Executive Dossier
‘DD is operating in a time warp’ : Ravina Raj Kohli CEO HFCL-Nine Broadcasting India.
Ravina Raj Kohli is a tenacious professional. The lady has come a long way from being an advertising professional to running a radio company in Singapore to heading the legendary Ozzie media and gaming baron Kerry Packer’s Indian broadcasting joint venture HFCL-Nine Broadcasting India. So when you hear her say that she is flummoxed, she clearly must be. The government has pulled the rug from under her company’s feet by calling for rebidding for supply of five and a half hours of programming by private firms on DD Metro. She had been renegotiating her earlier bid with DD and ministry officials, asking for better terms when they simply cut the line on her.
The first round of bidding has come and gone without any takers, forcing pubcaster Prasar Bharati to call for fresh bids with the carrot that there is no floor price for tenders this time round. Meanwhile, Packer has decided enough is enough and as things stand Nine Broadcasting’s DD Metro operations will shut shop on 10 September.
Indiantelevision.com’s Anil Wanvari spoke to Kohli in a free-wheeling interview on the strange ways of DD.
You were in talks with Prasar Bharati to resolve the situation. Then what happened? Why did the talks fail?
We were in talks with Prasar Bharati to reconsider our proposal. Certain improvements like ensuring reach of DD Metro penetration, enhancement of the transmitter network, had not been made and hence we had not been able to deliver on our targets to advertisers and hence on our revenues targets.
So we asked them for an extension of the contract to a long term one to allow us to recover our investments. They disagreed to this. They then offered us an 18-month extension. We asked them for certain concessions: like flexibility to bank the unused free commercial time, introduce certain programme genres…They never got back on this. There was total silence. And then we got a letter from the Prasar Bharati that they were reopening the bids. Just like that. Now, after the first bid failed, they announced that they would programme and market DD Metro themselves.
What baffles us is that we were told that there would be audit problems if we were given an extension for 18 months. In the new tender they were open to offering the time band to someone for three years. Are there no audit problems now? We are flummoxed.
The whole attitude at DD is incorrect. How can they treat a partner like this? Especially one who has invested so much in its belief in terrestrial television and built up the DD Metro brand? What have we done to become a victim? Research has shown that DD-2 is the preferred channel over DD-1 and Nine Gold has quadrupled viewership in C&S homes for DD Metro.
What issues does this situation throw up?
DD cannot continue in the time warp that it is operating in thinking that it can do what it wants. It should be thinking of milking the assets it has. To fulfil its role as a public broadcaster it must increase viewership and have loyal audiences. It must improve its brand equity. It must raise the value of national reach media. India has a strange situation where the national reach broadcaster has just 25 per cent of the ad market, while cable and satellite TV has 75 per cent. I do not know if anyone is concerned about this. The situation should be the other way round.
DD is a jewel that is not being given its due place in the crown. DD’s primary objective as a public broadcaster should be to build audiences. DD has to become competitive or even better than competition if it wants find a place in the calender of viewers. Television today is not a habit like it used to be earlier, it is about appointments made for shows. There are some officials who are good in DD and they want to make DD work; they should be allowed to make it work.
What else is needed to make a privatised DD Metro work?
There are other issues too: fear of reprisal either from the CBI or a joint parliamentary committee is also paralysing many of these officials from taking commercial decisions in the post-Shah era (Former Prasar Bharati CEO RR Shah is under investigation for certain deals that were struck during his tenure). If the government wants DD to work with a private partner, the officials will have to be given a free hand. Television is about instant and firm decisions depending on competitive pressures. It’s not about long delayed and arbitrary ones.
One day we are told, we can have a film festival on DD. Two days before we are to commence it, we are told it’s a no-no. No reasons are given. No means no. You cannot predict what an official will do. Hence you cannot make a programming plan. How can one work like that in TV?
The sad part is that if the bid fails or the band gets fragmented, it will be the end of all the efforts and money we have put in to build DD Metro as a brand. And even if it succeeds, the other people who come on board will not have anywhere close to the commitment we have towards terrestrial television.
There has to be commitment to make DD Metro’s privatisation work. We were debarred from bidding for the late night slot. We were willing to put in good money behind our bid. The authorities refused to lower the floor price from Rs 225 million fixed for the 10:00-11:00 pm slot, in the bid that failed it had been fixed at a much lower Rs 175 million. Leave aside the fact that even at this price there were no takers. And in the latest round of bidding, they have not even kept a floor price.
We are asking why did they not heed us then?
Is there any possibility at all of you re-bidding for the time band?
We will not bid for the new tender as the terms are unrealistic.
What about your producers who have been commissioned for shows?
All our producer partners will be protected. Most of the serials will run their course and we will end them as our contract expires on 10 September.
Are advertisers continuing to back you?
Advertisers would like us to continue running the programming block. They are backing us all the way. Some of them may be flustered about the culmination of the contract but most are backing us.
Executive Dossier
Game on, fame on as Good Game hunts India’s first global gaming star
New reality show puts Rs 1 crore prize and global spotlight on India’s gaming talent.
MUMBAI: Game faces on, pressure high India’s gaming ambitions are levelling up. Good Game, billed as the world’s first as-live global gaming reality show, has officially launched in India with a bold mission: to crown the country’s first Global Gaming Superstar.
Blending esports with mainstream entertainment, the show brings together competitive gaming, creativity and on-camera performance in a format that tests more than just joystick skills. Contestants will be judged on gameplay, screen presence and their ability to perform under pressure, reflecting how gaming has evolved from pastime to profession and pop culture currency.
Fronting the show are three high-profile ambassadors: actor and entrepreneur Samantha Ruth Prabhu, Indian cricket star Rishabh Pant, and gaming creator Ujjwal Chaurasia. The winner will take home Rs 1 crore ($100,000) among the largest prize pools for any Indian reality show along with the chance to represent India on a global stage.
Backed by a planned annual investment of up to Rs 100 crore, Good Game is also courting brand partners, promising a minimum reach of 500 million among India’s core youth audience. The creators position the show as a bridge between entertainment and interactive culture, offering long-format content, community engagement and commercial scale.
Auditions are now open to Indian citizens aged 18 and above, inviting amateur and professional gamers, creators and performers alike. Shortlisted candidates will be called for in-person auditions in Mumbai on 14 and 15 February, and in Delhi on 28 February and 1 March 2026.
With big money, big names and even bigger ambition, Good Game signals a shift in how India views gaming not just as play, but as performance, profession and prime-time spectacle.
Digital
SpotDraft hires new CMO and CFO to fuel global push for its AI contract platform
Alon Waks and Amit Sharma join as SpotDraft accelerates growth across key markets
INDIA: SpotDraft has strengthened its senior ranks as it gears up for faster global expansion, naming Alon Waks as chief marketing officer and Amit Sharma as chief financial officer. The appointments follow the firm’s $54 million Series B round earlier this year and mark a push to scale across the Americas, EMEA and India.
The AI-powered contract-lifecycle-management platform has posted 100 per cent year-on-year growth in customer acquisition, counting Apollo.io, IPSY, Mixpanel, Oyster and Panasonic among its global clients. The firm processes more than one million contracts annually, with volumes up 173 per cent and nearly 50,000 monthly active users.
Waks, a veteran of Kustomer, Bizzabo, CreatorIQ, LivePerson and ZoomInfo, will steer global marketing and category positioning as legal teams adopt AI-driven tools. Sharma, who has led finance across scaling tech firms since 2016, will guide financial strategy, investor relations and market expansion.
Both hires aim to sharpen SpotDraft’s bid for a larger slice of the fast-growing legal-tech market, expected to exceed $63 billion by 2032. Co-founder and chief executive Shashank Bijapur said the company is focused on scaling go-to-market operations in the Americas, deepening leadership in EMEA, and accelerating AI capabilities for general counsels and legal-operations leaders.
Clients report shorter deal cycles and better alignment between legal and business teams. “What used to take weeks now happens in days,” said Abnormal Security senior legal operations manager Susan Koenig. DeepL head of legal operations André Barrow, said SpotDraft has helped reframe legal “from a cost centre to a generator of revenue”.
Executive Dossier
Outdoor Ads Get Smarter as LOC8 Shifts OOH from Visibility to Attention
AI, dwell time and real-world vision are rewriting the rules of what outdoor ads can do.
MUMBAI: Out-of-home ads were once the wallflowers of marketing seen by everyone, noticed by few. But in an age where attention has become the world’s most fought-over currency, even billboards are getting a brain upgrade. Enter LOC8, OSMO’s AI-powered attention engine, quietly reshaping the old OOH playbook by measuring not just who could have looked at an ad, but who actually did. The shift is subtle but seismic: impressions are out, impact is in and data, not gut instinct, is calling the shots.
In a landscape where marketers question every rupee spent outdoors, LOC8 is turning lampposts, flyovers and traffic islands into precision-mapped attention laboratories. By crunching dwell time, visibility zones, perceptual size and real-world obstructions, the platform is dragging OOH into a future where creativity meets computer vision and where the best ideas aren’t just eye-catching, but eye-measured. From automotive facelifts to FMCG novelty and real estate trust-building, the message is clear, outdoor has stopped shouting and started listening. Indian Television Dot Com explores more about it in an Interview interview with OSMO co-founder Nipun Arora.
On how OSMO is shifting outdoor advertising from a visibility-led medium to an attention-led one through LOC8.
Traditional OOH has long been measured by visibility and impressions i.e how many people could see an ad. OSMO, through its proprietary AI platform LOC8, is shifting that narrative more towards likelihood of being noticed. Using computer vision and machine learning, LOC8 analyzes real-world video data to measure visibility zones, obstructions, dwell time and perceptual size; bringing precision to how attention is quantified outdoors. It moves the focus from mere impressions to quality of impressions, making OOH a data-verified, attention-led medium comparable to digital in accountability.
On how marketers can use LOC8’s dwell-time, visibility and perception insights to craft more effective, emotionally resonant OOH campaigns.
LOC8 helps brands understand how people truly experience outdoor media how long they look, from what distance, and under what conditions. By quantifying dwell time, visibility duration, and perceptual size; marketers can plan campaigns that align with real human viewing behavior. This empowers creative and strategy teams to design emotionally resonant storytelling where messaging, visual hierarchy and placement are optimized for how people actually notice and process OOH creatives.
About what LOC8 has revealed through campaigns like Renault Triber and Namaste India on how categories such as auto, FMCG and real estate use attention metrics to drive outcomes.
Each category uses attention data differently but all share one common goal: to convert outdoor visibility into measurable engagement.
• Automotive | Renault Triber
For the new Renault Triber facelift, bold creative met data-led planning through LOC8. By analyzing on-ground video data, LOC8 measured real audience attention across placements factoring in visibility zones, obstructions, traffic speed and perceptual size. This enabled Renault to identify corridors that delivered maximum reach, saliency and engagement, optimizing media efficiency and ROI.
• FMCG | Namaste India
In OOH, innovation is the hook and assets are the bait. But bait often hides the hook. With Loc8’s attention metrics, we ensured the bait wasn’t a hurdle, rather it became the perfect stage for innovation to deliver its full impact! The insight proved that creative novelty, when validated by attention data, drives deeper engagement and measurable brand lift.
• Real Estate
For luxury and real estate campaigns targeting HNI/UHNI audiences, attention patterns differ especially between front and rear passengers, who are often the core audience segment for premium sites. LOC8’s ability to distinguish rear vs. front visibility plays a critical role here. It helps identify sites that offer longer viewing windows and stronger perceptual dominance from the rear seat where decision-makers are most likely seated making it a key differentiator for premium and trust-led categories. Together, these insights prove that auto optimizes for impact, FMCG for recall, and real estate for trust visibility showing how attention metrics adapt to category goals while ensuring measurable outcomes.
On how attention analytics will shape the future of brand storytelling and media planning as OOH becomes more digitised and data-driven.
As outdoor digitizes, attention analytics will inform not just where to advertise but how stories are told in public spaces. This evolution transforms OOH from a static broadcast channel into a dynamic attention ecosystem, where creativity is optimized through evidence-based insight.
On how LOC8’s data-led framework helps marketers quantify OOH impact and make outdoor a more accountable, ROI-driven medium.
LOC8 bridges the gap between intuition and evidence. By quantifying metrics like visibility duration, attention opportunity index, and visual saliency rank, it allows brands to benchmark site performance and justify investment. This data-led approach brings transparency, comparability and ROI measurement to a medium historically driven by perception.
On how OSMO ensures AI and computer vision enhance creativity rather than reduce it to numbers.
OSMO believes that technology should enhance creativity, not overshadow it. LOC8’s attention models reveal what naturally draws the human eye helping creative teams refine design cues, contrast, and visual hierarchy for greater impact. By merging art and science, LOC8 empowers creativity with intelligence.
About the creative best practices and design cues LOC8 has uncovered regarding what truly captures consumer attention outdoors.
LOC8’s visual cognition analysis has surfaced clear patterns across campaigns:
• High contrast and minimal messaging outperform cluttered designs.
• Motion cues draw significantly longer dwell times.
• The first two seconds are critical, creatives must establish focus instantly.
• Contextual alignment between the creative and its environment increases attention by over 30%.
These learnings offer a scientific foundation for creative effectiveness helping brands design OOH that’s visually magnetic and emotionally memorable.
On how attention metrics will integrate into omnichannel planning where OOH, digital and social work together for unified brand impact.
Attention can become the unifying KPI across OOH, digital and social to creates seamless storytelling continuity, where outdoor triggers digital engagement. The future of omnichannel planning lies in attention-led integration ensuring that campaigns don’t just reach audiences everywhere but truly capture and hold their focus.
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