The company, part of the Kavithalaya group (of director K Balachandar), has been doing 60 per cent of time selling for Raj TV. But success in the past months has enabled it to get orders to sell 10 more half-hour programmes for Raj in non-prime time as well as 15 half-hour prime time and 10 half-hour non-prime time for other channels.

From being attached with a single channel, Raj, since May 1999, Cuecom has come a long way and cornered work with Doordarshan in Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai as well as the Eenadu channel in Hyderabad and is now looking to make a foray in Kerala.

"We want to retain the freedom to operate for any channel," said Cuecom director V Chandrashekar who also has plans to extend marketing concepts to internet malls to be set up bythe company in the future. Established in May 1998, Cuecom has 12.5 per cent market share in the Tamil television entertainment industry. The total market here is evaluated at Rs 150 crore. Encouraged by its success in improving the market perception of Raj TV, Cuecom plans to become a leading time seller in the south.

The company started off with a bang, doing time marketing for its own group productions in Sun TV, already a market leader in the south. In the early days of association with Sun, Cuecom prospered. It could get a price of Rs 10,000 for a slot of 10 seconds in prime time for Sun was the favoured channel of viewers. But the real challenge came when due to a disagreement, the Kavithalaya group switched over to Raj and Cuecom followed suit. Raj had a bad market perception. TRPs varied between six and seven points, prime time had no fixed charges and one could start bargaining from Rs 3000 for a 10 second slot.

Though revenues dipped initially this fiscal owing to the migration, the fortunes ofRaj and Cuecom has been rising steadily. Raj TV has improved its TRP ratings to 18 points and has at least 20 logs in the first 50 where earlier it had none.

The channel has also improved its image, its telecast quality, has been proactive and receptive to suggestions from Cuecom which has brought in better viewership. As a result, it commands a better rate for time which varies between Rs 6000 and Rs 8000 for a 10-second slot.

As part of its strategy, Cuecom planned attractive packaging (in terms of graphics, edits by virtue of the expertise of sister company Min Bimbangal) even to serials that did not command good TRPs and succeeded in getting sponsors. Another innovative measure was the kind of gifts given out to viewers. Instead of the usual cameras, watches, gold coins, Cuecom gave free internet connections, free comprehensive health checks at Apollo Hospitals etc which were much-appreciated and utilised.