Adgully Exclusive | We are looking at adding 400+ titles to the library: MOVIES NOW's Ajay Trigunayat

In just less than a week post its launch the channel captured around 38% market share. The channel thus clearly placed itself as a strong competition to the existing players. Now a little over two months after starting operations the channel has showcased some big properties and has plans to multiply its library with over 400 titles towards the end of this year.

Adgully caught up with Ajay Trigunayat, Channel Head, MOVIES NOW, to find out more about the content strategy and the distribution plans of the channel.

Talking about the clear cut roadmap for the channel, Trigunayat says, "We wanted to launch a very strong number three English movie channel and then about in six months time we had a roadmap to become the number one. So to an extent even we were taken by a pleasant surprise because the channel ratings have gone up significantly. As we stand today we are contemplating at how do we increase our channel share, consolidate it further. We believe in being a holistic brand. Firstly we are looking at what are the internal resources that we can maximise on and then we will look at plugging in external resources."

He identifies the TG for the channel as viewers of cable and satellite both in the age group of 16 to 35 years but extending upto 15- 44 years consisting of both male and female. MOVIES NOW has various partnerships and which includes deals with MGM and Fox. "There are three more partnerships which are in the pipeline. Currently we have a library of over 300 movies and we want to build upto an approximate of 400 plus titles," he adds.

Further sharing the content strategy for the channel, Trigunayat says, "Content strategy is very simple, we align ourselves to what the viewer wants to watch. We have done a significant amount of research and data analysis on TAM. Further we combined it with a lot of external data and then we chalked out a content strategy. Data is a very important insight into our content strategy and we keep doing it time and again. We analyse the content much more thoroughly than the existing players. In the beginning we also faced flak for not being available across certain platforms but frankly we are available to 90% of our viewer base."

However the channel has not been available on some of DTH platforms and faced flak to some extent for that. But Trigunayat explains, "I think distribution is determined by reach, so today we match the reach of Star Movies. Star Movies has a reach of about 16-19% and our reach is around 16%. Our distribution strategy has been a little different because I think a lot of people get swept away by this perception of DTH. I think which is completely incorrect. If you look at all the data which is available out of every 100 households 88 households are analog. And out of the remaining 12 digital households 4 of these households use digital cable. So within the DTH platform we are available on Videocon, Dish TV and Sun Direct. Moreover a lot of DTH service providers ask a disproportionate carriage fee and thus we feel it is better to utilise the distribution budgets on analog than DTH. Besides, there are five cable networks in the country which provide HD services and none of them are in the main metros across India."

As far as 8 major metros are concerned the channel has made its presence felt and even in 1 million plus towns the channel's reach is about 65%.

When asked about what are the innovative advertising platforms that the channel will be looking at providing, Trigunayat says, "Our whole endeavour is to provide the advertisers a platform that can get them more eyeballs. We might not be necessarily innovative but we just want to be positioned as a platform that attracts most number of eyeballs. The English movie space has grown phenomenally and has grown from 45 GRPs to 75 -78 GRPs. So as category grows more and more brands will have to look at the English movie channels more seriously."

The channel also sees opportunity in dubbing the movie in Indian languages like Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi and Malayalam. "We have plans to exploit a few languages but we will not be looking at it this year," he adds.

Talking about some of the big properties on the channel, Trigunayat says, "Soon we will be coming out with the Pink Panther Festival and we will be showcasing both Pink Panther 1 and Pink Panther 2. We have also launched a major property for women called as Love Boat on Valentine's Day. Where we played six movies back to back which were intense love and romantic comedies. In the month of March we will be showcasing around 25 big movies and there is a lot to look forward to because we will showcasing our martial arts movie library then."

The channel has no plans to telecast any other format except for English movies. "We are very committed to our proposition that we bring the viewers Hollywood in HD," he adds.

Trigunayat says that at present the channel has two important communication strategies. One is to build the brand, the channel is very focused in building a premium brand. So the use of OOH media has really been to build the brand image. The second strategy is to build appointment viewership for which the channel has used print and television media.

So does the channel believe in leveraging itself on the digital medium as the competition channels go ga-ga over their online presence?

Trigunayat says, "We have done some activity on digital but we have not maxed it. We do not believe in creating marketing buzz, we are here to create GRPs, OTS and Channel shares. Qualitatively everybody is talking digital but I think due to the lack of metrics we are not pushing budgets on the digital medium.."

While signing off we ask him what is that he is planning to combat the cricket fever called IPL, he says, "People spend more time on planning time slots than brand building. We are looking at building a very clear cut brand image for the channel. We have been resisting creating properties to build revenue at the expense of viewership. | By Prabha Hegde [prabha(at)adgully.com]