While Viacom awaits a regulatory nod to acquire 50 per cent stake in five regional general entertainment channels (GECs), its Indian joint venture (JV), Viacom18, is helping Prism TV rebrand and bring the GECs into the Colors fold. Starting March 22 through April, the ETV channels will be renamed, one by one, as Colors followed by the regional language suffix (Marathi, Oriya, Bangla, Gujarati, and Kannada).
Sudhanshu Vats, group chief executive, Viacom 18 Media, said the move would build the franchise of Viacom18's flagship GEC, and help monetise the group's GEC bouquet better and make the channels more modern.
The ETV channels are part of Prism TV, a wholly-owned subsidiary of TV18, one of 50:50 venture partners in Viacom18.
Work to align ETV with Colors had started a year and a half ago. Vats said, "The journey with Prism, a separate company for now, has been one of synergies. Synergies in programming saw us adapt Bigg Boss in ETV Bangla and Kannada and the Dancing with the Stars format in Kannada. Some of Colors' marquee fictional shows have been adapted, such as Ballika Vadhu, Uttaran and Madhubala. So, in the last year and half, all these channels responded well in terms of viewership. The logical piece was to look at the next step - to take brand Colors to the regional space."
Before Prism TV took stock a year back, some ETV channels were losing market share, unable to keep up with the contemporary audience.
The regional refresh would get a fillip with new programming and packaging. While for GECs, the core audience consists of females, 15-44 years of age, from SEC A,B,C, ETV's audience was skewed mostly towards the 35-45-year plus, a decidedly older audience. Vats says, "The attempt of the Prism team is to look at those who are 15-25 years of age, a relatively younger skew as 60 per cent of Indians are in that bracket."
Industry estimates put Prism's five-channel revenue at around Rs 300 crore, while the five markets bring in total ad revenues in the range of Rs 1,900-2,200 crore. Vats says that with regional TV channels commanding the second highest viewership (30 per cent to 44 per cent of Hindi GECs), advertisers are bound to come in.
The rebranding comes at a time when Star India, the leading broadcaster, is going deeper with its regional play -- right from cricket World Cup commentary in vernacular languages to acquisitions of sought-after regional channels such as MAA TV in Andhra Pradesh (Telugu) to complete its southern presence across five states.
