English Entertainment
Action Hero – Rohit Bhandari
Young Turks. The third in indiantelevision.com’s series profiling the brightest and the best among the youth brigade in the Indian television industry, focuses this time on Rohit Bhandari, the young ad sales head of AXN.
Barely 32, Bhandari has already earned the admiration of his colleagues and grudging but honest appreciation from those in rival channels. A hard working, soft spoken thorough professional, Bhandari is ambitious, though not overtly so. He has inched his way up tenaciously and may well be one of the key players in the television industry in India, in the days to come. We present here, a look at the man behind the profesisonal…
At 32, Rohit Bhandari can well lay claim to have been there, done that. He may have no hefty management degrees to fall back on, but that is probably what drives AXN India’s assistant vice president, sales and marketing to constantly exacting standards of perfection.
“Career switches for me have always stemmed from boredom,” says the soft spoken 32-year-old, sipping on endless cups of tea. His almost purposeful soft mannerisms hide an attitude of steel, something that has probably helped propel him to giddy heights within the corporate bureaucracy, which usually favours the academically endowed. A Mumbai University commerce graduate, Bhandari consciously and tenaciously cut his way into the advertising field, then crossed the fence and joined Sony in the late 1990s. Barely 18 months after he took charge at AXN, Bhandari has ensured that the channel has instant recall in the minds of his target audience and that corporates now view AXN as a viable advertising option. Not for nothing does his immediate boss Gregory Ho, VP, marketing, AXN Asia, term him as ‘a very focused and highly driven individual.’
|
|||||||
|
He may no longer keep the 12 to 14 hours that he put in when he joined the media planning unit at Enterprize as a rookie, but having to coordinate with the AXN Singapore headquarters on a daily basis ensures that Bhandari begins his day checking mail before leaving for office and continuing official conversations on phone on the 45 minute ride home in the late evenings. His tryst with outdoor sports, despite his current association with an action and adventure channel like AXN, held on only till college. Music, his favourite way of relaxation takes centrestage on weekends, only broken by the occasional official correspondence. Cooking is another favourite pastime that occupies much of his weekends, says Bhandari. |
|||||||
|
|||||||
|
Bhandari’s rise up the corporate ladder in media took an unusual route though – starting off in the accounts department of O&M after completing his graduation in commerce, he got interested in the creative side of the business. While O&M did not appreciate his enthusiasm, Enterprize that he joined in 1994 did. A year later, he joined Trikaya, and then Madison as media manager, planning and buying before shifting to HTA as media buying supervisor. It was in June 1999 that he crossed fences to join SET India, although in the interim, he even considered joining forces with the late Mark Mascarenhas who at the time had some potentially brilliant ideas for marketing sports events. And just when he thought he was reaching saturation point again, Rohit was offered charge at AXN. In the 18 months he has been here, business has jumped 300 to 400 per cent, something he modestly attributes to team work, both here and in Singapore. But the man has never really lived life by the book. From commerce to advertising and then to the television industry, life has thus far been a roller coaster ride for the guy, who believes in ‘breaking rules, if it helps in raising the bar’. Television, he says, is a business of perception and AXN, when Rohit came in, was perceived, as a blood ‘n gore channel, one that reached only about six to seven per cent of the available eyeballs although it was the only one that had a potent mix of reality shows, action and adventure. Baywatch, Sheena and VIP were the top scorers on the channel at the time. Intuitively, Rohit says he decided that out of the available genres of series, movies, adventure and reality, it would be reality that the channel should concentrate on. “The idea was to sharpen the image of the channel in India,” he says. Beginning 2002, the channel image in India has a keener look – gone are the Geena Lee Nolins who promoted the channel in India, it is series like Agency and CSI that have taken centrestage. The idea has paid off, with the 9 pm slot on AXN now commanding a stronger viewerbase than any of the rival English movie channels. While most of Rohit’s decisions are a combination of dipstick, IMRB and intuition, he admits to having less than no time for leisurely TV viewing. Cinema theatres he abhors, “for there is no remote control in my hand.” |
|||||||
|
A do it yourself guy, often he still spends long hours on weekdays, even couriering stuff himself if it means completing a job on time. He is no taskmaster, he avers, but expects the same professionalism from his peers as he puts in. He probably drives himself the hardest, evident from the fact that despite his several job jumps, he has never taken a break longer than four days between jobs and his last long vacation was over four years ago. Allowing himself a short break when he got married, he still worked till late into the night the day before the wedding. Time management obviously scores high on his priorities – the guy even reads two books at one time! Blessed with what Todd Miller calls a ‘challenger brand mindset’, Bhandari views the television scenario in the near future as belonging to the niche channels. There is space for more channels, he feels, only if the new entrants are able to provide novel entertainment to viewers, he says. “What will be needed will be a distinct positioning statement,” he says. The challenge in the coming days, he says, will also lie in getting viewers to tune into a non movie channel. For now, it is action – on screen and off it, that is of prime importance to Bhandari. A man of few words, as Ho succinctly describes him, Bhandari prefers to let his actions speak for him. And for an action channel like AXN, that’s indeed a blessing. Rohit Bhandari speaks on life in the corporate fast lane: |
|||||||
Rohit has a special combination of attributes and abilities, which are so vital to success in the TV industry, and so rare: a keen marketing mind, hard-working ethos, passion for the brand, determination to win, and a challenger brand mindset. Most importantly, he collaborates well, and on a personal level, is a fun guy to work with on a daily basis 
– Todd Miller, MD, AXN Asia
UK: The aerial is losing its grip. As broadband becomes the default way Britons watch television, the UK is edging towards a decisive, and divisive, question: should Freeview be switched off by 2034? The issue, highlighted in reporting by The Guardian, has exposed deep fault lines over access, affordability and the future of public service broadcasting.
For nearly 25 years, Freeview has delivered free-to-air television from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 to almost every corner of the country. Even now, it remains the UK’s largest TV platform, used in more than 16m homes and on around 10m main household sets. Yet the same broadcasters that built it are now pressing for its closure within eight years.
Their case rests on a structural shift in viewing. Smart TVs, superfast broadband and the Netflix-led streaming boom have pulled audiences online. Advertising economics have followed. By 2034, the number of homes using Freeview as their main TV set is forecast to fall from a peak of almost 12m in 2012 to fewer than 2m, making digital terrestrial television, or DTT, increasingly costly to sustain.
But critics say the rush to switch off risks abandoning those least able, or least willing, to move online.
“I don’t want to be choosing apps and making new accounts,” says Lynette, 80, from Kent. “It is time-consuming and irritating trying to work out where I want to be, to remember the sequence of clicks, with hieroglyphics instead of words. If I make a mistake I have to start again.”
Lynette is among nearly 100,000 people who have signed a “save Freeview” petition launched by campaign group Silver Voices. She fears the government is about to “take [Freeview] away from me and others who either don’t like, can’t afford, or can’t use online versions”.
Official figures underline the fault lines. A report commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport estimates that by 2035, 1.8m homes will still depend on Freeview. Ofcom’s analysis shows those households are more likely to be disabled, older, living alone, female, and based in the north of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Freeview is owned by the public service broadcasters through Everyone TV, which also operates Freesat and the newer streaming platform Freely. After two years of review, DCMS is expected to set out its position soon, drawing on three options proposed by Ofcom: a costly upgrade of Freeview’s ageing technology; maintaining a bare-bones service with only core PSB channels; or a full switch-off during the 2030s.
The broadcasters have rallied behind the third option. They argue that 2034 is the logical cut-off, when transmission contracts with network operator Arqiva expire. By then, they say, the cost of broadcasting to a dwindling audience will far outweigh the returns from TV advertising.
Ofcom agrees a crunch point is approaching. In July, the regulator warned of a “tipping point” within the next few years, after which it will no longer be commercially viable for broadcasters to carry the costs of DTT.
Others see risks beyond economics. Questions remain over whether internet TV can reliably deliver emergency broadcasts, such as the daily Covid updates, in the way that universally available DTT can. The UK radio industry has also warned that an internet-only future for TV could push up distribution costs and force some radio stations off air if PSBs no longer share Arqiva’s mast network.
“It is a political hot potato,” says Dennis Reed, founder of Silver Voices, who says he has “dissociated” his organisation from the government’s stakeholder forum, which he believes is “heavily biased” towards streaming.
The Future TV Taskforce, representing the PSBs, counters that moving online could “close the digital divide once and for all”. “We want to be able to plan to ensure that no one is left behind,” a spokesperson says, adding that rising DTT costs could otherwise mean cuts to programme budgets.
The numbers show the scale of the challenge. Of the 1.8m Freeview-dependent homes projected for 2035, around 1.1m are expected to have broadband but not use it for TV. The remaining 700,000 are forecast to lack a broadband connection altogether.
Veterans of the analogue switch-off, completed in 2012 after 76 years, recall similar fears of “TV blackout chaos”. Around 6 per cent of households were labelled “digital refuseniks”, yet a targeted help scheme and a national campaign, fronted by a robot called Digit Al voiced by Matt Lucas, delivered a largely smooth transition.
This time, the BBC is less keen to foot the bill. Tim Davie, the outgoing director general, has said the corporation should not fund a comparable support programme for a Freeview switch-off.
Research for Sky by Oliver & Ohlbaum suggests that with early awareness campaigns and digital inclusion measures, only about 330,000 households would ultimately need hands-on help ahead of a 2034 shutdown.
Meanwhile, viewing habits continue to fragment. Audience body Barb says 7 per cent of UK households no longer own a TV set, choosing to watch on other devices. In December, YouTube overtook the BBC’s combined channels in total UK viewing across TVs, smartphones and tablets, albeit measured at a minimum of three minutes.
That shift may accelerate. YouTube has recently blocked Barb and its partner Kantar from accessing viewing session data, limiting transparency just as online platforms consolidate power.
“When the government chose British Satellite Broadcasting as the ‘winner’ in satellite TV it was Rupert Murdoch’s Sky instead that came out on top,” says a senior TV executive quoted by The Guardian. “There already is such an outsider ready to be the winner in the transition to internet TV; it is YouTube.”
Freeview’s future now hangs on a familiar British dilemma: modernise fast and risk exclusion, or protect universality and pay the price. Either way, the aerial’s days as king of the living room look numbered.
