DreamDTH Explains: Disney Star’s peak may be over. Will Reliance (Viacom18) be the new king?

Disney Star’s future: Will India’s largest broadcaster remain under the Mouse House?

Recent developments at Disney since mid-2023 may send alarm bells ringing in corporate offices across the global media sector, with the American behemoth desperately seeking a partner for its Indian subsidiary. Talks are reportedly being held across several interested parties, ranging from Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, which owns Viacom18, to the Maran family’s Sun network which holds sway in Tamil Nadu and has a longstanding presence across South India. The loss of the IPL and many Western shows and movies, as mentioned, seems to have dealt a body blow to Disney+ Hotstar. And yet the company’s CEO K. Madhavan seems to have very ably filled the big boots of his predecessor, Uday Shankar: Disney Star remains in the driver’s seat among Indian broadcasters, and only a move as massive as the merger between Zee and Sony can threaten to dislodge it. Unless Zee–Sony and Reliance put their money — potentially running into hundreds of crores of rupees — where their mouth is, Disney Star’s position does not seem to face too much trouble, at least for the time being.

Table of Disney Star’s channels

First, as we have done several times in the months leading up to the launch of Disney Star’s new channels in March 2023 and the shutdown of existing channels, we present a table of the network’s channels. At 77 channels, it remains the largest broadcaster in the country, but this is only one more than Zee–Sony’s total of 76 — and that’s excluding the 15-odd news channels under Zee Media Corporation Ltd. (ZMCL) which will not partake in the merger. In contrast, Viacom18’s total of 42 appears very small indeed — which includes History TV18 (though it is not technically a part of the joint venture with Paramount Global) and the new Sports18 2 and 3, but not the News18- and CNBC-branded channels, of which there are more than 20.

Analysis of Disney Star’s TV offerings

We briefly go through Disney Star’s genres below and emphasise that it has been the leader in most of these segments, struggling in only certain languages like Kannada and Odia. Few broadcasters have enjoyed the kind of all-encompassing dominance that Disney Star has had across so many genres, from Hindi GEC to sports to most regional languages. We do not discuss its other assets like Disney+ Hotstar or Star Studios.

Hindi GEC: Disney Star’s flagship channel Star Plus is unquestionably the leader of the Hindi pay GEC segment, driven entirely by serials like Anupamaa, Imlie, Titlie, Teri Meri Doriyaann and Faltu, with no reality shows or movies — though it is set to revive its Dance+ dance reality show in December in the form of Dance+ Pro. (MasterChef India moved to Sony TV, which now has the great majority of Hindi reality shows.) Many of Star Plus’ serials are originally from Star Jalsha, its Bengali counterpart, which are also remade across the broadcaster’s other GECs like Asianet, Star Kiran and Star Pravah. Its dominance is such that it is a permanent member of BARC’s top 5 TV channel ratings all over India, alongside its Telugu sibling Star Maa and the free-to-air Hindi GEC Dangal by Enterr10 Network. Colors and Sony Sab are the other Hindi pay GECs that usually appear in the top 10, while Zee TV seldom does and Sony TV almost never — which does not mean, though, that they are struggling.

However, Star’s other Hindi GECs are far less successful. It used to be that Star Bharat and the rural-focused Star Utsav (which airs reruns of Star Plus shows) were available on DD Free Dish, and were among the most popular TV channels in India. However, they were removed in 2019, and Star Bharat has completely lost relevance and ratings. In July 2022, Star Bharat rebranded with a romance-focused positioning, only to abandon it a year later in September 2023 and reposition itself as a male-oriented GEC with emotionally charged series. The future for these two channels is not as bright as it is for Star Plus.

Hindi movies: Thanks to action-packed South Indian dubbed movies, Sony Max was the leading Hindi movie channel for several years, but after the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 — along with BARC ending releasing the ratings of channels for free on a genre-by-genre basis — the situation of Hindi movie channels is no longer as clear as it used to be. Two things are for sure, though: the fall of Sony Max has coincided with (a) the astounding rise of Goldmines (formerly Dhinchaak) among free-to-air movie channels — one of the all-India top 5, thanks to DD Free Dish — and (b) the rise of Star Gold as the leading pay Hindi movie channel in terms of its library, selection of movie channels and differentiation, and its focus on Bollywood movies across all eras and genres over South Indian ones.

Star Gold has an excellent collection of Bollywood, South Indian and Hollywood movies, including an all-important deal with Yash Raj Films (YRF), one of the leading Hindi production houses, whereby all post-2019 releases and several older ones have their satellite rights with Disney Star (and digital rights with Amazon Prime Video) — breaking a decades-old exclusivity arrangement with Sony, which still has most of YRF’s pre-2018 movies. Pathaan, the first blockbuster of 2023, which was produced by YRF, was premiered on Star Gold on 18 June 2023 and grossed the highest ratings of any TV premiere in the year. Brahmastra – Part One: Shiva, co-produced between Star Studios and Dharma Productions — whose movies typically air on Viacom18’s Colors Cineplex — also airs on Star Gold. However, in terms of overall library, Zee and Sony have more premieres in 2022–2023 than Star Gold, including big-budget productions like RRR and Jawan (Zee Cinema) and KGF: Chapter 2 and Adipurush (Sony Max), with more to come.

More importantly, the Star Gold channels have not devoted excessive time to South Indian movies like Sony with its limited Hindi movie channels has done, nor have they repeated Hindi movies over-frequently across secondary channels like Zee often does. This was further amplified in March 2023 with the launch of Star Gold Romance and Star Gold Thrills and an HD feed for Star Gold 2, replacing three channels that used the UTV brand. There are a total of nine channels (6 SD + 3 HD) — the same number as Zee before the Sony merger — also including Star Gold Select which is dedicated to niche, lesser-known movies, and Star Utsav Movies which (unlike Star Utsav) is available on DD Free Dish, along with Star Gold Thrills which focuses on Hollywood dubbed movies.

Sports: The Star Sports network has remained absolutely dominant for a decade, with its cricket-heavy approach, driven by the ‘holy trinity’ of IPL, ICC and BCCI rights. Besides cricket, it also caters to several other sports, including Premier League football, Wimbledon tennis and Formula One racing, in addition to the homegrown Pro Kabaddi League and (until September 2023) the Indian Super League in football. It boasts of a whopping 17 channels, of which five are South Indian — including two new HD channels — and four are Select channels. Its biggest competitor, Sony Sports Network, has a more all-round offering, with cricket coming in the form of several bilateral series, and other sports — from combat sports to football (including all UEFA events) to tennis and many more — occupying more airtime, not to mention quadrennial sporting events like the recent Asian Games in Hangzhou, China, and the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

However, Star Sports’ dominance has slowly started to fade, thanks to the Reliance-owned Sports18 and JioCinema. Despite having only three Sports18 channels at present, Viacom18 has grabbed the rights of many big-ticket properties — from BCCI to ISL to the women’s WPL to the Paris Olympics in 2024, plus the digital rights of the IPL (the broadcast rights remain with Star Sports) — and streamed them for free on JioCinema. Star has been forced to follow Reliance’s lead and stream the ongoing 2023 Cricket World Cup for free on Disney+ Hotstar, instead of paid. Moreover, while the Cricket World Cup still airs on Star Sports, other ICC events may be shared with Zee hereafter, thanks to a sub-licensing deal that depends on Zee’s merger with Sony.

Some Star Sports channels may be deemed surplus if its sporting rights continue to dwindle, and channels like Star Sports 3 and Star Sports First — which was present on DD Free Dish but removed later — could very well shut down like Star Sports 1 Bangla and Marathi did. For that matter, Disney Star cancelled the launch of Jalsha Josh, which would have replaced Star Sports 1 Bangla along with the launches and shutdowns of other Disney Star channels in March 2023, and overall the broadcaster may have to cut down on its sports channels and business further in order to avoid further losses.

Regional channels: Disney Star is the undisputed leader in as many as four regional markets: Telugu (Star Maa), which is among the top 5 TV channels nationally; Marathi (Star Pravah), which is also in the national top 10; Bengali (Star Jalsha) and Malayalam (Asianet). In all these cases, the second-ranked channel is from Zee: Zee Telugu, Zee Marathi — the number one Marathi channel until 2020 when Star Pravah dislodged it — Zee Bangla and Zee Keralam respectively. Other broadcasters like Sun and Viacom18 have suffered from Disney Star’s dominance, with one major exception: the Sun network’s flagship Tamil channel Sun TV remains one of the biggest TV channels in India, with a top-5 ranking like Star Maa, far ahead of Star Vijay, Zee Tamil and others. Nevertheless, Star Vijay still has a respectable viewership, also appearing in the BARC top 10.

Meanwhile the Kannada channel Star Suvarna has a sizeable if modest viewership, though it trails behind Zee Kannada, the numero uno, and Colors Kannada, the previous leader. But the broadcaster’s newest regional market has been a disaster thus far: the Odia-language Star Kiran, launched in June 2022, has completely failed to make any impact in a small but fast-growing market, where Zee Sarthak and the independent Tarang are the main players. It almost never makes it to the top 5 Odia channels, falling even behind another local channel, Sidharth TV, and remains an outlier in the midst of success stories like Asianet, Star Maa and Star Pravah — a possible reason being a lack of good distribution and publicity, since it was only after a year that Dish TV became the first DTH platform to add Star Kiran HD.

Regardless, in the big six languages mentioned above, Disney Star has plenty of supporting movie channels, including Vijay Super and Asianet Movies (which launched HD feeds in March 2023), Pravah Picture (which was launched in May 2022 and also shows old Star Pravah serials), Jalsha Movies and Star Suvarna Plus — as well as both Star Maa Movies and Star Maa Gold in Telugu. (Unlike Star Suvarna Plus, the Malayalam-language Asianet Plus is a secondary GEC, not a movie channel.) Moreover, it has a couple of music/youth channels: Vijay Takkar (formerly Vijay Music) in Tamil and Star Maa Music in Telugu, which are a rarity as Disney Star has almost exited the music/youth genre nationally, barring Bindass.

English GEC and movies: This is probably the only area of non-dominance, if not weakness, for Disney Star. It sharply reduced its presence in the English GEC sector — where it had had a presence since the early 2000s — in March by bringing the shutters down on Star World and Star World Premiere HD, leaving it with only Disney International HD, which airs the US Disney Channel’s live-action teen shows. In a similar manner, Sony’s AXN ceased broadcasting in 2020, leaving Viacom18’s Colors Infinity and Comedy Central to rule this genre, with Zee Café having a smaller presence. In the past, it has closed several other English channels like Star Movies Action, FX and Fox Crime.

Among movie channels, Star Movies has a large offering of Hollywood movies from Disney’s in-house studios — including Marvel and Pixar — besides several others, while Star Movies Select (originally available only in HD before launching an SD feed in March) initially focused more on arthouse movies, like MN+ HD from Times Network and &privé HD from Zee, but has lost that specificity. Their graphics are rather outdated, with Star Movies never having rebranded even once since 2009 — a record among Indian TV channels — and Star Movies Select keeping the same look since its launch in 2015.

Kids, music/youth, lifestyle, infotainment: Disney Star has had a longstanding presence in these niche genres since the 1990s, briefly outlined below.

• Kids’ channels: Disney Star’s kids’ channels were originally operated by Disney India alongside Bindass and the UTV-branded channels, and all these channels were part of the 2019 acquisition of Star by Disney. At present, they are Disney Channel, which launched an HD feed in March; Hungama; Super Hungama (previously known as Marvel HQ, Disney XD and Jetix/Toon Disney) and Disney Junior. These show a mix of homegrown Indian productions and Japanese shows like Doraemon and Shinchan. Previously, Star also broadcast the foreign-run infants’/toddlers’ channel BabyTV in India, but the SD feed ceased broadcasting in June 2019 — along with Nat Geo People and Nat Geo Music in both SD and HD — and the HD feed in March 2023.
• Music and youth: Today Disney Star’s only Hindi youth channel is Bindass, which was also part of the 2019 acquisition of Star. Originally known for its youth dramas, it has now switched to showing only popular Bollywood songs, and its future is uncertain as there are rumours that it may rebrand as Star Utsav 2. Arguably Star’s more famous channel in this segment was Channel V, an iconic youth brand from the 1990s, through positioning shifts in the 2010s to youth dramas and back to music, until its closure in 2018 — leaving Viacom18’s MTV to rule the youth sector. In regional languages, Disney Star has been operating Star Maa Music in Telugu for years, and also launched Vijay Music in 2020 in Tamil, which was repositioned as a youth channel, Vijay Takkar, in 2022.
• Lifestyle and infotainment: In the lifestyle, food and travel niche, Disney Star operates Fox Life — launched as The History Channel in 2003 before several rebrandings took place — which is currently the only Fox-branded channel in the country after the closure of FX and Fox Crime. It may very well drop the Fox brand in the coming years and rebrand as Star Life, as a trademark has been filed for the same. Meanwhile, among infotainment (knowledge) channels, Star has operated National Geographic since 1998 and Nat Geo Wild since 2010, plus several foreign-run channels in the past — Nat Geo People (formerly Nat Geo Adventure) and Nat Geo Music — until they were withdrawn from India in 2019. It also had dedicated Tamil and Telugu versions of Nat Geo, but these were never added on TV platforms and lasted for only a year before being closed in 2020.

Now that we have shown an overview of Disney Star’s current TV offerings, we turn to Viacom18 and the broader Network18 group and explore what they have to offer. While not as big as Disney Star and the Zee–Sony combine — Reliance is absent from certain genres like English movies — it is still one of the largest Indian broadcasters. However, its abnormally limited presence in genres like sports and Hindi movies severely handicap its potential to grow, even as a complement to the booming JioCinema.