Muhammad Saigol, Director Content, Creative & Strategy, DawnNews talks to Marylou Andrew about the changes at the channel.

MARYLOU ANDREW: The DawnNews colours have recently changed; was this a cosmetic change or is there more to it?

MUHAMMAD SAIGOL: The best place to start is with our overarching philosophy, which is to build on the credibility we own through our legacy from DAWN newspaper. However we also want to refresh our identity. Our new vision statement is to enlighten, which means to educate, entertain and thereby open minds. In terms of colours, we have slipped away from the solid blue into an arrayed diversity of colours which speaks to the diversity of our viewpoints. We wanted to say that we are not only going to give you facts, we are also going to provide you with analysis, infotainment and entertainment. So it is more than a cosmetic change, it is about refreshed thinking and the sea of colours embodied in our logo represents the possibilities, openness and credibility we stand for.

MLA: Why did you decide to include a Turkish drama in the new line-up of shows?

MS: We wanted to refocus our commitment to our audiences and in our opinion someone who watches the news is not necessarily distinct from someone who watches entertainment programming. Saazish, our Turkish drama, is not like the romantic Turkish dramas aired on the entertainment channels; it is a suspense filled thriller about an abduction, which we felt would connect with our news oriented audiences. What we are doing is to give our audiences more options.

MLA: Is DawnNews going to be an infotainment channel in the future?

MS: No, we will still stick to news and analysis, but we are adding variety in the shape of lighter programming on the weekends when there isn’t that much news anyway. We are not ending our commitment to providing in-depth analysis, but you will see bolstered infotainment. There will be a new morning show in August and there is a new sports show as well as several lighter but informative shows. Our objective is to ensure that whatever the programming, our audiences will be able to take away something from them; it should not just be fluff time.

MLA: Are you concerned that your ad campaign which is heavily promoting Saazish will give the impression that DawnNews is shifting towards entertainment?

MS: Although, in the beginning, this was a concern, the fact is that we wanted to communicate the idea that we are more than just news and we felt confident that if people did think we were moving towards entertainment, once they tuned in, they would see that we are still solidly news, but now offering an entertainment component. We went out strongly with the entertainment component in the campaign because we felt that had we pushed our current affairs programming along with it, the entertainment part would not have registered.

Creating a connection: Saazish is not a romantic drama, it is a suspense filled thriller to connect with news oriented audiences.

MLA: Are people still as interested in watching news and current affairs as they were a year or so ago?

MS: People are still interested in the news and in this market there will always be a need for accurate reporting and in-depth analysis, and as far as we are concerned news will continue to retain its primacy. However, there is a gradual shift towards entertainment programming and this is something we want to address. Our objective is to claim this space in preparation for future trends.

MLA: Who is the DawnNews viewer?

MS: The current DawnNews viewer is middle-aged, mostly male and better educated than the audiences of most of our competitors. We are now trying to bring in a younger segment. Neither are we excluding women and we have programming for them, although of course there are plenty of women in Pakistan who are interested in news. We have noticed that we skew predominantly male although we incorporate women in everything we do. Two of our main anchors are women and we are very proud of that.

MLA: Have you taken into account the fact that a lot of young people are now watching TV online?

MS: We have online streaming and we are working with dawn.com to build a video first site. Of course no one wants to watch a 50-minute video online, they want just the highlights, so we will be repackaging almost all our content into online-friendly, digestible formats that work in that environment.

MLA: How do you expect these changes to impact advertising?

MS: Positively; advertisers have traditionally opted for news channels because not much has been happening on the entertainment channels, until recently. Advertisers are receptive to the idea that there is a channel that straddles both and they are very comfortable putting their spend here because they know we are in that in-between zone in which audiences currently find themselves. The proof is that we were able to get sponsors for Saazish before it went on-air.

MLA: Where do you see DawnNews headed in the short to medium term?

MS: We will continue our strong news coverage; that is central to our identity both as a channel and as a Group. But there will be a lot of different types of programming especially on the weekends and that is probably where it will stay, although we are not ruling out adding it on weekdays as well.

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