Reliance Entertainment to start Cinema halls' Chain in US

No. It's not an April fool. It's true. Reliance Entertainment is all set to start a chain of Cinema halls called 'Big' in the US that will be showing Hindi movies as well as other regional Indian movies. There will be almost 200 cinema halls under the brandname showing these movies.

Reliance's movie theaters' chain in India is known as Adlabs which Reliance Entertainment had acquired from Manmohan Shetty. But the US chain will be branded as Big, which is also the music label and FM brand of Reliance Entertainment.

From the movie makers' point of view, the project will be welcome only as it will give a better chance to Indian movies in the US as there is a number of Asian viewers in the US.

ADC goes. Calls may get cheaper..

With the Access Deficit Charge for local and STD calls being finally put to an end by the TRAI, the call rates may once again be cheaper. Access deficit charge (ADC) was the price that operators other than BSNL used to pay to BSNL so that it could provide subsidized service in rural sector.

But with the number of mobiles increasing at a hopping speed, there seems to be no more a need of such a thing. Hence, it's a welcome move that will surely remove a lot of burden from the private operators and is expected to help their customers too.

BSNL used to get almost 5000 crore as ADC from private mobile operators until 2 years ago.

The ADC for ISD calls is also brought to a half from Re 1 to 50 p per call.

All for money

Doing things for money is fine. But doing things only for money is not. And BCCI certainly is doing things which confirm that cricket, people, morals, gratitude, all come second. First comes MONEY.

The board has this time done a thing that doesn't even cost it money. It's not about money in a direct way this time. This is about the fact that those who come in the way of money, whoever they are, whatever they are, whatever they do or have done, for the Cricket or Country or BCCI itself (as team India does not represent India, it represents BCCI actually), they will not be tolerated. Rather they will be done all the bad that can be done.

Well, this is the story of Kapil Dev and Ajit Wadekar. The two former Indian captains that were not invited on the celebration of Anil Kumble's 600 wickets' celebration. Other than Kapil and Ajit, all the captains were invited to the program. But these two were not invited because they are related to ICL, the rebel league.

The interesting fact is that India has won the Cricket World Cup only once and the captain of the World Cup winning team happens to be Kapil Dev. But this fact seems to be easily ignorable to BCCI while compared to his joining the ICL.

Any other reasons than money?

No.

On the other hand, 3 players from the West Indian Cricket team are unable to confirm their commitment to their national Cricket team due to a probable IPL clash. These players include veterans like Chanderpaul.

We shall also see a great deal of interesting things happening in the IPL matches. For example, there will be Ricky Ponting playing under Ganguly, a news that shocked even my 9 yr old niece who hardly has an interest in Cricket. I wonder what SRK thought.

Sometimes I wonder what has money make these people do.

Sometimes I think how much more is remaining.

SRK vs SRK?

We used to see such headings when two movies of a film star had a clash and released on the same date. But the new Don of Indian film industry is not going to have any such clash of his movies.

This time it's different. It's business.

As you must be knowing, Star is all set to start its super hyped show 'Kya Aap Panchvi Pass Se Tez Hain?' hosted by Shahrukh Khan. On the other hand, Sony Entertainment is betting on the Indian Premier League, the Karmyudh of cricket, and Shahrukh has a complete team owned by him playing in the league. The Kolkata Knight Riders of Khan's team, led by Ganguly are all set for a 'karbo, larbo, jitbo re'.

Both, the quiz and the league matches boast of heavy investments and are big money things. Both are going to start in the second half of April as per the information received yet. And both are eagerly awaited.

The question is, "Will these two not affect the viewerships of each other?"

I think they will.

If at all both the shows (Let me address them as shows collectively, though it is not so) clash in their timings, the viewerships will be badly affected. Generally when there is a matter of viewerships concerning cricket matches, the simple funda with the one dayers and T20 is that if India is playing, people will see the match. Else, the other program will also get almost equal or more viewers. But in case of IPL matches, there will be no team like India or Pakistan. But all the Indian players will be playing in every match. So, what will the viewers be doing?

In case there is no clash in timings of the two shows, only days clash, which is highly likely, there will still be some effect of matches on the quiz show.

It will be also interesting to see how the words 'Panchvi Pass' affect the Indian viewers and how many children prefer the show to the matches.

Still, there is doubt that if the programs really clash, the quiz will be able to save its TRPs. And both the shows will be affected as people with the remote power will be surfing the other way round whenever there are advertisements in between, giving the advertisers a bad deal.

Anyways, all we can do for now is wait and watch. And pray that there is no clash.

New faces. And old.

We have heard the phrase 'ad mad' so many times. Probably because advertising is a mad people's business. You have to do all the mad things required to attract public. And that's what is our ad world also is doing.

In last few days, many changes took place in the advertising. That is, a few old faces vanished and some new ones came. But it's not always that the faces that vanished were old. And not always the ones that came were new.

To start with, we see Big B. The one time king of the new advertising industry is now losing many ads. Sometimes to others, many times to Shahrukh Khan. But that was something normal. Something that was going on in process. And then there was a blow. When Pepsi declared its intention to drop biggies of Cricket, Dravid and Dada, and taking up the likes of Ishant Sharma and Rohit Sharma.

Almost the same time, as Pepsi was launching its 'Ye Hai Youngistan Meri Jaan' campaign, Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Kapoor were taken in. And the one to find the way out was Priyanka Chopra. It is be only the ad world that can find Priyanka too
old to campaign, or less efficient in anyway.

But it's not that the old always give way to the young. Sometimes it goes the other way too. For example, Samsung, going with John Abraham, found John wasn't enough and roped in Aamir Khan as the brand ambassador for its phone range.

Advertisers bring in everything that they hope will work. Advertisers have tried all sorts of combinations from Sachin and Big B (kite flying ads of Pepsi) to real life couples like John Abraham-Bipasha Basu to the elegant brother-sister combo of Saif-Soha Ali Khan. In fact, even Amitabh-Abhishek have also worked for an ad together. (think think)

But its not always necessary to bring in some celebrity to make an ad work. Fevicol and Bajaj are example of such advertising. In fact, sometimes even ads make celebrities. Remember Cheeka, the Hutch puppy? The boy-puppy combo also made themselves a celebrity.

Anyways, the celebrity and non-celebrity ads will keep on going. I hope in a few days we'll be seeing even Darsheel Safary selling some products. After all, he's the youngest Indian celebrity for now.

On the wrong path

Economic Times recently told that the prices of movie VCDs and DVDs were going to be increased again. Companies that had brought down the prices to Rs 145-160 a CD, will be back to Rs 200 again.

In one sentence, if the prices go up, so will the piracy.

Yes. I have seen Jodhaa Akbar on my laptop on a pirated print and I was thinking who would be buying CDs if the pirated versions become so good.

Companies that are relying on the fact that the general Indian public is not aware of e-piracy (movies available on Internet for downloads) cannot do this for long as people are getting more educated day by day and getting what can be the options in the flat world.

The article written by K Muthukumar and Sonali Krishna tells that companies are thinking selling VCDs and DVDs for the same prices won't be able to bring them enough profits and so they should increase the prices. But the fact is that, seeing the low cost of manufacturing, if the prices are brought down, the sale can be increased a lot to get profits the way they want. In fact well designed DVDs can be sold at higher rates to those who want more. Thus there can be profits both ways.

In fact, as far as the article is concerned, there seems to be a lack of homework as the rates of some VCDs and DVDs are wrong as the article quotes the price of Moserbaer DVDs as Rs 49 whereas it starts at Rs 34 itself. Even T-Series is told to be selling discs at Rs 45 that is the price of DVDs only, where the market sells more of VCDs, that are actually priced at Rs 38 only.

Indian Money league by BCMC

Actually I was planning to write the title of this blog as 'Indian Money League', but then I felt the title was not that suitable as I thought it would be. Because as soon as I typed Indian Money League, I felt it wasn't just the League, it was Entire BCCI that was working as the 'The Board for Control of Money in Cricket'. Interestingly, something that ICC finds itself unable to do that efficiently as BCCI (or BCMC) does it.

IPL, the Indian Premier League, an idea that suddenly hit BCCI hard when it saw a possibility of cricket slip off its hand. And they left no stone unturned to take all possible revenge from the guys who had dared to threat the Board, as well as ICC. I still doubt whether the BCCI people had an idea that the IPL will be such a grand success making cricket the game of million dollars for even individuals.

Anyways, who cares for that now when the stage is set and people like Vijay Mallya and Shahrukh Khan (and even Preity Zinta) are singing the IPL tune with Mr Lalit Modi, and people like Dhoni and Sachin are going to get more than a Million dollar for playing.

Actually, the question here is not about who cares for the ICL and those-who-were-left-somewhere like Brian Lara and Inzamam-ul-haq, the question is, how much Cricket is involved in this business?

The money spent (or wasted) on getting the players is hardly related to their performances on ground. It is simply proportional to the 'market value' of the cricketer. Otherwise what explains Andrew Symonds getting more than thrice the amount of money than Ricky Ponting.

Another question regarding the Money Leauge is whether it will be able to maintain the standard of Cricket played by country teams. In fact I am unable to imagine yet how Saurav Ganguly, Ricky Ponting, and Shoaib Akhtar be playing together.

Though, I would really really love to see Tendulkar and Jayasuriya batting together, for Mukesh Ambani's Mumbai team. YES. That WILL BE worth watching. Pray for some beautiful innings by these two biggies.

Anyways, there is one thing good in this Indian Premier League. Whoever wins, India will not be losing. :)

When is the match by the way?

Jab We Sell

This has nothing to do with selling or buying of shares and has no relation with the share market. Any relation of words with those used in the share markets is purely coincidental.

This is about a movie. A movie that was a great hit. Of course the movie must be good in order to be a hit. But we know all good movies are not hit. And this 'okay' movie has achieved profits that can make any filmmaker jealous.

Actually this is not about the movie either. This is about marketing, about strategies and setting time frames of when to do what and how to earn the maximum possible money from the movie. This is about business. The business done in the film industry, and about the way it should be done.

Well, this is about 'Jab We Met'. A movie from which I was not hoping much when I went to Raghavendra, our only source of movies besides laptops. It was the first week and the publicity was such that movie was expected to be just time pass.

And that it really was. The movie did really well what it was expected to do - a good time pass, which gave the movie a good publicity through word of mouth. I mean, the results were exceptional in some way. Jab We Met was probably the only movie of the year that increased its collection after second week. Be it the masala filled Om Shanti Om or the touching Taare Zameen Par or the laugh riot Welcome, all have gone down on the box office, week after week. But Jab We Met was different from all these, increasing the number of viewers and thus profits.

On the other hand, the music score of the movie was already good and was being popular day by day. So no doubt the sale of audio CDs and cassettes was good, too.

And as soon as the theatres seemed to come to saturation, television started showing the 'coming soon' ads for the DVDs and VCDs. That too on Moserbaer, making it affordable for everyone, and since the movie came at a time when it was still fresh on people's mind, there were record sales of the DVDs and VCDs of the movie. The DVDs were promoted on TV with beautiful, touching advertisements that were showing less of movie and instead, were trying to move people through emotions of people.

I do not know whether these emotional ads added much to the sales but these were different from other movies' advertisements and people were noticing them.

And when everything was almost over, the box office, and the CDs and DVDs, the music and the movie, and when the movie was still 'new', the TV started showing advertisement for the 'television premier' of the movie. That is, the movie is gonna hit the idiot boxes this Sunday, which must have provided the producers with a few more crores as a hit movie is being aired so early.

I think the movie generated money in all the ways it could and that too in a short span of time. Probably because the strategists for the movie know that it's not an era of silver jubilee and golden jubilee and planned according to the short lifetime of current movies. I think the movie makers today should try to plan in such a manner that they are able to find maximum profits from all possible sources and for that, Jab We Met can be a great example.

Now, Expectations!!

The one lac magic is out. The most awaited car, Indione, Jeh, and finally Nano has come out. Now its turn of expectations. You must have read a lot bu now regarding the features and non-features of the magic car, but the question is, to what extent will the car be able to cope with the expectations of people.

Will the car be able to start another revolution in the country making cars as common in a few years as are cellphones today or will the one lac car be just an achievement to be written for the history books of automobiles?

Well, the answer depends, to a large extent, on the perfprmance of the car. If the car performs well, even for small distances, and if the security is enough, I very much hope that the car will be able to brong in a revolution as there would be a number of small families that would like to own a car rather than a bike.

Probably the best strategy would be to target the customers that were targetted a few years back by the Maruti Suzuki 800 under the 2599 scheme in collaboration with the State bank of India.

Anyways, what happens only time will tell. Till October, when the car is expected to hit the markets, we can only predict. And be proud of our country for launching the cheapest car of the world.

Bank to Bank

1969: 14 banks nationalised by the Indira Gandhi government.

1980: 6 more banks nationalised.

1994: Private banks like ICICI, HDFC, and UTI take off as a result of the then Prime Minister Narsimha Rao's liberelisation policy.

And since then, the number of banks has been increasing and today there are 19 nationalised banks, excluding State Bank of India and its associate banks whereas the number of private banks is almost 30, that include the foreign banks, Citibank, HSBC and Deutsch Bank.

With a number of banks providing good service, the competition among the banks is at its best now. Previously it was ICICI an HDFC banks which gave other banks a good competition. Especially ICICI bank came to the second spot in terms of total assets, just behind the State Bank of India.

Later, the competition grew fierce with other private banks also joining the race. But a new turn in the banking sector came when nationalised banks started to gear up themselves for the race. It was started by the Bank of Baroda when it changed its logo along with colors and established a series in June 2005. Then in May 2007, UTI Bank decided to go through a change of name and logo and soon it was Axis Bank.

And recently, Canara Bank joined the series. With the beginning of the 2008, Canara Bank turned a bright blue with two crossing triangles and a beautiful tagline 'Together We Can'. Mind Can.

And now the State Bank of India is all set to go through the merger that has been on cards for a long time. The largest bank of India, with more than 9500 branches, is all set to grow larger with the proposed mergers of its seven associate banks. If the mergers take place as expected, the bank will be South Asia's largest bank with more than 14,000 branches. The first merger, with the State Bank of Saurastra, may complete this month itself.

Ad. No Mad.

Seen the new Airtel advertisement in which u don't understand a word? The one in which two little boys play football on the border of two countries. You need not think which language they are talking in. But you get the message. Talking, we can overcome all sorts of borders. A beautiful ad that indicates the new heights our advertising industry is reaching.

Another beautiful series of ads is being shown by Vodafone. The ads about alerts. I especially liked the ad on art of living alerts in which a wife is throwing cushion on her husband and every time he silently gives it back to her and finally the anger of the lady goes. A beautiful ad with no words again.

Yet another advertisement comes from Canara Bank in which a typical South Indian old lady is reading, trying and speaking Punjabi words all the time and greets her Punjabi daughter-in-law (or daughter-in-law to be) in Punjabi when she meets her for the first time. The ad tells again how boundaries are going and the world is getting smaller.

Overall, it seems that we are getting more good ads than before. Hope the standards get still better. I'll be telling you more, but after a 'commercial break'. :)

Harshit