How Paul Aiello could finally catch a falling Star

MUMBAI: There’s no doubt about it. The Star CEO, Paul Aiello, also the acting CEO of Star India, occupies the hot seat.

The view from his throne is rather mottled: two of his stars, Peter Mukerjea and Sameer Nair, have left the kingdom and may well take their satellites with them in due season. The audience ratings (TRPs) of some of their big shows are significantly dropping. Stake holders and joint venture partners are naturally rather perturbed. Within this turmoil, KBC3 is just breaking and Aiello would be counting on this lifeline.

A cross-section of media and corporate luminaries limn the priorities before Aiello, a seasoned media man, but also an expatriate who’s stranger to the peppery vagaries of Indian broadcasting:

Reinventing programming

Aloke Banerjee, CEO, S Kumars admits that the road ahead for the interim India chief is thorny. “I think that the Star shake-up was necessary. Programming-wise, Star was offering re-hashed K serials and contest formats (parts after parts.) I have my doubts whether the much-hyped KBC3 will garner as much of a footprint amongst viewers, as its predecessors. With this change in hierarchy, Star should look at a re-invention in programming. Because that’s where the revenues would come from.”

Says Arvind Sharma, CEO, Leo Burnett: There are big programming challenges that Star faces. K serials have been losing out on their appeal and other channels have been scoring on it. There was a time when nine out of ten top shows were that of Star and advertisers were forced to pay a premium. Star will no longer be able to command the kind of premium it had on ad rates. Revenues will not turn around until content changes in tandem. I think that for Aiello it’s a programming challenge more than anything else.

JV partners and share-holders would ask questions, but those can be managed.

Even the employee crunch can be resolved. But where does the answer lie in terms of programming?

Meenakshi Madhvani, managing partner, Spatial Access reckons that a key task before Aiello ``would be to drive relevance to other channels in the network like StarOne and Star Gold. Apart from Star Plus, all of the other channels in the Star network need some re-work.’’

Star’s partners aren’t too ruffled though. Says Vikram Kaushik, Chief of TataSky stated, “The changes don’t alter our equation with Star. We would be just as committed on the DTH platform.”

Pushing revenue growth

Media analysts claim that Star has lost as much as Rs.20 crore in ad revenues in recent years. A broadcaster states, “After Sameer’s and Peter’s exit, there’s a void in the Star India office. Every department at Star, starting from programming to finance and then marketing/sales, distribution, needs overhauling. Revenues have been falling and that’s the net result of sorry programming.’’

Learning an alien market and employee networking

Listen to other broadcasting voices: Aiello’s biggest challenge is that he has been behind the curtains and has barely dealt with Star India employees. Day to day management was taken care of by Michelle Guthrie and Steve Askew, at least from Hong Kong’s side. It’s an alien market for him.

“Top that with the fact that he doesn’t have an India head as local sounding board and guide. It’s an unenviable situation for any CEO. That coupled with the fact that competitors are watching the situation closely and waiting to strike could prove to be a double-edged challenge for Aiello,” they add.

Says Madhvani of Spatial Access: “The biggest challenge would be to boost the morale of Star employees and to fill the void, left by senior-level departures.’’ That’s the only way that Aiello can stem an expected flight of top-level names-a scary thought in a sector so scarce in A-class talent.