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Traditionally
on-air-promos (OAP) are the single largest and primary source of
information of programmes for the viewers of any channel. The industry-wide
average as per research done a couple of years ago was around 85
per cent to 90 per cent of viewers of any channel.
With
channels going to the extent of experimenting with new time bands,
and launching a new show every other day, Indiantelevision.com makes
an attempt to profile OAPs of some of the newly-launched shows on
Indian television.
Starting
the series with OAPs of Zee TV's Zee Woman, the afternoon
band (12:30 pm - 3 pm) on Zee TV which has programmes conceptualised
keeping the new age housewife in mind.
 Zee
TV launched Zee Woman on 12 July. The idea was to launch a time
band on the channel that would lead to differentiated viewing for
the woman. The task was to create a very strong women-driven time
band to attract the female viewer group. The idea was to provide
the women with something beyond serials.
So
the two-and-a-half-hour band (Monday through to Thursday) came out
with short capsules covering various subjects interwoven with shows.
The band covering topics like career options, recipes, astrology
and agony aunts, which aired alongside shows like Reth (12:30
pm), Dil Hi Dil Mein (1 pm), Tera Mera Saath Rahe
(1:30 pm), Piya Ka Ghar (2 pm) and Astitva Ek Prem Kahani
(2:30 pm).
"We
planned it based on the target audience. So the majority of the
promos were in prime time and the afternoon band, as prime time
had the highest frequency of promos, hence the choice to place promos
there as well," Zee TV marketing head Ashish Dabral (who has
since this interaction reportedly resigned).
 The
creative of the Zee Woman OAPs came from the production company
Final Cut Video. All the promos showed how every woman is special
and needs to be made to feel special, to celebrate the woman of
today. One of the promos shows a housewife, while cooking, listening
to some music she likes and starts swinging to that music, forgetting
everything else. At the end of the 'show', the mother-in-law, who
had been watching the entire performance, starts clapping.
Another
promo, set in a super market, has one housewife looking for grocery.
A football lands right in front of her and she can't resist the
temptation. She dodges the ball between rice racks and scores a
goal by successfully landing it in a basket trolley. Big applause
follows.
 Zee
Woman doesn't follow the cross-promotional strategy since it
has a primary sponsor in Kellogs. Still, Dabral feels cross channel
promos are very useful as one basically gets access to a completely
new set of targeted viewers, which otherwise is denied and is channel-specific.
Zee
started promoting the band one month prior to the launch, somewhere
in early June 2004, starting with teaser promos. The OAPs are expected
to run anywhere from six to eight months. "It is the size of
the property that decided the duration of the on-air-promotion,"
said Dabral.
Now
did these OAPs get converted as impressive ratings? Quoting TAM
ratings, Dabral said Zee Woman is very successful as it boosted
channel share for the afternoon band.
"Channel
share for the afternoon time band registered a rise of 7 per cent
after the launch of Zee Woman and the ratings of the soap
Reth has gone up 15 per cent," said Dabral.
 Dabral
believes that OAPs should be complemented with effective off-air
promos as well. In the case of Zee Woman, the channel unveiled
an innovative off-air promo campaign by starting a branded free
bus service for the women in Mumbai "to give them some respite
from the lashing rains."
"There
are a lot more campaigns in the pipeline. Based on this initial
success, we are working on making the band more interesting and
refreshing," is how Dabral summed it up.
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