Executive Dossier

‘People are turning to the BBC as a source of global perspective on world events’ : Rupert Gavin Chief executive of BBC Worldwide’s

Published

22 years ago

August 2, 2004

For Rupert Gavin, BBC Worldwide’s chief executive, a trip to India seems linked to announcing a new programming initiative with Star India.

Last year he was in Mumbai in the middle of October to announce a licencing agreement with Star for the popular British television serials Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister for broadcast in Hindi as Ji Mantriji and Ji Pradhanmantriji respectively. Ji Mantriji is currently running on Star but Ji Pradhanmantriji seems to have gone into permanent cold storage.

This time round (25 October to be exact) it was to announce The Weakest Link, the biggest programming hit to come out of the BBC Worldwide stables in the last decade.

The largest non-US, English language television programme producer and exporter in the world (2000-01 programme sales increased from ?138m to ?150m), BBC Worldwide is still in the build phase as far as India is concerned, Gavin says. It is building the brand, building its presence so that it will be in a position to make investments. Once that happens, maybe India will contribute more than the 2 per cent it currently does to BBC Worldwide’s sales.

In an interview with indiantelevision.com’s Thomas Abraham, Gavin outlined BBC Worldwide’s plans in the changed scenario post-11 September.

Post September 11, has there has been any particular change in strategy, how has the business model changed?
Since then, a lot has changed. Obviously our news programming, our news channels, have gained a lot. The world market has opened for documentaries. See, we probably have some of the best documentaries on Bin Laden, Al Qaida (the chief suspects in the attacks on the World Trade Centre). Nobody wanted them eight weeks ago. Now suddenly people who were not aware of these guys’ movements are showing interest in buying these documentaries.

We are also aware of a shift in demand to a slightly more serious, more factual programming ethos. I think people’s attitude to life, certainly in the West, has changed.

Is there a transformation in people’s demands, are they more interested in trying to figure out what is happening outside America?
Big transformation. We have a lot of demand because a lot of the American papers have been writing that America’s television news has become exclusively domestic. And certainly people are turning to the BBC as being a source of global perspective on world events. They are sad events no doubt but they have had a very significant and positive impact on us.

Obviously, the advertising market has been precarious. But the advertising market has been precarious all the way round the world. And that has an effect on us. But we will have to see how that shapes through.

‘We are interested in bringing in more BBC channels, or channels in partnership with other people’

As a long term effect?
Whether it is a long term downturn or whether it is just a cycle.

What do you propose in India? Last year, there were a lot of things happening. There was also talk that you were in discussions with the Indian government regarding investment plans in broadcasting. What came of that?

We are still in discussions. It has been very a turbulent market and some of the changes that were going to take place did not. DTH, things like that, due to tight government restrictions. We are interested in the investment market in India. But things will have to move a little faster.

What projects are you looking at other than these?
We are interested in bringing in more BBC channels, or channels in partnership with other people. We are also interested in the radio market.

We are also expanding our publishing operations. At the moment, our publishing is gaining partnership with Penguin and the Noddies with Egmont.

From our perspective, and the traditional way that we work, is to expand by way of working with existing players on a licensed basis.

When we build on a sufficient scale in the market, we will start investing as well in infrastructure.

That is the programme of activity – we are in the build phase, which is why we are doing things with Star. Which is where Teletubbies and Noddy come in, as well as Ji Mantriji, the books with Penguin. We are actually building the brand, building our presence and that will help us to be in a position to make investments.

Any concrete investment plans?
Bring in channel operations. We are also looking at the possibilities of Radio, and publishing, maybe even magazines.

These will be BBC publications printed in India for sale in India?
Yes.

As far as radio is concerned, do you have that kind of cachet in India? I think radio as a medium seems to have lost out.
We are primarily on short wave, with a certain amount of FM redistribution. But that’s all. We have got to get to a stage where it is accepted that BBC news can be broadcast on domestic channels.

Basically FM? Is that what you are looking at?
That’s right.

‘We have got to get to a stage where it is accepted that BBC news can be broadcast on domestic channels’

But you say you have a small band on FM. Could you elaborate on that?
I think we must be having. It’s not my particular area but we do have a range of partnerships for FM redistribution around the world. Or, a lot of people are listening to us on the Internet. But obviously for India, the bulk of our dependence is on short wave.

Talking about your short wave listenership, have you tracked that in any way? Has it gone down?
It has remained pretty steady, actually. It’s surprising that. It’s not increasing but it’s stable.

Any numbers?
It’s around 30 million. It’s very substantial considering that our total weekly listenership to the (BBC) World Service around the world is around 153 million.

What do you think about broadband, the Internet? Even in the West, it has not taken off, leave aside India.
We are the biggest Internet content provider outside America. We just keep pumping out internet content. We use more video content than any other internet provider in the world. And that’s part of the service we provide.

As people’s connections get faster and faster, their appreciation of our service also gets better. But we’ve always been ahead of the curve. That’s why we have all of our radio channels on the Internet. That’s why we have all of our news bulletins, a lot of our video archives on the Internet. We have more video and audio on the Internet than any other media company in the world.

What about the revenue model? That’s the question any Net-based venture confronts today.
The majority of is publicly funded. That is our unique difference. We are able to do that because of public funding.

What about BBC’s current investments in India, is it increasing… decreasing?
Increasing. I can’t give you any figures though.

What about worldwide sales figures; what is coming out of Asia and how much is the contribution of India in percentages?
It’s modest. Of our total worldwide sales it’s about two per cent.

And Asia?
Asia is more substantial. Asia is about 15 per cent, but that includes Australia, which is a very big market for us. Bear in mind that 50 per cent of our sales are in the UK

Still? But wasn’t that the sales break-up average in 1999? You were thinking it would go up weren’t you? But it hasn’t really gone up.
No it has. The international is now above. So we have moved from international (sales) being about 45 per cent to about 55 per cent. That’s been the change over three years.

Related Topics:Al Qaida BBC Worldwide Bin Laden FM indiantelevision.com Ji Mantriji Ji Pradhanmantriji Rupert Gavin Star India Thomas Abraham

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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.

Published

5 months ago

January 27, 2026

indiantelevision.com Team

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

Published

6 months ago

December 3, 2025

indiantelevision.com Team

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.

Published

7 months ago

November 28, 2025

indiantelevision.com Team

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.