As a channel we always look at profitability holistically: Anuj Poddar

Colors Marathi, the Marathi channel from the Viacom18 stable, has been showing steady growth over the last one year and has become a major player in the Marathi television space today. The channel’s shows across genres – be it drama, romance or mythology – have propelled the channel to the No. 2 spot in the Marathi entertainment space.

Not just in terms of channel viewership share, but in terms of advertisers on board, too, the channel has been witnessing a consistent growth. Some of the major advertisers on the channel today include: Nissan Motor, Samsonite, Hector Beverages, LimeRoad.com, Oxigen Services India, Scholl Piramal India, Cipla, JSW Group, Indian Oil Corporation, PN Gadgil & Sons, and Pernod Ricard India, among others.

Anuj Poddar, Head, Colors Marathi, speaks at length about the phenomenal growth witnessed by the channel, the factors contributing to this growth and more. Excerpts:

AdGully (AG): What have been the key milestones for the channel over the last one year?
Anuj Poddar (AP): It’s been an absolutely phenomenal journey for us. We’ve done far better than I myself, the competition may or may not have expected us to do, but we had hoped for and targeted us to do. If you see in terms of numbers, ratings, we were the No. 3 channel at that point of time. Now we are a dominant No. 2 and giving a close firth to the No. 1 channel on an overall channel basis. If we look at the relative channel viewership share, we had a 15 per cent share at the start of the year; Zee Marathi was a big daddy at 63-65 per cent share. Star Pravah was at 22 per cent share. Zee is now down from 63 per cent to 51 per cent share. Pravah is down from 22 per cent to 12 per cent. And we have grown from 15 per cent to 36 per cent share – a growth of 140 per cent.

If you look at in terms of reach there is just a 5 per cent gap between our reach and Zee’s reach. The growth is happening for us slot by slot, where we are breaking and converting audiences. While you get to see the whole channel, we track it slot by slot. We have four shows that are slot leaders today and when you look at the profile of these shows, they are all very different shows – ‘Kamla’ is a hardcore drama, ‘Assa Saasar Surekh Baaii’ is a romance, ‘Ganapati Bappa Moraya’ is a mythological show, and ‘Mejwaani’ is a cookery show. So we are not dependent on one show.

We have achieved this growth in the last one year without any big ticket tent pole property. We have not done it by stunting or spiking or spending our way through it. We have done in a very solid, stable manner, which makes us consistent and not dependent on any single show.

Coming to the slot by slot point, we have looked at the whole day part – from 7 am till 12 midnight, which is about 17 hours, so 34 slots. In those 34 slots, Zee is a leader in 17 slots, Colors is a leader in 16 slots, Colors and Zee are joint in one slot, while Star does not lead in any of these slots. For me, these are the metrics and milestones.

Outside of TV, if I look at social media, we spend a lot of effort there engaging our audiences. We also get a feedback on how engaged are they with us, our content and our characters. Today, we have reached 1 million Facebook Likes in no time, again we are just neck and neck with Zee over there. In our engagement scores on Facebook, we are No. 1, far ahead of the others. All of these together paint a picture of the rapid growth, the pace of that growth and the quality of that growth. One can just buy their way to growth, but we have not done that, we’ve grown it in a very solid manner with a well-balanced portfolio of content appealing to all TGs and age groups. Therefore, we are enjoying that stability and continued growth.

AG: Any thoughts on launching a tent pole property?

AP: We are not averse to it, we have done it in the past, we will do it in the future. I think tent pole properties have their own value. It just so happened that we didn’t do it this year. If I launch a tent pole on top of this, it gives me more confidence of that doing well for itself rather me being dependent on that to sustain my ratings. So my fictions are doing well, that’s like the icing.

AG: Do you think a tent pole property makes sort of a dent in your profitability?
AP: Not necessarily. Ultimately we are playing a portfolio game. As a channel we have to always look at profitability holistically; you can’t maximise profitability show by show, it will never work. I don’t believe in show by show profitability, I believe in a channel holistic profitability, whatever maximises over a period of time. So I am not against tent pole properties at all.

AG: What do you feel is missing in your bouquet of shows?
 Let me first tell you what we have – we have comedy, we have a dance reality show right now (the reality shows keep changing), we have a cookery show, we have spirituality in both non-fiction avatar and in a fiction format, we a mythological show, we have a romance, we have two hard-hitting dramas, we have big ticket events, we have awards shows, we have our own concerts, we have blockbuster films – I don’t think we have left out anything in our content line-up.

AG: How dependent are you on movies?
AP: Very less, but not by design. Movies are played out typically on Sundays and we have only 52 Sundays in a year and on some Sundays I have my own events. We have created different IPs, which have now got on their own identities. I have my fiction-special episodes that I play on a Sunday. I have a lot of awards properties and a lot of these properties have partners who have partnered with us because they are treating us as a platform of choice. So we looked at almost all the independent awards show properties in the market and they are all with us – from Filmfare Awards to state awards to Sanskriti Kala Darpan, it’s a long list.

So I have 4 or 5 Sundays a month to juggle between an awards show and our own events and music-based properties and fiction special and movies. I have a limited window for movies. Hence, we are not very dependent on them.

AG: With BARC rural ratings now in place, how are you contextualising your content? Has your bouquet increased?
AP: We are very conscious of that. With the change in the ratings universe – and it is not a small change – from being a slightly urban thinking channel, we’ve had to also factor in this audience. So we have consciously started making incremental changes in our programming. But when we do that, we want to do something that will appeal to the rural audience. So all my shows should not have a modern Mumbai household setting – they may watch it for entertainment, but they will not relate to it. So shows like ‘Darshan’ or ‘Sant Tukaram’ will appeal to them more. But while doing that, I don’t want to lose out on my urban audience. So how I strike that balance is the core thing. Therefore, that show has to be made in such a way that either its story or overall character or the look and feel has to be contemporary enough to appeal to a younger audience in urban areas as well.

Thus, when you look at our show ‘Sant Tukaram’, it has a village setting of the olden times but at the same time has the gloss and the sheen, the story grip, characterisation and pace of the story that will appeal to everybody. ‘Darshan’ is a travel show that showcases different temples and places of worship and talks about people’s experiences, etc. But that again is presented in a narrative style that is interesting for all. The places that it covers are educative and informative and offer something new. It is designed to connect to both sets of audiences. So as a GEC we have to cater to everybody.