MAM
Sebastian does a successful hard-sell for BBC World
MUMBAI: Brilliant. As innovative promotional campaigns go, this will certainly take some beating. Last night saw the last act of a three city-tour of the country organised by BBC World to promote the channel to the trade and media. Tim Sebastian, the award-winning presenter of interview programme HARDTalk, “In Conversation With” first time interviewer Reliance Industries’ Anil Ambani.
The road show had its grand finale at south Mumbai’s Oberoi hotel, after earlier sessions, first in Bangalore with Frontline editor N Ram and in Delhi with Asian Age editor MJ Akbar.
The choice of interviewer, vice-chairman and MD of India’s only Fortune 500 private sector company, was quite apt for India’s commercial capital though the purists probably cringed at the idea. It was BBC’s Sanjeev Srivastav who managed that part of it.
Coming to the event itself, the “conversation” was interesting and had just enough aggro, light banter and seriousness to keep the audience involved. The flow from light repartee to serious talk and back to light banter was well managed. Sebastian, a veteran of the interview routine with 1,500 behind him (he conducts 235 interviews a year) handled the questions both the tough and the light with aplomb.
For a first time effort, Ambani’s performance was also pretty commendable. With two days of preparation, and at the outset confessing that he’d never seen HARDTalk, much thought obviously went into the question flow. Whoever scripted the question list did a good job of it and though there could be some carping about how Ambani did a bit of overkill as far as the hardball question routine went, it was a good showing all in all.
The interview had its moments. Among them:
“Hair doesn’t grow in busy places.” Sebastian’s rejoinder when Ambani made a reference to his bald pate.
Ambani brought up Amitabh Bachchan having been paid $75,000 per episode of Kaun Banega Crorepati (if the Reliance scion was serious, this is the first “unofficial” confirmation as to the Big B’s pay packet for KBC). When asked about his take home Sebastian said, “If you’re looking to buy me, I can’t be bought. But for God sake’s try.”
“Politics is a performing art.” Sebastian’s observation that the politicians of today were well versed in how to handle media.
An interview he did with former external affairs minister Jaswant Singh. “Twenty-four minutes (the length of his interviews) that yielded absolutely nothing by way of insights.”
Some advice from Sebastian to wannabe interviewers: The biggest secret is listening. “It is also in the preparation, the more you put into the interview, the more you get out of it.” Describing his job as an interviewer, Sebastian says: “I measure reality against rhetoric the whole time. My job is to get new answers from old issues, find out why my subjects (those he interviews) haven’t done as much as they should.”
As one media buyer put it, the road shows were an excellent way to send across the message that for the BBC, India is way up there on its priority list.
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Abhay Duggal joins JioStar as director of Hindi GEC ad sales
The streaming giant brings in a seasoned revenue hand as the battle for Hindi television advertising heats up
MUMBAI: Abhay Duggal has a new desk, and JioStar has a new weapon. The media and entertainment veteran has joined JioStar as director of entertainment ad sales for Hindi general entertainment channels, adding 17 years of hard-won revenue experience to one of India’s most powerful broadcasting operations.
Duggal is no stranger to big portfolios or bruising markets. Before joining JioStar, he spent a brief stint at Republic World as deputy general manager and north regional head for ad sales. Before that, he put in three years at Enterr10 Television, where he ran the north region for Dangal TV and Dangal 2, two of India’s leading free-to-air Hindi channels. The north alone accounted for more than 50 per cent of total channel revenue on his watch, a number that tends to get attention in any sales meeting.
His longest stint was at Zee Entertainment Enterprises, where he spent over six years rising to associate director of sales. There he commanded the Hindi movies cluster across seven channels, owned more than half of north India’s revenue across flagship properties including Zee TV and &TV, and closed marquee sponsorships across the Indian Premier League, Zee Rishtey Awards and Dance India Dance. He also handled monetisation for the English movies and entertainment cluster and the global news channel WION, a portfolio that would stretch most sales teams twice his size.
Earlier in his career Duggal closed what was then a Rs 3 crore single deal at Reliance Broadcast Network, one of the largest in Indian radio at the time, before that he helped launch and monetise JAINHITS, India’s first HITS-based cable and satellite platform.
His edge, by his own account, lies in marrying data and instinct: translating audience trends, inventory signals and client demands into long-term partnerships built on cost-per-rating-point discipline rather than short-term deal chasing. In a media landscape being reshaped by streaming, fragmented attention and AI-driven advertising, that kind of rigour is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable.
JioStar, which blends the scale of Reliance’s Jio platform with the content firepower of Star, is doubling down on its advertising business at precisely the moment the Hindi GEC market is getting more competitive. Bringing in someone who has spent nearly two decades doing exactly this, across some of India’s most watched channels, is a pointed statement of intent. Duggal has spent his career turning audiences into revenue. JioStar is clearly betting he can do it again, and bigger.
