Local fare

TELEVISION: Channels are hoping to woo viewers with dubbed versions of hit international shows.

Feeling as desperate as those Wisteria Lane housewives, but only because you can't understand what they're saying? Don't be. SAB TV has announced that it has acquired prime content like Desperate Housewives, Alias and Lost from Disney-ABC and allocated a primetime slot (9-10 pm) on Fridays for airing this content with Hindi dubbing.

Seventy per cent of SAB TV's audience are in the mini metros and small towns and "international chaska", as the dubbed offering has been branded, will allow the channel to fill a newly-identified aspirational need gap for its target audience in the "Hindi heartland", says business head Anooj Kapoor.

SAB is not the only one seeing potential in Hindi-ising international content. Sahara One is launching an entire channel devoted to dubbed content. And though it is cagey about exactly what content it has acquired, channel officials claim its USP will be its exhaustive repertoire "" from original novelas to sitcoms, drama, kids shows and world cinema.

If there are any precedents for such experimentation, it's only in children's programming. According to Ravi Menon, head of content for Star India, Star will only ever consider the dubbing formula for the kids genre because it transcends language implications, whereas with culture-specific adult entertainment there is always a risk. Star has been airing dubbed versions (Tamil and Hindi) of The Wonder Years for seven years. "On Star Vijay, it gets nothing less than a TRP of two or three even today," says Menon.

It was the dubbing of Hollywood blockbusters in Hindi that set the ball rolling. When Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire fetched domestic distributors close to Rs 5 crore, the incremental earnings were attributed to its release in Hindi and other Indian languages.

HBO occasionally airs Hindi versions of popular English movies. When King Kong, telecast on HBO in January, was the highest-rated English movie of 2007 on Indian television with a TAM rating of 1.32, HBO decided to air a one-time exclusive Hindi dubbed version in May. This, in turn, went on to become the highest rated program for the week with a rating of 0.50 (Source: TAM 5 metros, CS AB 15-44).

A lot, says Menon, depends on the quality of dubbing which, at a minimum, costs Rs 50,000 per episode. He adds, "At a time when all of us are looking at acquiring content in the most cost-effective manner, dubbing is a superfluous cost." Kapoor claims SAB's decision was driven not by cost but by strategy. "We see it as an investment for brand building."

SAB has tied up advertisers like Procter & Gamble, Pepsi and L'Oreal for International Chaska. "Advertisers are understandably tentative because the audience profile is still unclear," says Kapoor.

However, a spokesperson from Discovery Networks "" which has a dual feed system of airing content both in English and Hindi "" believes advertisers categorise consumers more broadly. "They look for deliverables of a certain age or SEC profile; language isn't the decider, aspiration levels are."

SAB is gauging response to its first dubbed show Alias which competes in its time slot against English general entertainment programmes like The O.C. on Zee Cafe or The Apprentice on Star World. "If we touch TRPs of 1 for Alias we will release more content simultaneously," says Kapoor.

Whether SAB and Sahar One's latest offerings create new audiences or pry them away from prime-time English language TV, remains to be seen. Menon is unfazed, "You have to choose content for dubbing very cautiously. There's a reason why a Die Hard movie will work in Hindi and a Desperate Housewives or a Full Monty won't. Having said that, entertainment has never operated by any rules of grammar."