MUMBAI: The Mukesh Ambani majority owned Viacom18 is firing ahead on two regional markets: Kannada and Bangla. Its flanking Kannada GEC Colors Super is all charged up to roll out eight show come 11 June, while Colors Bangla is unveiling a new season of the Who Wants to be a Millionaire format - Ke Hobe Banglar Kotipoti.
The reason: the channel's management is hoping to build up on the momentum the two have been gathering. While Colors Super has grown by 280 per cent in terms of reach and viewership in just the past year, Colors Bangla has seen its viewership double while its reach has gone up from 28 per cent to 40 per cent and its share has leapfrogged to eight per cent. So much so that it ranks third in the regional pecking order after Colors Kannada and Colors Marathi for Viacom18.
"We are the one who understood the Kannada viewers wonderfully and understood what they wanted and we ran out of slots for our ideas. Because our existing shows are doing so good in a way and we have a couple of other plans so we needed another platform to execute them," says Viacom 18 regional entertainment head Ravish Kumar. "The top shows were rating ninth, tenth and eleventh and there is lot of length left in the story, so I had no choice other than launching another channel. You must have seen the same network having several channels of kids, music, GEC but you have not seen a network having two channels of the same genre in the regional space."
The Colors Super offering appears to be a bit of a smorgasbord, spanning genres: socio mytho, family drama, romance, sitcom (which was an ETV Kannada property called Papa Pandu), a legal-based show with CLF for weekdays and two singing reality shows on weekends. These shows will be followed by Bigg Boss Kannada which will launch in September – October. A point to note is that Bigg Boss Kannada, helped polevault Colors Super to the No 2 spot in the non-fiction genre.
A specially created promo 'June Tingalu Super Tingalu' has been hitting the channel for the past few days.
Adds Ravish: "We built up a certain viewership base and we wanted to grow that even further and each one of these shows has helped us to do that. We could have continued with the current line-up. But since we at Colors feel that June is a month of change, we thought of coming up with new shows which I hope people will like more."
With two years being crossed for Colors Super, the channel felt the need for more powerful narration and even giving a break to newcomers. "We liked their talent and decided to give them a break. I hope they will do a good job," says Kumar. Among the old ones are Majaa Bharat and Majaa Talkies with the latter being produced by Kannada superstar Srujan Lokesh. The packaging has been entirely done by Colors in-house team.
The Bengali version of KBC is produced by BIG Synergy with the usual fanfare of a quiz show. The Bangla version will premiere on 16 July 2018, every Monday to Friday at 9 pm. Taking the reigns as the host will be Bengali cinema stalwart Prosenjit Chatterjee.
According to Kumar, the regional entertainment market is extremely dynamic in nature and the viewer appetite for quality content is fast increasing. He feels that Chatterjee is the host with the right mix of intellectual appeal and grandeur.
Indiantelevision.com's Poulami Sengupta spoke to Ravish Kumar on the sidelines of the show launch about the network's plans to expand the Bangla and Kannada markets. Excerpts from the interview
How has Colors' distribution been in the Bengal market?
I think our distribution is good. We are at par with other channels. What we really need to overdrive is the sense of excitement from the brands. This is what we are trying to do with KBC. Over time everyone starts to get very comfortable with their choices- the moment something comes it needs to be different from what is already there in the market. We come from a legacy of ETV, we work hard to modernise it across all our markets to make it contemporary and in line with the footprint of Colors.
Who were the sponsors on board?
The sponsors are yet to be decided. The show is still about 45 days away. So while a lot of conversations are going on, we would be finalising the sponsors in the next 15 to 20 days.
Is the format going to change this time for KBC Bangla?
KBC is the property of Big Synergy. So I think the format will follow the course. The difference comes in when you have different hosts, participants, questions and the emotions behind that.
We will continue to look at the market where we were not present and we will continue to grow in a more meaningful way in the market where we are already present.
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| Viacom18 head of regional entertainment Ravish Kumar |
Why Prosenjit Chatterjee as a host?
So, when we thought of a host we thought of someone who would embody excellence, who people could look up to but at the same time not being intimidated by him. Chatterjee is a fabulous host- he is highly regarded in this market. He remakes himself with every grooming and so have a huge number of fans across Bengal.
What are the marketing strategies?
For all the big ticket shows we have the 360 degree campaign. So we are promoting through print ads, billboards, radio, cross channel promos and also the ground activations. In our case, since we have the call for the entries, so we have already started with the marketing. We will have a nice lead up to the show breaking. We have got about 45 days and we will ensure that all touch points of the consumers get powered. So it's a massive campaign on the backend. Additionally, we also have the calls for entries happening, which, itself is a marketing campaign.
How has KBC's response been from all the Bengali speaking people across India?
We have got a lot of response from Bengalis across India. But the counting is still on as the phone lines are open till today 7.30 pm. So, only after this, we will get the final answer. The promo will go live tonight at 8 pm and now it's open for entries. We are already getting 14,000 to 15,000 entries a day. The promo will only be available on Colors Bangla but the news is going to cut across through all mediums.
The Bengali GEC market is worth more than Rs 800 crore. I am very fond of this market. I think the talent in this market is incredible. This market has evolved a lot. There was a time when this market didn't have much to offer and that changed when more broadcasters came and with them came a variety of genres. The shows are getting bigger and better and the kind of stories and concepts that are coming these days are incredible. This market is absolutely second to none and there are shows from this market that have been remade in Hindi and other languages.
What are your plans for regional expansion?
Right now we have two things in our mind. One is we wanted to expand our footprint market where we were very strong, so in Kannada we launched Colors Super. Then we wanted to do something for that market where we have not set our footprint, so we launched Colors Tamil. On the ongoing process, we continue to follow both these strategies- we will continue to look at the market where we were not present and we will continue to grow in a more meaningful way in the market where we are already present.
What is Colors Bangla's programming strategy for the upcoming festive season?
So we include festive season as a part of our programming line-up. We will have some specials, we will also have events, and we will also have a lot of ground activation. In West Bengal, throughout the year many festivals are celebrated. In Bengali, there is a famous proverb 'baro mashe tero parbon' which means thirteen festivals in twelve months. And we all know that Durga Puja is the most significant of all celebrations in Bengal. Then they have the Poush Mela in December. We will cater to that in our own way- we will have special episodes where that particular festival will get reflected. We also do lots of events and we are planning to do this year as well.
How are you planning to give a tough competition to your competitor channels in the Bengali market?
We have already started giving them a tough competition to them by launching more and more non-fiction shows. If you look at Zee, they tend to follow a certain pattern in terms of non –fiction and they never change their formats and Star Jalsha has stopped doing non-fiction altogether. So I think non-fiction is a genre which a whole family can watch and one should keep on introducing new formats of non-fiction shows.
Who is the target audience for Ke Hobe Banglar Kotipoti?
Our audience is, of course, the families and it's a format where everyone can sit together and watch or play along as well.
