make money from content But you also need to have enough content for that infrastructure to be of use China has only six minutes of content available for every 60 minutes needed Since it is not a democracy a lot of things are taboo So it has large multiplex chains and digital TV systems but not enough programming to feed them India on the other hand has loads of content a lot of it good But it struggles to make money on mediocre infrastructure Though multiplexes and digital TV are happening we are a long way from covering the entire population The second and biggest reason this industry rocks is because it is so full of characters Globally almost every major media company is ownerdriven News Corporation Rupert Murdoch Viacom Sumner Redstone Liberty Media John Malone the list goes on It would be safe to say that just about half of the worldrsquos top 100 media companies are controlled usually by one man or a family News Corporation for instance is listed But it is for all practical purposes controlled by Rupert Murdoch This is true for several professionally run large media companies Bob Iger of Disney or Tom Freston the former head of Viacom are stars in their own right u00a0There are no clear reasons why media is such a ownerdriven personalitycentric business But one can hazard a guessu00a0 It was after hours of waiting to meet Richard Li who owned the only satellite broadcasting into India and China in 1991 that Subhash Chandra decided to pay five times the asking price Almost every major media firm in those days mdash The Times Group included mdash has declined space on that satellite But Chandra saw something that the others did not His vision gave birth to Zee and consequently private television broadcasting Only a maverick visionary kind of chap can see what Chandra has seen again and again in different business mdash lotteries DTH amusement parks or flexipackaging Ronnie Screwvala UTV Prannoy Roy Samir Jain Times Group Aroon Purie India Today saw something long before it happened and fought everything mdash regulators existing norms mdash to create markets brands and businesses that changed this country If you are such a man chances are that you are also a strong personality u00a0You could argue rightly that Narayana Murthy or Kiran Mazumdar Shaw too are visionaries in their fields For the sake of focus I will stick only to mediau00a0 This personalitycentric feature makes media a fun business to watch What is disappointing is that it still hasnrsquot achieved a size that reflects the potential of the Indian market Indiarsquos largest media group Zee is just over Rs 5600 crore It is a fraction of the size of the largest companies in sectors such as telecom or IT The total MampE industry brings in just under one per cent of Indiarsquos GDP For an entertainment crazy country those numbers simply do not tell the full story Clearly this one is still being writtenu00a0 The writer is a media specialist and author Follow her on twitter at httptwittercomvanitakohlik