Dipping ratings,draping new trend,stealing the show

Television Audience Measurement (TAM) has just released viewership data for news channels after a 13 week break. The News Broadcasters Association had asked for TV ratings to be suspended till March in order to adjust to the changes brought about by digitization. The viewership for the news genre has fallen by 3 percent - for English news channels it is a drop of 15 percent and for Hindi it is down by 7 percent. Pavni Mittal gets reactions.

Creating buyers through advertisement: The auto industry body Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) has announced December sales figures. The 12.5 percent dip last month, the biggest since the 19 percent drop we saw in August means that growth rate for fiscal 2013 may end up at a low of between 0 to 1 percent. This confirms the fact that it has been a really rough ride for the auto industry which continues to be one of the top 5 spenders in both television and print media. Animesh Das gets the auto industry to spell out the marketing challenge this year. Meanwhile, Storyboard gave out the Storyboard Auto Commercial of the Year Award on Friday at the Overdrive Awards which was held in New Delhi. Volkswagen and DDB Mudra Group picked up the award for best car commercial of the year for the 'Parsi' film for both the Polo and Vento. Suzuki India and RK Swamy BBDO picked up the award for best bike commercial for the Hayate. The winners were picked by a panel of ad agency creative heads. Draping a new trend: Fashion designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee who is known for his Indian wear and for dressing actors like Vidya Balan and more recently Sridevi in their movies, has picked up cudgels on behalf of the sari. In a new CSR initiative he has launched saris starting as low as Rs 1,800. The aim is to popularise the sari and save the livelihoods of weavers. Pavni Mittal puts this initiative on Noticeboard.