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UTV Movies plans to ramp up content, signs syndication deal with Viacom18
indiantelevision.com Team
MUMBAI: UTV Movies, the Hindi movie channel from Disney UTV stable, is ramping up its content as it seeks to grow its share in a competitive three-player genre dominated by Star Gold, Zee Cinema and Max.
The channel had recently signed a limited telecast deal with Viacom18 Motion Pictures for 38 titles beginning with Cocktail. The deal includes titles like Oh My God, Khiladi 786, and Yamla Pagla Dewaana part 2 amongst others.
The long-term deal includes the nine titles that Viacom18 had acquired from Eros in July last year for airing on its Hindi general entertainment channel Colors.
Earlier last year, UTV Movies had inked a syndication deal with Star India for 115 films which included Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, RaOne, Golmaal 3, Dabang, Houseful, and Khatta Meetha.
This along with big titles from Disney UTV Motion Pictures on limited telecast basis, the channel believes, will help it bring freshness to the content. Disney UTV Motion Pictures is a sister concern and The Walt Disney Company India?s movie production arm.
?Apart from the limited telecast deal with Viacom18 Motion Pictures, we also have an understating with Disney UTV Motion Pictures that we will have access to limited telecast of their movies. So if you add UTV Motion Pictures and Viacom18 Motion Pictures they cover a significant amount of new movie releases for us,? Disney UTV executive director movie channels and channel distribution Sameer Ganapathy tells Indiantelevision.com.
The movie premieres of blockbusters is what gives viewership spike to the Hindi movie channels. While UTV Movies has consciously stayed away from big movie purchase game, at the same time it wants to air big-ticket movies via syndication deals to give viewers a dose of new content.
?Whether it?s a GEC or a movie channel, offering new content has become regular part of the business. That was one part where we were slightly deficient. We have overcome that deficiency by adding this layer of new titles through this limited telecast deal,? he asserts.
Ganpathy says that UTV Movies will continue to stay away from big movie purchases and focus on limited telecast deal as it works well for its business model.
"We will pursue the limited telecast deals because it suits our business models better. We currently don?t need those movies for more than a limited time of a year because we just need to fill the gap for a particular time during the year. We are not looking to acquire titles on an exclusive basis. Having said that, should there be a compelling title which becomes available and suits our business needs and our budgets we will certainly make a good and fair bid," Ganapathy avers.
UTV Movies currently has over 1,100 titles which includes 300 movies, the licences for which will open up in 2014. "Right now, we have 800 active movies,? he reveals.
Ganapathy adds, "The concept of Hindi movie in television business is more of content aggregation concept which is to find the right title from the right licensor. We do make significant investment in acquiring future libraries that we think will add fair amount of value to the channel."
A consumer survey done by UTV Movies to gauge the viewer preferences revealed that family and comedy are two genres that work very well with viewers.
"We are now building our portfolio as far as family and comedy is concerned and in the next three months we will acquire some more library titles to make sure that our library title in that genre becomes stronger," Ganpathy reckons.
