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Rina Chandran

CHENNAI, March 7

MISSILES landing in Baghdad, reporters on hotel rooftops in flak jackets - and we'll be right back after a commercial break. As the possibility of war in Iraq becomes real even as pressure to find a diplomatic solution mounts, TV news channels are also grappling with a dilemma: pull or play commercials?

In the US, radio networks have reported lower ad revenues for March as advertisers pulled back, and several publications have launched "war-free zones," guaranteeing nervous advertisers that their ads will be carried alongside non-war stories. Analysts have predicted that CNN or Fox News could lose between $25 and $30 million per week, even as they are assured bigger audiences riveted to the news.

It's a dilemma that's familiar to Indian news channels, particularly the English ones: viewership and ad revenues for news channels have grown steadily since September 2001, with revenues growing even faster than viewership, according to a report by TAM-AdEx. In a recent survey of six news channels, viewership share rose from 1.9 per cent to 3.7 per cent in the last 18 months, while revenue share jumped from 8.6 per cent to 12.2 per cent.

Also, the average time spent watching news (in cable & satellite homes, 4+ years) rose from 95 minutes per month in Jan 2001 to 223 minutes in December 2002. And, the number of loyalists - i.e. people who spend at least five minutes per week viewing news channels - rose from 10 million to 22 million, according to TAM Media Research.

"The context has changed: world events and politics have become important to viewers," said Mr Atul Phadnis, Director - S Group, TAM Media Research. As a result, news channels attracted ad revenues of about Rs 300 crore in 2002; the surge in revenue typically comes three to four weeks after a major event - like the Gujarat earthquake, the WTC attacks, or the Parliament attack.

"The higher viewership during a disaster leads to increased interest in the category, per se," said Mr Girish Menon, GM, Mindshare, Chennai. This is a fact that the news channels scheduled for launch are counting on. "So advertisers who are already on the channel get the benefit of increased viewership and others want to get in."

But does everyone want to be seen alongside violent images of war? Ad agencies and media buyers in the US are considering a "war clause", which would ensure that a client's spot will be pulled in the event of war, thereby protecting the brand from being associated with negative images.

In India, Star News replaced its regular news with a Fox News feed in September 2001, with no ad breaks. BBC World goes into "rolling news," and all ad breaks will be cut, said Mr Jonathan Howlett, Director Airtime Sales, BBC World.

"Advertising would only be resumed when it was felt to be appropriate (and) spots would be made up in comparable breaks once we were to resume," he said. "In the aftermath of a conflict, there would be some sensitivity towards certain campaigns which we would discuss with the individual clients."

But, there are some real issues: as most channels are uplinked from outside India, it would be impossible to pull an ad at short notice. Besides, advertisers are more pragmatic here, Mr Menon said. "If you ask advertisers if they want to be seen at the same time as war coverage, they would say `No'," he said. "But they also know there are more viewers then." Besides, channels could lose viewers to rival news channels if there are ad breaks, he added.

It is not certain if war will break in Iraq; until then, news channels have their own dilemma to resolve: keep the ads and get more revenue, or pull the ads and lose revenue. "It's a tough decision to make," Mr Menon said.

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