Global Viewers!

Media  (TV, video, games, Internet, music, mobile phones) has brought about a substantial change in the experience of youth in our society. These changes leave many parents unprepared for the challenge on how to regulate their child’s behaviour and language with such technologies. These changes at times can have such drastic impacts that the complete behaviour pattern is changed.

The use of abusive language amongst the youth is a byproduct of films and television. The youth is being exposed to so much violence and abusive language in the form of names of films, songs or publicity of dialogues that leave an impact in the mind of the youth. The youth uses abusive language not only as trend but also because it is understood easily and thus leads to group acceptability.

The influence of western culture can be traced from the attitudes and behaviour of young adults. This varies from food habits, fashion statements, acceptance of violent behavior to sexual orientation. The emergence of music channels in the line of MTV has created significant changes in youth‘s language and their music preferences. Soap operas, movies and now days- the reality shows -made the youth increasingly aware of fashion and trends.  At present at least two among the five soap operas in Hindi as well as regional channels deal with the issue of premarital and extra-marital sex. Heavy viewing of foreign television programmes leads to the acceptance of western sexual norms like dating, live-in relationships. The present generation of young people, unlike their predecessors, lives in an increasingly globalizing world that is being transformed by a wide range of technological innovations. Language isn't just about communication; there is a strong cultural, social, political and emotional charge to it. The language of youth has changed, and now, television content must adapt to keep up with the younger generations' new interests and ways of communicating.

Arati Kamath 

www.dgmcms.org.in

Arati Kamath is a core faculty member of DGMC.

Online Communities

Involvement of citizens for better governance is a very innovative idea. BJP has started this drive to form online community to get inputs from the citizens. These inputs will be forwarded to the government for action.

These inputs will be very significant to the government for deciding guidelines, prioritizing issues to take action, but the major concern is how many people will get involved? Especially in Indian scenario, where 60% citizens are in rural areas and don’t have connectivity to internet. The youth will contribute and that too of urban areas.

Will the government get clear picture of the important issues through these online inputs? or is This innovative initiative is too early for Indian scenario?

Shubhangi Dharma

www.dgmcms.org.in 

Subhangi Dharma is a permanent faculty member at DGMC. She is a senior faculty and heads the Mass Communication Department at DGMC.

Net Neutrality!!

Nowadays there is a debate on “Net Neutrality” between Internet Service Providers (ISPs), telecom operators, regulatory bodies and content providers who are also referred to as OTT (Over The Top) players.

Net Neutrality is defined as the principle that all internet traffic has to be treated equally by ISPs, irrespective of content, sender, recipient, device or platform of data consumption.

It also says that ISPs cannot adopt a differential pricing strategy to its subscribers and that all subscribers should be treated equally by the ISPs in terms of quality of services provided by them.   

I hold the view that ISPs should be allowed to adopt differential pricing in a scenario where there is scarcity of spectrum which leads to network congestion. Especially when spectrum is auctioned at very high prices because it is a finite resource. Let’s equate the ISPs to a courier service provider. The courier service provider delivers shipment in an express mode by charging higher to the consumers. Whereas shipments of consumers, who pay regular ordinary charges, are delivered through normal mode. Or for that matter when one books a Tatkal ticket he is charged more to jump the waiting list.

Similarly ISPs should be allowed to adopt differential pricing based on quality and speed of services provided to the consumer.

On the other hand I agree that Net Neutrality has to be enforced to ensure that all internet traffic is treated equally irrespective of content, sender, recipient, device or platform of data consumption, which I believe have no relation with the quality of services provided by the ISPs.

Even the demand of telecom operators for a revenue share from OTT players is unjustified. There is no logic in that. It’s like the ISP asking an e-commerce portal to share its revenue from the sales done to an online shopper!! The shopper is buying products, services or content from a particular website because of the offerings made by that website which has no relation with the quality of service provided by an ISP.

Vishal Desai

Faculty

www.dgmcms.org.in

Vishal Desai is a permanent faculty member at DGMCMS. He is an alumnus of Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai. He has experience of 12 years in marketing, sales, product management and key accounts management at key positions in leading entertainment companies like Zapak Digital Entertainment Ltd. (Reliance Entertainment), Shemaroo Entertainment Ltd. and Milestone Interactive Group. He has managed mega entertainment brands like Slumdog Millionaire, Dhamaal, Chandni Chowk To China, Bal Ganesh, Spiderman, Batman and many more.

Offline to Online - Is it for real or is it a bubble?

The e-commerce space has seen lot of action in the past few weeks. Amazon has committed an investment of USD 2 billion for India. Flipkart got a funding of USD 1 billion. Alibaba’s IPO is the biggest in the world so far. It is in talks with Snapdeal for picking up a stake. Quikr and OLX have got Venture Capital funding as well. All this even when e-commerce accounts for less than 2%  of the total retail market. Out of that 70% comes only from online travel bookings.

Flipkart posted a loss of Rs 281 crores in 2012-13 with sales of Rs 1180 crores .This makes me wonder whether such kind of investments in the online space are viable.

Though e-commerce is growing at 30% CAGR (88% in 2013) against a global rate of 8-10%, is it the right time to pour in such huge amounts in the online space. Is this a pure valuation game in which private investors would eventually exit making a moolah while putting retail investors at risk.

Agreed that Indian e-commerce market, which is worth Rs 78,000 crores, will get a push from increasing penetration of smart phones and internet. But I see two challenges as follows:-

a)      Managing on ground logistics in a country where the population is scattered over hundreds of towns and thousands of districts. This calls for several brick and mortar fulfillment centers across India. Plus the density of population in semi-urban areas is not as high as urban areas, which increases delivery costs.

b)      All the frills that the e-commerce sites offer, like free returns, rock bottom prices, same day delivery, etc eventually lead to erosion of profit margins.

c)       Most of the online sites operate on a market place model. The major disadvantage of this model is that the shipping cost is higher because multi-product orders are fragmented across vendors and shipped separately. And this in turn may lead to customer dissonance because a customer won’t receive his entire order at one time. This may also lead to non-compliance of delivery timelines promised; reasons being cross state barriers and non-availability of stock with the vendor, order cancellation, and loss of consumer trust.

Several investment advisors believe that e-commerce valuations are being driven more by investor demand than by any significant improvement in their financial performance. A day will come when investors will start expecting positive returns on their investments. This is when valuations will become more realistic.

Also currently there is inorganic growth rather than organic growth that is based on business fundamentals, which may not be a right strategy.

Hence the next 2-3 years are very crucial for this space. If these e-commerce portals survive for next 2-3 years, we will have a e-revolution in retailing.

Vishal Desai

Faculty

www.dgmcms.org.in

Vishal Desai is a permanent faculty member at DGMCMS. He is an alumnus of Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai. He has experience of 12 years in marketing, sales, product management and key accounts management at key positions in leading entertainment companies like Zapak Digital Entertainment Ltd. (Reliance Entertainment), Shemaroo Entertainment Ltd. and Milestone Interactive Group. He has managed mega entertainment brands like Slumdog Millionaire, Dhamaal, Chandni Chowk To China, Bal Ganesh, Spiderman, Batman and many more.

Physical to Digital

The media & entertainment industry has always witnessed various format changes in terms of delivery of content.

Be it from cassettes to Audio CDs to digital music downloads, from VHS to VCDs to DVDs to Blue Rays, from hard copy news papers to e-news, from paper backs to e-books, from physical prints to digital prints, from analog connections to set top boxes. The ever evolving content delivery platforms have presented an opportunity and at the same time have done some harm. Music piracy in MP3 format killed the physical format of cassettes and audio CDs. The home video and computer gaming industry has always struggled due to piracy. Hope fully the Blue-ray format will help revive the fortunes. The books publishing industry has also been plagued by piracy both in both physical and digital format, though off late the e-books segment is getting organized and thus driving revenues for the publishing industry. The cable & satellite television industry has for long seen under reporting of subscriber numbers. Digitization will address that. Movie distribution has widely benefited from digitization, which makes it possible to release a movie widely in 4000+ screens nationally.

Also, the transition from physical to digital has eliminated some intermediaries in the value chain. Gone are music retailers. HMV shut its last store a year back. Digitization and DTH platform will eliminate local cable operators. E-news could eventually eliminate news paper distributors and vendors.  

Going forward customization will be the key. Serve what the consumer wants and not what you dish out. Be it downloading a single rather than buying an entire album. Be it reading only sports news on the internet rather than buying a full news paper. Subscribing only to those channels that you want to watch rather than paying for all sundry channels to the local cable operator.

But is it the complete end of physical era? I believe no. In countries like India there are still many pockets and segments for whom digitization is alien. Be it rural India or people in urban areas  who are averse to technology and thus depend on the physical format. Or purely because its sometimes much easier to just pick up a hard copy rather than depending upon gadgets and bandwidth speeds!!

Signing off at this.

Vishal Desai

Faculty

www.dgmcms.org.in

Vishal Desai is a permanent faculty member at DGMCMS. He is an alumnus of Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai. He has experience of 12 years in marketing, sales, product management and key accounts management at key positions in leading entertainment companies like Zapak Digital Entertainment Ltd. (Reliance Entertainment), Shemaroo Entertainment Ltd. and Milestone Interactive Group. He has managed mega entertainment brands like Slumdog Millionaire, Dhamaal, Chandni Chowk To China, Bal Ganesh, Spiderman, Batman and many more.