For a long time, Sri Adhikari Brothers was seen as a television production house before it launched SAB (later sold to Multi Screen Media), Janmat (Hindi news channel, renamed as Live India) and Mi Marathi (Marathi news channel).
The company sold all three channels before launching Mastiii, a Hindi music channel in an overtly crowded space.
However, Mastiii changed the fortunes and from one channel, Sri Adhikari Bros has now grown into a five-channel company—Mastiii, Maiboli (Marathi), Dabangg (Bhojpuri), Dhamaal (Hindi movie and teleshopping) and Dillagi (Hindi GEC turned movie channel for the LC1 towns).
Recently, it also entered the film production and distribution space, while future plans include launching a mainline Hindi GEC and a clutch of regional channels apart from a digital content company. TelevisionPost.com’s Gaurav Laghate caught up with Sri Adhikari Brothers group CEO Manav Dhanda to learn about the company’s future plans.
Edited excerpts… Q. Sri Adhikari Bros. already has five TV channels and now you have forayed into film production and distribution.
What’s next? We look at ourselves as a media enterprise and are not limited to one vertical. We plan to expand our broadcast network to about 10–11 channels in the next 12–18 months.
We will announce the plans soon. One of the upcoming channels from the company will be a mainline Hindi general entertainment channel [GEC]. The team has been working for a while on that.
We are very excited about the product that is shaping up. But what it will exactly be like is something we will announce in due course.
Q. Hindi GEC has become a very expensive play. Are you ready for that kind of investment? It is a very interesting and exciting space.
Unfortunately, over the last 4–5 years several channels have come and disappeared very fast, so we are aware of the challenges. There is a lot to learn from both their success and failure stories.
We are a content creation company and we understand our audiences very well. Our strength lies in good content. We know how to read and understand audiences, even when the content is fully duplicated as in case of Mastiii.
Q. Are you prepared to compete with big players like Star, Colors and Zee? Somebody else’ success or failure does not define us.
There is always a place for one more if the product is good, irrespective of genre. Some may say youth and music has 16 channels, but if you are good, you are good.
Q. As per the MIB’s list, you have licences for two more channels, Tak Dhina Din and Mauja Mostii. As I said, the plan is to launch 5–6 channels. The other channels will be focused on the niche and mostly regional segments.
Q. All the channels are free to air (FTA).
Will the new launches be in the same space? I can’t comment on the Hindi GEC, but the other channels will remain FTA. ‘Hindi GEC is a very interesting and exciting space. Unfortunately, over the last 4–5 years several channels have come and disappeared very fast, so we are aware of the challenges. There is a lot to learn from both their success and failure stories’
Q. Is this because FTA channels have seen a great surge in viewership according to BARC data for rural India? BARC has done a great job in getting a fair representation of what India is all about. But I think the question that remains is how the advertisers look at the channels.
Q. How do you see advertiser response? It is very early. The consumption patterns of rural and non-rural audiences are very different.
The products that sell there [rural] and here are extremely different at a macro level. It will be interesting to see how advertisers allocate their budgets to channels and what segments they go after on national channels.
Q. So do you envisage a shift in advertising? Advertisers might not change, but the brands certainly will. For example, we have never seen tractor advisements on TV channels, but they are sold in certain parts of the country in large volumes.
So now they can advertise on TV because there is a measurement in place. Many brands and products have no relevance with the existing measurement system.
Q. When you launched Dillagi, there was no rural data reporting. Did that force you to change the positioning of the channel from a GEC to movies? We launched Dillagi seven months back and it was an early start. It was India’s first LC1 channel. Yes, we changed our strategy to make it a pure movie channel because we realised that there was no measurement system for that market.
When you make original content, you want tracking as well, and with no measurement system for rural, we did not know what to do with our shows. We will evaluate the ratings for 6–8 weeks and see how to take it forward. We sustained the channel for 6–8 months without rural ratings. We will study the audience and take it from there.
Q. With the current line-up of movies, how is it fairing? Our distribution was focused on LC1. It was a long wait for us because we had made an early start assuming rural would come. We waited for a long time before the channel got traction. We were rated on a very low base for a long time as rural was not measured and our distribution was LC1 focused.
Read more at: http://www.televisionpost.com/interview/one-of-the-upcoming-channels-will-be-a-mainline-hindi-gec/ | TelevisionPost.com
