When things were spiralling out of control at Star India in 2006, the then News Corporation COO, Peter Chernin, on a visit to India, asked him what he thought was going wrong. Mr Shankar, who was then MCCS CEO, gave Mr Chernin his unedited opinion. Soon he was called to Hong Kong and, to his surprise, asked to take over.
His big takeaway? "As CEO you should not pretend to be what you are not. As a content person, I have realised that the way people connect to content is the same for news or entertainment," he says. Mr Shankar had walked into Star without ever having watched a soap opera, and he admitted it. "I met the content team and told them that I don't know anything about programming. But I have one skill, asking the right questions. And I will use that to solve this problem [of Star's falling popularity]," he says.
Some of the problems were obvious. Star and other broadcasters had overdone the kitchen politics and metro-oriented programming. Cable and satellite had spread to small towns and rural India but Star was not capturing that audience. Some problems were less obvious. "The place was frozen, people were living in denial," says Mr Shankar.
One of the first things he did was sever ties with Balaji. That signalled the beginning of a transition that is still going on. Several experiments later, came a slew of shows that resonate better ' Satyamev Jayate or Saathiya. Plus there is this pan-India focus, not just geographically but with new channels such as Life OK that target segments of the Hindi audience. And there is the regional push. From five per cent, Star now makes over one-fourth of its revenues from languages other than Hindi and English, making it the only national broadcaster of size after Zee.
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