MUMBAI: English movie channel Movies Now, which created an impact in the genre in a short period of time celebrates its first anniversary on 19 December 2011. It is looking at increasing its distribution footprint.

Movies Now channel head Ajay Trigunayat said that the aim is to increase its reach in the one million plus towns. "These are places where products and services are seeing a lot of growth. The focus will be on making the channel available at the right price among operators."

He notes that Movies Now is the only channel in the genre that reports for eight Metros which gives advertisers a homogeneous picture. Some of the other players he says are still not present in cities like Chennai and Ahmedabad.

The channel has now done deals with all the DTH operators - Tata Sky, Dish TV, Airtel Digital TV, Videocon D2H, Reliance Digital TV, and Sun Direct. The question though is what impact cable digitisation will have in terms of distribution costs.

Times Television Network MD, CEO Sunil Lulla notes as per the experience in other markets globally digitisation will result in as re-caliberation of carriage costs. "It is important that you are a strong brand that is present in consumers homes. The Times Television Network owns and operates strong brands. Movies Now, if I may say so, has been a super smash hit. We are a daily habit. Consumers come to see the movie of their choice," Lulla added.

One challenge is that of viewer fatigue with franchises like Rocky and Bond revolving among channels. Trigunayat notes that Movies Now gives at least a two month break to a film. The other challenge is increasing content costs which Trigunayat says have doubled in the past couple of years. This is affecting the period for which a channel holds the rights to a film. "For instance, if earlier you held the rights for three years, today if you want to pay the same price then you will only be able to hold it for a year and a half to two years. It has become a sellers market. Earlier when there were fewer players it was a buyers market."

He adds that when Movies Now launched it challenged the status quo. He adds that most viewership in this genre comes from library content. Action and comedy work the best. "Our philosophy is that if 60 million people watch this genre each week then it cannot be considered as niche. Right from the start we provided the necessary value with HD."

He adds that GRPs for the genre have risen despite the large amount of cricket being played. Also now more library content for film is being exploited with more players coming in. Earlier only 60 per cent of the available content was being used. Now this has gone up and popular films from previous decades air. Movies Now has around 500 films in its library and this will not grow. The only thing is that some films will go out and others will come in.

He adds that the broadcaster has made strides in social media. On Facebook it has half a million fans.