 "Network riders")
For almost a year now, ever since BARC began measuring rural viewership numbers and including them in their Thursday line-up of most watched programmes and channels, network mavens at Star, Sony and Zee have been keeping a close watch on the data. And going by the flurry of brand extensions and new launches, it seems that the pieces of the puzzle are finally coming together for the Hindi movie genre for these networks. But the picture for the general entertainment genre is still hazy.
In terms of big screen offerings on the small screen, most networks have put in place a coherent strategy for rural viewers. Brands have been extended to reflect a pure rural focus; Zee has Zee Anmol Movies, Sony Pictures Network India (SPN) launched Sony Wah earlier this year, and Star India has Star Utsav Movies while Viacom18 has Rishtey Cineplex. These channels show a specially curated selection and most are available on DD Free Dish. However for the general entertainment genre, the data is still being decoded as many of the programmes are not available on free to air channels which limits their access for rural audiences.
Playing at home
The new rural focused movie channels are a hit because they play relatively new releases in homes that often do not have access to movie halls. At the launch of Star Utsav Movies in May this year, Hemal Jhaveri, GM, Star Gold, Movies OK and Star Utsav explained, "With the advent of BARC, rural markets took the centre stage with as high as 50 per cent of TV viewership coming from the heartland. Our analysis indicated that there was a clear need gap in this category since 25 per cent of the total viewership came from movies, but the Hindi movie genre share is a miniscule 5 per cent. This is because of the non-availability of good content from the existing Hindi movie channels in the FTA space." Regional movies still claim the lion's share of movie viewership and networks such as Star, Sony and Zee are keen to find a way to expand their audiences for Hindi movies without losing out on these numbers.
The result was an audience segmentation strategy. For example, Sony Pictures Network (SPN) has four distinctly programmed channels; Sony Max, Max HD, Max 2 and Sony Wah. Zee similarly has Zee Cinema, Zee Anmol Cinema and Zee Cinema HD and Star India has Star Gold, Star Movies Utsav, and Star Gold HD. (However, the HD feeds of Star Gold and Zee Cinema are mirrors of the standard definition feed, while Max HD has a separate programming line-up.)
It was important to create a new brand offering for rural audiences so as to not dilute the parent brand. According to data provided by SPN, the segmentation strategy has increased market share for the network's movie cluster to 27 per cent, out pacing Star and Zee (23 per cent market share each). Currently, Sony Wah contributes to 34 per cent of the viewership for the network's movie cluster.
Neeraj Vyas, business head, SPN movie cluster explains, "Rural is an important market, but how we approach it makes a big difference. We have provided content that is relevant to the rural masses and presented it in a way that they find appealing. Remember that these audiences are starved for new Bollywood content since many of the places do not have movie hall for 50-60 kilometres. At times, a movie that is three years old is still new." He adds that as a network, it has helped to have four distinct identities for the movie channels.
Mixing it up
According to BARC, even though urban India offers greater advertising clout, rural viewership is a bigger market in terms of absolute numbers. The rising influence of the rural movie viewer is such that many networks have started premiering blockbusters on movie channels, instead of first premiering them on the GEC's. The logic was that a big ticket film should be first launched on a high reach platform. With movie channels giving them the wide reach, the focus has now shifted.
Are advertisers willing to invest in inventory on these channels? "Sadly, that is not the case. The genre has been undersold for a long time and we need to see a spike of more than the 15 per cent increase," says Vyas. The cluster has added some advertisers with consumer goods players like HP and e-commerce players like OLX, and Go Daddy coming on board, but the numbers are still small.
Vyas hopes that advertisers will realise that rural audiences have the potential to shift the overall viewership towards women in the genre. "Traditionally, movie channel viewership has been male skewed. But in the rural areas, the dynamics are different. While men may go out frequently, most times, women remain at home, and so for them, these channels offer an opportunity," adds Vyas.
Interestingly, even though the segmentation strategy adopted by the channels is not entirely new. Star and Zee had that before the introduction of rural data by BARC. At the time the objective was not to increase viewership, but to provide advertisers with more inventory and beat around the '12 minute' rule which stipulated the commercial time to be sold per hour. Now with new data and the growing popularity of these channels, the networks find they have more to lure advertisers in with. However the networks have not made a similar switch with GECs though given the success of their movie channels, it is possible that they will relook at their content strategies here too. For that to happen, more brands will have to bite the rural bait.
