Two years ago, it was on air for just 12 hours every day, that too on a single DTH platform. But BBC Entertainment is now a 24-hour channel making serious efforts to grab space in the TV viewing space in India.
Primetime family viewing on the BBC Entertainment channel today includes programmes such as Sherlock, the critically acclaimed contemporary update of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective stories, and Food Super Highway that have helped it reach 17 million households. This is the break that BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), was looking for.
The channel hopes to be in 20 million homes in the next few months. In January this year, the channel brought in new content and Deepak Shourie, director, BBC Worldwide Channels (South Asia), explains how the content was hand-picked for the Indian audience.
He says, “Early this year, the Asia feed was split and the India feed went live with content catering to the lifestyle of our target audience. We now focus on three core genres that form our unique strategy – Factual, Lifestyle and Entertainment.” The channel, he says, is now buying fresher, more unique content to cater to the needs of the India viewer.
That’s why BBC Entertainment, which claims to have a higher female skew than other channels and caters to viewers of English genres (age between 15 years and 34 years), is busy fortifying its distribution in India. Plans include launch of high definition feed for the DTH households. “We are evaluating HD feeds and availability on other DTH platforms besides Tata Sky, Airtel and Reliance Digital,” he says.
Meanwhile the renewed approach to content seems to be working as the channel has attracted over 35 brands such as Pepsi, Honda, Loreal, Tata Motors, IDBI Bank, Vodafone and Tanishq among others. “These are premium brands and coveted advertisers.
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A KPMG report suggests that TV advertising for English channels is around 3 per cent of the total TV ad revenues (around $3.52 billion). “Our content costs are minimal as we source original content from BBC,” says Shourie.
But that’s something that is being done by all its competitors including Star World, Zee Café and Reliance CBS.
According to TAM estimates, the English speaking audience in India is about 72 million and BBC Entertainment views this as a big opportunity.
