Big TV Rolls Out Rs 30 Crore Ad Campaign

At a time when companies have tightened their advertising budget due to recession, Reliance Big TV has rolled out a Rs 30 crore advertising campaign to promote its to-be launched interactive services.

The campaign, 'Get the big world of entertainment’ will run in print and air for three weeks, and is targeted towards tier-II and tier-III cities. Big TV is slated to launch three interactive services, iNews (news), iCooking (cuisine) and iAstro (astrology).

Big TV already has a subscriber base of 1.3 million, even as incremental additions are coming in these cities. To further gain visibility in non-metro cities, Big TV has embarked on an ‘Entertaining and Educating Rural Andhra’ promotion.

Big TV branded float vans with dummy dish will go around various towns like Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Tirupati, Kurnool, Srikakulam, Warangal and surrounding rural towns promoting its service. The campaign will also cover remote educational institutions and IT sector across Andhra Pradesh.

According to the company, "The on-ground team has already captured small towns like Kakinada by installing more than 3,000 connections during the promotion. And, more than 90 per cent of the town was connected with Big TV DTH with the nameplate of the house with Big TV branding.

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Big TV Delays Launch of New Channels

Reliance Big TV has postponed its plans to foray into broadcasting, due to economic slowdown. The company had announced in May last year to launch and operate a bouquet of 20 channels under two new entities — Reliance Big TV Entertainment and Reliance Big TV News.

"There is no change in the business plan. Since it is tough time around, we will decide the timing of the launch later. Currently, the company is proceeding with studies and analysis," said a company executive.

Reliance will consider acquiring sick broadcasters as most of them are in deep financial trouble. The company also held back its plan to launch its Digital Video Recorders owing to the global situation.

Apart from this, Big TV has been in the news for pulling out of Indian Premier League, citing contractual violations with Sony. Big TV had signed the DTH deal with IPL last August for US$ 31.16 million over four years.

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Big TV Postpones DVR Launch

The economic crisis has taken its toll on the DTH industry, with several providers postponing the launch of Digital Video Recorders (DVR). Reliance Big TV, who was planning to launch its DVR by mid-October, might unveil the product only in the beginning of next fiscal.

The DVRs are upgraded DTH set-top boxes which allow the viewers to record multiple programmes from different TV channels, this feature also comes at a higher price, DVRs would cost between Rs 7000 to Rs 9000.

"The sale of DVR service comes with heavy cost implications to DTH service providers, which only adds to their existing financial burden of offering the basic DTH services. This may be among the reasons why some of the existing DTH players are holding back the launch of their DVR services," said an industry expert.

Reliance also intended to launch its IPTV service by end of 2008, but that has been deferred as well.

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Big TV Crosses 5 Lakh Subscribers in South

South India has always been a major market for Big TV, as it crosses another milestone in the DTH segment. Big TV has touched 500,000 subscribers in the four Southern States within five months of its launch.

Bangalore with Karnataka leads the way with 150,000 subscribers. According the company, this was possible because of offering viewers their favourite regional bouquet of channels along with popular channels all bundled with a competitive pricing.

Mahesh Prasad, president, Reliance Communications, said, "It's heartening to note that we're scoring impressively in the South which has diverse content needs. Reaching the magic figure of 5-lakh customer milestone in the four Southern States was a great New Year gift to us. It is indeed a testimony to the superior product and the best proposition offered by BIG TV and its success in accelerating the growth momentum of DTH sector in India."

The company had indicated a possibility of a price hike in the South market, due to global scenario and increase in cost of importing set-top boxes. The rise in price was expected to have little effect on the increasing demand.

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Big TV Enhances After-Sales Service

Consumers have been disappointed with Big TV's customer service, claiming to ineffecient and lack of assistance from the distributor or the call center. So I guess the company has taken note of it and set up new support in after-sales service.

According to the company, its after-sales team comprising 10,000 trained installation personnel and demonstrators along with customer service are equipped to install 50,000 connections daily.

This move to enhance its service capabilities is in line with Big TV's aim to capture 40% market share in the DTH market.

Mahesh Prasad, president, Reliance Communications, said, "After-sales service is a crucial element of our business. A lot of time and effort has been invested in training our teams in technical aspects as well as soft skills necessary for customer experience management."

Big TV has set up call centres capable of handling queries in 11 Indian languages. Recently, Big TV also improved its graphic user interface by adding couple of new features including direct links like remote key access to Program Guide and select (12 channel mosaic preview), etc.

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Big TV Improves its User Interface, Adds More Features

In its bid to improve viewing experience for its subscribers, Big TV has added some new features in its graphic user interface.

Subscribers can now move the Big TV logo on the screen by channel, to ensure that it does not obstruct while watching any program or overlap the channel logo.

Few more features include direct links like remote key access to Program Guide and select (12 channel mosaic preview), a 12-hour time clock, and specific genre headings for each Select screen.

According to the company, its home page is now more informative with direct links to its exclusive cinema channels landing page, iNTERACTIVE landing page, and other services like account info, onscreen user guide etc.

The cinema page will now be picture-based (DVD Jacket covers) wherein the viewer can browse through the list of movie genres and then select the movie to play and directly tune to the selected cinema channel. Even the iNTERACTIVE landing page is picture-based now.

Mahesh Prasad, president - Reliance Communications, said, "We are committed to offer our customers new and improved value added services. Our aim is to make the BIG TV known as the most user-friendly brand in the DTH space and we will take all the necessary steps to do that."

Big TV crossed 1 million subscribers within 3 months of its launch, and holds 15% of the DTH market share.

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Big TV Reaches Mount Everest

Reliance has gone where no DTH service provider has dared to go, not out of space but the company recently started servicing the base camp of Mount Everest at the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering (NIM), situated 15,317feet above sea level at Dropadi ka Danda.

According to the company a team of 24 members braved snowstorms and temperatures reaching 3 degrees to trek from Uttarkashi to the base camp from the 26th to the 30th of November.

Big TV has a 300 member installation team in North India that have been trained to access the mountainous region to set up their DTH service there.

Mahesh Prasad, president, Reliance Communication, said, "Big TV holds the biggest market share in both Uttarakhand (also known as Uttaranchal) and Himachal Preadesh. On an all-India basis, Big TV has achieved one million subscribers within 90 days of its launch, to become the fastest-growing DTH service in India."

Big TV acquired 44% of the market share in Himachal Pradesh in less than the 90 days since it entered the mountainous state. The company has also got hold of 60% of the market share in the remote areas of Rohru, Kotkhai, Karsog, Nadaun and Palampur.

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