'We customise 30% shows for India'

Gregory Ho, vice president, marketing, AXN Asia was in India to promote the channel's new Hot 'n' Wild contest. The contest is a lead up to a new reality-based weekly series the channel is planning to air in December. Ho claims the show reflects the channel's commitment to the Indian market. It has earmarked $100,000 for the talent search. Ho discusses AXN's India plans with Yusuf Begg.

Does AXN have enough viewers in India?
Across Asia 25 million people tune into AXN on a monthly basis. And half of this comes from India.

So India is an important market?
Yes, in Asia, India is important. We have different programmes for viewers here. For example, in South-east Asia, animation is the pillar of our programming. But not so in India. Indians find Japanese animation totally unappealing and alien. Basically, for India 70 per cent of our shows are shared while the rest are customised.

Do you believe in localisation?
The bulk of our shows is international. We honestly make no apologies for it. That's what our viewers want.We are here to serve an audience that wants the very best of international programmes in English.

For strategic reasons our parent company Sony Pictures has SET as a brand for the local market as opposed to AXN which is for the international market. There may be elements of local relevance and localisation. I think Sony Pictures has big plans for AXN. It is trying to build up AXN as an international brand.

How much money do you make out of India?
Frankly I can't tell you how much money we make in India. But I think we're doing pretty well. The revenues are equally broken up between distribution and advertising.

How do plan to build the AXN brand?
Unfortunately we do not have the resources that some of the other networks have. And we're a young brand. We are trying to build ourselves up through quite a bit of "ground events". We're trying to make ordinary people our brand ambassadors We think this sort of channel loyalty is as effective as advertising.