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indiantelevision.com Team
MUMBAI: In a move that is bound to add muscle to its movie library, Star India has entered into a movie syndication deal with rival Viacom18.
As per the deal, Viacom18, which runs Hindi general entertainment channel Colors, has offloaded 500 of its Hindi movie titles to Star India for an estimated Rs 4.5 billion.
Viacom18 was aggressively building up its movie library as it was planning to launch its own Hindi movie channel. However, with competition, rising acquisition costs and a mounting internal debt, the company decided to defer the launch plans.
Star India is already a major player in the Hindi film space with over 700 titles in its library. Moreover, the company has started to premiere big-ticket movies on Star Gold, the movie channel. It has also taken some bold steps like reducing the ad breaks and airing 6 movies daily, which has forced other players to change their business models.
Talking about the deal, Star Gold general manager Hemal Zaveri said, ?This is the first of its kind deal that we have entered into.?
Colors spokesperson said, ?As part of our overall strategic plans, we have off loaded part of our film library. We still have a large library and have also kept enough runs to take care of our main channel needs.?
The most pressing need for the group companies, TV18 and Network18, is to reduce their debt load. ?For Viacom18, the deal makes sense as its launch plan has deferred and it allows the company to monetise a part of the library. Also, the amount directly reaches to the bottomline,? a media observer said.
To a query on Viacom 18?s strategy for acquiring films for Colors in future, the spokesperson said that they would look at acquiring new movies on syndication if and when the need arises. However, the company is still holding on to the plan of launching the movie channel. ?The movie channel is an integral part of Colors? growth
strategy and we will revisit our plans at an appropriate time,? the spokesperson said.
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