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Indian broadcasters are selling old wine in new bottles, as they launch general entertainment channels (GECs) that beam seasons of archived television shows. Such channels have far lower operational costs; they give a new lease of life to old content and add to the muscle power of the network. Glorious television seasons of the past are brought alive on the small screen, and such shows find new audiences. The Hindi GEC genre game is no more limited to one flagship channel within the given network.
Viacom18, the 50:50 joint venture between Viacom Inc. and Network18, is launching its second GEC Rishtey in India early next year. First launched in the UK in September last year, the free-to-air channel telecasts re-runs of Colors’ (Viacom18’s flagship channel) popular and old shows including Jai Shri Krishna, Bairi Piya and Jeevan Saathi for now. Says the official website of DD Direct Plus, "DD Direct Plus added a new general entertainment channel ‘Rishtey’ to its channel line-up by replacing Test 308 channel. Rishtey is a new entertainment channel from the Viacom18 Group. The channel is a test feed and it is going to be officially launched soon.”
When contacted, Viacom18 declined to comment on the issue.
Now, should Rishtey continue to air re-runs of Colors’ shows on its India feed too, it will be the second launch this year and the third entrant in the Indian television space to focus on recycling the content library. However, it must be noted here that Viacom18 is yet to announce the content line-up for Rishtey’s India feed.
Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd launched Zee Anmol in September this year, making it the first launch of 2013 that focuses on exploiting the network’s library. It airs old Zee shows such as Pavitra Rishta, Choti Bahu, Saat Phere, Naagin, Maayka, Kasamh Se, Sindoor, Jhansi ki Rani, India’s Best Dramebaaz, Shabaash India and Dance India Dance. Star Utsav is, of course, the first in the category which has been in existence for a very long time.
So, why launch a channel to telecast repeats? ZEEL chief creative and content officer Bharat Kumar Ranga’s comments put some light on this. Earlier at the launch of Zee Anmol, Ranga had said, “The television viewing universe has expanded by leaps and bounds over the last few years. So the content of Zee Anmol will be first-time consumption for a vast majority of viewers across smaller towns where cable and satellite penetration is still picking up. Our shows will reach out to fresh viewers across every television household in the country and thereby expand the reach of the network.”
The number of cable and satellite homes in India has grown from a 100 million base in 2010 to 150 million in 2014. Hence, the new 50 million homes have not been exposed to content that ran in the past.
“It’s obvious therefore to dedicate a channel to take care of this new incremental base. Star Utsav is a classic example of the success of such a model. Between Star Utsav and Zee Anmol they are garnering 50% of ratings delivered by a second-rung GEC channel,” says Divya Radhakrishnan, managing director, Helios Media.
A channel typically spends R8-12 lakh for 30 minutes of original programming. Now, if the show has run consistently even for a year, the channel would have spent crores of rupees on creating the episodes. However, even with such heavy investments made, the show appears just once on the channel, maybe twice as part of the repeat schedule. Now, if a network chooses to launch a channel to re-telecast these shows, it has the potential to attract additional gross rating points (GRPs) with no extra investments made.
Says Akash Chawla, marketing head—national channels, ZEEL, “For any GEC, the major cost is content. Since we have taken that content from our ZEEL library, it is already amortised. We have focused on marketing and distribution as the two key investment criteria and are already at par with rival channels with regard to audiences sampling the channel and we see a positive return on investment (ROI) going forward.”
Interestingly, the move is quite similar to the movie-acquisition strategy. Explains R S Suriyanarayanan, associate vice president, Initiative, a media buying agency, “When a channel acquires a movie title after paying huge sums of money, it has to justify the buy. Therefore, it does not show the movie just once but exploits it through multiple airings. Similarly, networks are now trying to capitalise on their huge library of content which are enormous in investments but are lying idle.”
With cable digitisation, the reach to smaller markets is increasing, each market presents an opportunity of its own. Now, if a channel like Star Utsav or Zee Anmol is able to penetrate into these hinterlands and attain even a 50-60 GRP mark, then it could be at par with similar GRP grades (such as UTV Movies and Sahara One), which are used as frequency builders. In turn, the advertisers could redirect their monies (about R 2000 for a 10-second spot) to these re-run channels to tap into the given demographies.
Radhakrishnan says, “The content cost is zero and infrastructure-wise the channel will ride on the network’s strength. So the main physical outflow of investments would be on distribution. Now, such kind of channels will have to be free-to-air. Hence, it should be easier to distribute them.”
When the Past becomes the Present - Financial Express
Viacom18, the 50:50 joint venture between Viacom Inc. and Network18, is launching its second GEC Rishtey in India early next year. First launched in the UK in September last year, the free-to-air channel telecasts re-runs of Colors’ (Viacom18’s flagship channel) popular and old shows including Jai Shri Krishna, Bairi Piya and Jeevan Saathi for now. Says the official website of DD Direct Plus, "DD Direct Plus added a new general entertainment channel ‘Rishtey’ to its channel line-up by replacing Test 308 channel. Rishtey is a new entertainment channel from the Viacom18 Group. The channel is a test feed and it is going to be officially launched soon.”
When contacted, Viacom18 declined to comment on the issue.
Now, should Rishtey continue to air re-runs of Colors’ shows on its India feed too, it will be the second launch this year and the third entrant in the Indian television space to focus on recycling the content library. However, it must be noted here that Viacom18 is yet to announce the content line-up for Rishtey’s India feed.
Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd launched Zee Anmol in September this year, making it the first launch of 2013 that focuses on exploiting the network’s library. It airs old Zee shows such as Pavitra Rishta, Choti Bahu, Saat Phere, Naagin, Maayka, Kasamh Se, Sindoor, Jhansi ki Rani, India’s Best Dramebaaz, Shabaash India and Dance India Dance. Star Utsav is, of course, the first in the category which has been in existence for a very long time.
So, why launch a channel to telecast repeats? ZEEL chief creative and content officer Bharat Kumar Ranga’s comments put some light on this. Earlier at the launch of Zee Anmol, Ranga had said, “The television viewing universe has expanded by leaps and bounds over the last few years. So the content of Zee Anmol will be first-time consumption for a vast majority of viewers across smaller towns where cable and satellite penetration is still picking up. Our shows will reach out to fresh viewers across every television household in the country and thereby expand the reach of the network.”
The number of cable and satellite homes in India has grown from a 100 million base in 2010 to 150 million in 2014. Hence, the new 50 million homes have not been exposed to content that ran in the past.
“It’s obvious therefore to dedicate a channel to take care of this new incremental base. Star Utsav is a classic example of the success of such a model. Between Star Utsav and Zee Anmol they are garnering 50% of ratings delivered by a second-rung GEC channel,” says Divya Radhakrishnan, managing director, Helios Media.
A channel typically spends R8-12 lakh for 30 minutes of original programming. Now, if the show has run consistently even for a year, the channel would have spent crores of rupees on creating the episodes. However, even with such heavy investments made, the show appears just once on the channel, maybe twice as part of the repeat schedule. Now, if a network chooses to launch a channel to re-telecast these shows, it has the potential to attract additional gross rating points (GRPs) with no extra investments made.
Says Akash Chawla, marketing head—national channels, ZEEL, “For any GEC, the major cost is content. Since we have taken that content from our ZEEL library, it is already amortised. We have focused on marketing and distribution as the two key investment criteria and are already at par with rival channels with regard to audiences sampling the channel and we see a positive return on investment (ROI) going forward.”
Interestingly, the move is quite similar to the movie-acquisition strategy. Explains R S Suriyanarayanan, associate vice president, Initiative, a media buying agency, “When a channel acquires a movie title after paying huge sums of money, it has to justify the buy. Therefore, it does not show the movie just once but exploits it through multiple airings. Similarly, networks are now trying to capitalise on their huge library of content which are enormous in investments but are lying idle.”
With cable digitisation, the reach to smaller markets is increasing, each market presents an opportunity of its own. Now, if a channel like Star Utsav or Zee Anmol is able to penetrate into these hinterlands and attain even a 50-60 GRP mark, then it could be at par with similar GRP grades (such as UTV Movies and Sahara One), which are used as frequency builders. In turn, the advertisers could redirect their monies (about R 2000 for a 10-second spot) to these re-run channels to tap into the given demographies.
Radhakrishnan says, “The content cost is zero and infrastructure-wise the channel will ride on the network’s strength. So the main physical outflow of investments would be on distribution. Now, such kind of channels will have to be free-to-air. Hence, it should be easier to distribute them.”
When the Past becomes the Present - Financial Express
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