News channels need to learn the art of collaboration: Shashi Sinha

Instead of obsessing over who is No 1, Shashi Sinha, CEO, IPG, and chairman of BARC proposed that channels could work on selling their television inventory using a common metric.

He was speaking at the first edition of afaqs! ‘The Future of News’ conference.

“The news industry needs to compete, but it also needs to learn the art of collaboration,” Sinha said.

Declaring a bright future for news, he said that the industry is quite powerful and will remain that way. However, if it keeps competing the way it is right now, it will perish.

He advised the industry to stop the race to be the number one channel. He suggested that the industry come together to create a code of conduct in this regard.

“This is nothing other than vanity. It is not fooling the agencies, the clients or the consumers. The industry needs to come together.”

Sinha said that over the short-term, the monetisation is largely going to be led by advertising. However, he also said that it should be sold on the basis of CPMs, and not effective rates (ERs).

“This genre always sells on ERs and the world works on CPMs. The industry needs to come together and declare the trading mechanism of metric to be CPMs.”

During his keynote address, Sinha also suggested that the industry sell the television and digital inventory together.

“Online is extremely strong for news. If you were to merge television and digital, there’s a great opportunity, but this has to be done across the industry. It can’t be done by individual channels.”

This will bring together the power of television and online. It will also force the industry towards measurement.

“If, say, a strong lobby of news broadcasters want measurement, the rest will fall in line. Measurement in digital has been kept away not because of a lack of capability, but because of stakeholder management. News industry can lead this and sell television plus digital,” said Sinha.

It can also help create special segments. “As an industry, we are also to blame. We have created some wide segments. NCCS is such a wide segment. This whole system is designed for FMCG. Why don’t we start getting super specialised segments?”

The combination also allows for a full funnel approach. “This whole clamour for data, in terms of measurement, will go away. It will help with the top of the funnel, but the bottom of the funnel will always come from what you are serving.”

Sinha also stressed on the need for differentiation in the industry. “When you start doing differentiated content, your credibility may also increase.”

News18 presents ‘The Future of News’ Conference is powered by Public App. The platinum sponsor is ABP Live, knowledge partner is Nielsen, and live streaming partner is 24 Frames Digital.