It is time for television broadcasters to wake up and rethink their business and branding strategy.

If they have to be successful, channel branding will be the key to their success in the post-Conditional Access System scenario.

Based on this branding, it is expected that viewers will select their most preferred bouquet of channels, which they would like to watch and pay for.

This is part of the continued series of updates on the findings of a syndicated study by ORG-MARG on the preferences and perceptions of consumers towards the proposed CAS and their choice of television channels resulting from it.

Surveying consumer preferences within channel genres shows that the most likely and preferred bouquet that a viewer would like to have and pay for are Star Plus, Star World, Aaj Tak, Zee Cinema, Star Sports, Discovery and Channel [V]. Sony was not included within the scope of this study.

The need for distinct and effective channel branding assumes greater importance when viewed in conjunction with viewer apprehensions regarding the implementation of CAS.

Today, viewers largely have programme loyalty and not channel loyalty. This is because the channels have not effectively communicated about themselves to the viewers.

Says Srinivasan Raman, vice-president, AC Nielsen ORG-MARG, "It is evident that channels like any other branded product or service needs to focus on building brand relationships rather than announcing ad hoc programming changes which may or may not be sustainable in retaining viewers and commanding a premium."

The study uses Winning Brands TM, the brand equity measurement system to gauge the depth of a channel-viewer relationship.

The study shows that while Star has managed to top the general entertainment and sports genre, Star News falls a fair distance behind Aaj Tak because few of its viewers claim a preference for it or recommend it to others.

Even among movie channels, Star Movies loses out marginally to Zee Cinema in terms of regular viewership and brand recommendation.

It is evident that in the CAS regime, channels as brands will become synonymous with a certain genre of programming.

This, combined with price sensitiveness, will lead to wary viewers selecting their viewing bouquet of pay channels carefully.

This means that broadcasters will have to carefully define and correctly communicate their brand offering and differentiate it from their competitors if they hope to be included in the viewers preferred set of channels.