Forget bollywood on the big screen and television sets. Entertainment companies are creating content exclusively for mobiles and the internet.
While 56 million regular Net users in India spend at least four hours every day on the Internet, only 30 million people watch TV for two hours a day. TV viewership is falling, and sharply so in the big cities,” says Abhigyan Jha. He would know. After all, as co-founder of Undercover Productions and creator-director of Jay Hind!, the first ever TV show made exclusively for the Internet, Jha has been researching — and eyeing — the Web space closely. What’s more, he’s also succeeding.
Jay Hind!, regarded as India’s first stand up comedy show on the Web was launched as a bi-weekly offering on August 15, 2009, and has completed more than 75 episodes. Each episode — ‘webisode’, in this case — is divided into four segments complete with three short commercial breaks. In February 2010, the show recorded 30 million hits. “The ratings on the Web are more transparent than the television rating points (TRPs). Every hit on the Net is recorded by video servers. The growth has been phenomenal and exponential,” says Jha, adding, “From 10,000 views on the day of our launch, we now have 200,000 views every day and while 20,000 hits are on YouTube alone, the views on mobile devices have crossed 5 million.”
While the Indian media and entertainment industry continues to grow at a steady pace (according to a recent Nielsen Survey report, the industry will grow by 28 per cent this year), the buzz around 3G-based convergence is also heightening the excitement for companies venturing into the Web entertainment space.
Not surprising, then, even established names are launching their products in the new media space. Take Balaji Telefilms, which is exploring space beyond the small screen. Promoted by Ekta Kapoor, the production company, best known for its family drama soaps on Indian television, recently partnered with Aircel, India’s fifth-largest mobile communications service provider, to launch India’s first interactive detective audio series (or ‘audiosodes’) called Kriminal Kaun. “This being the modern phase of telecom, multi-functionality of the telephone while engaging with the youth through entertainment is our prime focus now,” says an Aircel spokesperson. The ‘audiosodes’, with rather tacky names, including Crime in Fashion World, The Trap, Wedding Night Murder, to name a few, allow Aircel users to subscribe to a service that lets them listen to mystery stories told in Hindi or Tamil. The series revolves around the character of Inspector Avinash who solves murder mysteries and crimes. While the first segment gives listeners a synopsis of the story, the second focuses on the investigations, the third segment allows listeners to guess the culprit, and the fourth and final part allows Inspector Avinash to reveal how he solved the crime. The detective series is available to users of Aircel at a charge of Rs 30 per month as subscription and 10 paise per minute. Interestingly, other telecom operators, too, are exploring such ventures. Vodafone, for instance, collaborated last year with ACK Media, India’s leading entertainment and education company for young audiences, to present Amar Chitra Katha series as an audio drama series.
Why is there a sudden boom in alternative entertainment? Puneet Kinra, group CEO, Balaji Telefilms, says: “Considering the busy lifestyles of Indian consumers, it’s important to offer entertainment on the move. With ‘audiosodes’ mobile entertainment will no longer be restricted to just gaming and music.”
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Manish Agarwal, CEO, UTV New Media, makes an interesting observation. “The concept of ‘audio recreation’ comes from our childhood days when we used to ‘listen’ to movies on the radio.” Keeping this in mind, UTV New Media last year launched a unique product, Audio Cinema. As the name suggests, it showcases an hour-long narration of movies with some of the snappiest dialogues from Bollywood’s classic hits. “The only difference between earlier times and now is that on mobile phones one can play, pause, rewind and forward the content,” adds Agarwal. So, popular dialogues from films like Sholay (1975), for example, are interspersed with nuggets of information. So far, with a collection of 50 films, UTV has an interesting series of ‘audiosodes’ on some of the biggest Bollywood hits starring Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Rajesh Khanna, among others. The facility is available with leading operators, including Airtel, Reliance, Idea, Aircel, Vodafone and others.
Those in the business of launching entertainment in the new media space say that they’re happy with the success that they’re witnessing. Says Agarwal: “With a subscriber base of 1.5 million, Audio Cinema registers 10-12 per cent growth every month with 30-40 per cent of the growth coming from regional subscribers.” Agarwal also observes that the maximum demand has been registered in tier-two and three cities.
With new media promising a wider reach, a lot of people — including actors — are experimenting in the space. Take Sumeet Raghavan, for instance. One of the more popular faces of the small screen, he admits that he was tired of getting the same comic roles on Indian television. When Jha approached him as the host of Jay Hind!, Raghavan admits that he was “wary, skeptical about treading into this unknown and dark territory”. Raghavan, who has also sung the title track of Jay Hind!, explains that the show was initially conceptualised as a television series. “Though I doubted the reach of the Internet, I definitely wanted to do something different and not be part of the usual comedy shows on television. I believe in exclusivity and did the show for my love for challenges. The show is being lapped up by everybody now,” he laughs. Some of the regular segments of Jay Hind! include ‘Laid Night News’ (a spoof on the ‘breaking news’ obsession of news channels), ‘Savita Bhabhi Ke Sexy Solutions’ (a rip-off of India’s first online porn character) and ‘Bhootnath’ (where viewers are invited to record their statements on any issues that affect them). Dr Amitabh Saran, co-founder of Buzzintown.com, an online guide of events taking place in various Indian cities, which also hosts Jay Hind!, says, “India is the third-largest consumer of YouTube. However, there is very little originality in video content. Jay Hind! is fresh, edgier, packed with great content and intelligent humour.” He also adds that unlike television shows, viewers on the Internet have easy access to older episodes as well as new for instant viewing. For the record, Jay Hind! has 10 million page views on a monthly basis and a 2 million-strong registered user base.
“Web is the natural extension of television… Through tools like blogs and video diaries, interactivity is only increasing,” says Aditya Swamy, senior vice president (sales and marketing), MTV (India). The TV channel has been active on the Web page, including micro-blogging site Twitter, and even started an offshoot of its popular show Roadies on the Internet recently. Called Roadies Battleground, it has registered 300,000 hits already. In fact, MTV has been continuously partnering with companies like Vodafone, Yahoo! and Ibibo for their web- and mobile-based shows. IMix with Vodafone, for example, is the channel’s latest venture, wherein users can click on their favourite listed music tracks and mix-and-match to create their own tracks. By mid-July, MTV will announce a host of properties that it will release exclusively for the Internet space. Like MTV, UTV Media, too, will announce exclusive content for the Web forum. In fact, it’ll start by uploading exclusive behind-the-scenes content of Prakash Jha’s Raajneeti.
A whole new world of entertainment is now just a click away.
