COLORS Kannada entrenches itself as leading Kannada GEC

Reflecting the distinctive culture and traditions of Karnataka through its differentiated content, COLORS Kannada has been a steady Numero Uno for past five and a half months in its market. Leading in both fiction and nonfiction genre for the last five and a half months, COLORS Kannada today owns six out of the top 10 shows Kannada GEC space. What is more, 19 out of top 20 slots of the weekly top program chart also belong to Colors Kannada. ‘Agnisaakshi’ is the top show for the channel and the market while the other five tops shows include Anubandha Awards 2015 (EVENT) and Fiction dailies - Puttagowri Maduve, Lakshmi Baramma, Akka and Kulavadhu.

The channel was a Number four player when it initially came under the Viacom18 fold in 2012 but grew to be one of the top two players after the first season of Bigg Boss. With its rebranding to COLORS Kannada in April 2015, the channel further built traction and went on to become the one stop for entertainment in the market.

When asked about the factors that has driven the growth of channel, Ravish Kumar, EVP Viacom18 and Project Head – Colors Kannada, Colors Bangla and Colors Odiya says, "Talking about last three years, what made us no. 1 is the journey which involved constant innovation, fantastic production values, lot of risk in experimentation and with regards to providing best content. It is the effort, hard work, innovation, passion of everyone...the entire ecosystem. The efforts of every single person are seen on screen. The journey took us a while and started with Bigg Boss two years ago. It triggered the change in the way people perceived the channel and it started changing for better. The market loves reality and so we introduced Bigg Boss which was hosted by superstar Sudeep. Then we went on to adapt popular Fiction shows like Balika Vadhu and Madhubala. So we started out with remix and then with original content. We did occasional movie premiere also”.

After the second season of Bigg Boss on a rival channel, the third season now returns to COLORS Kannada- setting the stage for the next spurt of growth and further widening the gap between competition and the Number 1 position.

The channel is not only focusing on sprucing up its programming, but also paying attention to maximizing its consumer connect. Ravish Kumar says, "Serial Sante has helped a lot. What we do is to take fiction stars to cities like Bangalore for on-ground engagement. It also provides a platform for audiences to ask questions. This creates on ground engagement and entry is totally free. What started as 4k is now 10k plus. Now the channel has dominant position and on air promos on our own channels work well to promote on-ground activities. When stars become bigger, ratings also improve. Now we do one such event every month. Serial Sante is also shown in the channel as a three hour programme.”

He adds, “It is a win-win situation for us and advertisers to build viewer engagement as Serial Sante is both on air and off air event and advertisers want to engage audience in multiple ways. So from core marketing strategy, we are providing experiential marketing also. Down the line, when we are looking at smaller cities, we might look at local advertisers as well.”

Ravish Kumar believes that a channel should not depend on a single show but strengthen its entire programming. He states, “Key driver of our channel is the innovative content. We provide around seven hours of original content on weekdays catering all target audience i.e. be it be youth, housewives or senior citizens. Definitely it’s different for weekends as there's a movie premiere and reality shows. Also, I would say the team is doing a great job. We have an energetic and enthusiastic team. "

The channel plans to bring in more innovative content and would be soon launching three new shows in evening slot.

Top 10 shows

Non Fiction shows on Colors Kannada

Events of Colors Kannada

Market Share of Colors Kannada