After a poor experience in 2001, the channel has steered clear of big-bang spends and is focusing on profits rather than stars.
At a time when leading Hindi general entertainment channels such as Star Plus, Colors and Sony have roped in big Bollywood stars to grab eyeballs, only one among the top five – Zee TV — has remained firm on its decision to go off the beaten track.
The flagship channel of one of the few profitable TV networks in the country says it does not believe in spending lavishly on stars’ salaries.
Some of these costs are impossible to recover, Zee says. “Signing big Bollywood names and purchasing movie rights at unrealistic costs do not necessarily convert into more revenues. Bollywood celebrities create buzz and capture eyeballs only in their launch week but are not able to sustain it for the entire season,” says a spokesperson of Zee TV.
Many observers, however, say Zee is being once bitten, twice shy. The channel had a bad experience with its first big budget celebrity reality show, Sawaal Dus Crore Ka, featuring Manisha Koirala and Anupam Kher, in 2001. The show had to be pulled out as it did not find favour with viewers.
“The channel tried to emulate the success of Kaun Banega Crorepati in 2000. However, the show was a poor imitation and sunk without a trace even though the prize money was 10 times what was being offered on KBC,” says an executive of a rival network.
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Zee TV has never taken that route after that. Market observers say the channel is making a virtue out of necessity as it seems to be quite content with its number 3 position in the ratings chart (it slipped to number 4 this week after KBC started airing on Sony).
Star Plus and Colors say celebrity driven shows are excellent buzz marketing tools. “We are constantly innovating with our reality show formats. This year we have MasterChef India with Akshay Kumar and we are confident that the show will do well as the format is a hit globally and Kumar has a huge fan following,”says Star India CEO Uday Shankar.
Ashvini Yardi, programming head of Colors, says not only do celebrity reality shows create a buzz, they also drive sampling. “With celebrity reality shows like Fear Factor, Khatron Ke Khiladi and Bigg Boss we get newer viewers. It is true that these are high budget shows, but they are necessary as a marketing tool.”
To its credit, some of Zee’s reality shows have got great ratings without “star power”. For instance, Zee TV’s song reality show Saregamapa (formerly known as Saregama before singer Shaan hosted the show) has been on air for 15 years now and the show continues to get better ratings than other shows in the same genre.
Over a period of time, the show has become so popular that in February 2007, Real Media - Zee TV in Dubai produced and started airing Saregamapa Middle East - Pakistan Challenge 2007 for contestants in West Asia and Pakistan. Zee TV also produces the show in regional languages like Bengali, Marathi, Kannada and Telugu.
“With our dance reality show Dance India Dance (DID) too, we got loyal viewers. It’s not that we are against celebrity judges, but it should make commercial sense,” a Zee TV executive says, adding DID and Saregamapa are Rs 100-crore brands for us. The channel says it is more interested in profitable growth rather than running after eyeballs. One of the strategies for profitability that the channel has employed is to focus more on fiction content and expand its reach beyond India. The channel is present in 167 countries and in FY 10, nearly 20 per cent of its top line was contributed by its international business.
“We have built a mechanism to understand the preference and taste of Asian audience across the globe,” says Bharat Ranga, COO, international operations, Zee. Experts say that only Sun and Zee make money, while others are in the red.
Not just stopping at healthy subscription revenues from markets outside India, Zee TV is also pushing the envelope to generate advertisement revenues from these territories. Recently it tied up with TV rating agency Nielsen in the US to get better deals from advertisers. Nielsen will track the channel's performance in the US. It is the only South Asian network to be monitored by Nielsen.
In FY 10, Zee Entertainment Network posted a net profit of Rs 429.16 crore on a revenue of Rs 1276 crore.