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A whole new world of cinema that never existed before for the Indian movie buffs has now come alive. UTV’s World Movies and NDTV Lumière are ready with their goodies to quench your thirst for this new genre of foreign language films. By SURBHI CHAWLA
When Dilshad Master, COO, UTV Entertainment Television Ltd., visited the Cannes Film Festival in May 2007, she thoroughly enjoyed watching the more than 3000 movies from across the globe that were screened at the event. Her only disappointment was with the fact that “India gets to see only movies made in Bollywood or Hollywood, which is such a pity, as there are such great movies being made in the world and we don’t get to see them,” she avers. And that’s when Dilshad got the idea of bringing foreign movies to Indian shores. She started working on the concept in April 2007. And the fruits of ten months of hard toil were indeed sweet when on February 3, 2008, World Movies, the world cinema channel of UTV Entertainment Television, went on-air (albeit with a soft launch).
Patrons of this kind of international cinema – till now – were totally at the mercy of film festivals, to see great French, Italian, Latin or let’s say, feature films in myriad languages, other than English & Hindi (or regional languages for that matter!). And the floodgates have only just about begun to open. Apart from UTV, another Indian media house – NDTV – is buoyant on the potential of bringing videshi films into India. Through its new venture NDTV Lumière (collaboration between NDTV Imagine, Manmohan Shetty and Sunil Doshi), the group seeks to premiere the best of world cinema in Indian multiplexes, immediately following their worldwide release. The films would then be made available through home videos or in the pay-per-view format, and will finally make it to their soon-to-be launched channel, NDTV Lumière.
Vidyuth Bhandhary, General Manager, NDTV Lumière opines, “Currently, the only supply of international movies is renting or purchase of few popular titles or through pirated DVDs. We believe there will always be demand for good cinema, irrespective of which part of the world it is from. We intend to bridge this demand-supply gap and provide ‘cineasts’ with the opportunity to watch good international cinema.” UTV’s World Movies, on the other hand, has taken an entirely different approach. Giving a miss to Indian multiplexes or home videos, World Movies has gone on-air in the first phase itself. Dilshad asserts that the strategy was crafted after positive results of all the test-marketing and focus group discussions. “We’re very clear about the movies that we want. We want the kind of movies that Indians would like to watch – action, thriller, crime, horror, romance, drama – that would click with the Indian audiences. The only pre-condition being that the movies that we get have to be hits in the countries that they were made in,” she explains.
But one important question remains unanswered. Would there be many takers for this kind of cinema? Dilshad enthuses, “The global Indian is all over the place. When we talk in terms of cuisines, people are not just going to tandoori restaurants any more. They are trying out Italian, Mexican or Spanish. There’s a tendency to experiment and people are game for different foreign language movies.” World Movies and NDTV Lumière also need to contend with the prevailing audience perception about these foreign films being boring and intellectually driven parallel cinema. However, Dilshad is quick to differ. “We’re not here to intellectually stimulate your brains, but simply to entertain.”
Small surprise that after a relatively soft launch, World Movies has now launched an aggressive marketing campaign to educate viewers, promote their movies and do away with that ‘intellectual-arty’ image. World Movies has yet to carve its niche in the Indian cable & satellite industry. But, even before the actual TRP wars begin for the nascent channel, competition from existing dedicated English movie channels on Indian television is hotting up. For starters, Star Movies (and later HBO) have adamantly refused to show ads and promos of World Movies on their respective channels.
There’s another cause for concern. Time spent per week by an individual on an English movie channel is witnessing a declining trend. As per TAM data, Star Movies witnessed its share drop from 5.9 minutes each week in 2006 to 4.91 minutes each week in 2007. Plus there has been no increase in ad revenues for these channels in the year 2007. If such is the case with traditional English movie channels, wonder how a foreign language movies channel would fare at the hands of both viewers and advertisers?
Having said that, it does seem a tad too premature to talk about the success of these two channels. Being a paid channel, World Movies has seen advertisers flocking from day one. Even then it would be interesting to watch the kind of ratings these channels would eventually fetch. So the next time you wanna catch a late night flick, drooling over a tub of popcorn, remember that you always have the option of ‘world cinema’ at your disposal.
SURBHI CHAWLA
For more articles, Click on IIPM Article.
Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).
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