A new discovery of India

COME OCTOBER, Discovery Channel would serve horses for courses. Deepak Shourie, Managing Director of Discovery Communications India, certainly knows how to gear up for the rat race, and get spotted among scores of other channels that serve animals, party animals, wild life and action.

In Chennai recently, the channel organised a corporate bash to unveil its new programming strategy, `My Time on Discovery'. The strategy is more on the lines of Divide and Rule - dividing chunks of programming according to the various target groups around the time they prefer to sit in front of the TV.

``Relevant content for the right target audience at the right time,'' says Mr. Shourie. ``Easy to view, easy to promote and easy to sell,'' he chuckles.

Nowhere else on the planet has Discovery done something similar in terms of strategy. The blocks introduced on the channel are on the basis of extensive research studies on the audience-viewing patterns across target groups, identifying the `most popular day parts' for each group.

Which means that the Sunrise block would have programming tailored to early bird TV watchers, the Discovery Kids block would be around the time when kids get home, Action Zone block blasts the screen when the adventure loving get a glimpse of the TV screen, afternoon programming for women, Prime Time block for family viewing and so on.

And there would also be Friday Showcase specials and the Super Sundays block which would repeat the best programmes of the week for those who might have missed it.

``What we found when we undertook intensive consumer research is that people did say `Discovery is a great channel, I love to watch it'. But then it came with a rider, `...but I don't know what to watch when','' Mr. Shourie recalls.

What they also found was that contrary to the popular belief that Discovery is a kids channel, the research studies indicated that ``kids in the age group 4-14 do watch Discovery but not as much as those in the age group 35 plus''.

``There is a slight male skew,'' Mr. Shourie adds. ``But there were avid Discovery Channel watchers across the age groups. And hence this strategy,'' he reasons.

``The concept addresses the consumer need and recognises viewing convenience of each family member individually and collectively, by giving them what they want from Discovery at the time they want it, while still catering to the family as a whole,'' Mr. Shourie says.

``Of course, it's a marketing strategy, to get more advertisers by providing them a focussed platform to reach out to their key target groups. This is about delivering consumers to advertisers,'' he adds quite candidly.

Mr. Shourie's presentation for the evening wound up quickly with the presentation and clips after which the corporates let their hair down for dinner and of course, shaking more than a leg.

It was party time. For that's the kind of programming required for the Target Group that night and at that time. Discovering and responding to individual needs - who does that better than Discovery?

By Sudhish Kamath

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