While the Amitabh Bachchan magic seems to have rubbed on to audiences on Sony Entertainment Television, which continues to hold strong as the second largest brand in the Hindi general entertainment space, Bajirao Singham’s prowess catapulted STAR Gold to the top slot among Hindi movie channels this week.
STAR India premiered the Ajay Devgn-starrer Singham on its Hindi movie channel STAR Gold on last Saturday. According to data available with TAM, a television viewership monitoring agency, Singham recorded television rating points (TRPs) of 8.79, the highest ever registered on any Hindi movie channel. Earlier Aamir Khan’s 3 Idiots and Salman Khan-starrer Dabangg had TRPs of 10.9 and 9.2 respectively. But both the movies had been aired in the Hindi general entertainment category and not specifically on movie channels. Robot, premiered on SET Max earlier this year, was previously the most watched movie in the Hindi movie space with 4.11 TRPs.
“Over 35 million viewers tuned in to watch the premiere of Singham on Saturday. The GRPs we have recorded are the highest achieved by any Hindi movie channel in over three years, except when cricket events were shown. We have been working on bringing in quality content in the space and airing movies with shorter breaks to enhance viewership experience over the last six months and that has paid off,” said Hemal Jhaveri, senior vice-president, STAR Gold.
According to sources, the television rights for Singham were picked up for Rs 18 crore. Jhaveri informed, “The response from advertisers has been very good.” While Lifebuoy was the principle sponsor for the screening, Nokia, Smith & Jones, Intel, White Tone also purchased ad space during the premiere.
STAR Gold recorded a whopping 221 gross ratings points in the week ending September 10. The viewership numbers for the movie channel are larger than the 181 GRPs registered by Zee TV in general entertainment.
The broadcaster has tied up with Shri Ashtavinayak Cine Vision to acquire movies over the next two years. While the company declined to share specifics of investments made so far, media analysts told STAR had spend close to Rs 150 crore to acquire movies in the last financial year. The channel’s bouquet now includes blockbusters like Bodyguard, Zindagi Na Milega Dobara, Housefull 2, and yet to be released Ra-One, Rockstar, Bol Bachchan.
Jhaveri added, “We are going to increase the number of movies screened daily on our channel to six. We have also cut on inventory to reduce ad breaks to 12 minutes per hour from the earlier 18 minutes which have ensured stickiness of audience.” The average time spent by a viewer on Singham last Saturday was as high as 106 minutes.
STAR Gold had a channel share of 37.21 per cent in the Hindi movie segment last week, which is an increase of 33 per cent over the 27.9 per cent share recorded in the previous week. Zee Cinema and Sony Max followed with channel shares of 23 per cent and 21 per cent respectively.
