Discovery Channel to premier Breaking Point: Indian Air Force Academy
Discovery Channel, India’s leading destination for factual entertainment, is launching a special series on the Air Force Academy as a part of its extremely popular Breaking Point franchise. The new series gives a never seen before look into the training imparted at India’s premier Air Force training institution - Air Force Academy located at Dundigul, Hyderabad which is instrumental in shaping the future Air Warrior
Breaking Point: Indian Air Force Academy was launched at a press conference in New Delhi in the presence of senior officials from Indian Air Force and Discovery Communications India. Air Marshal Amit Tiwari VM, Commandant Air Force Academy, presided over the function.
Breaking Point: Indian Air Force Academy, packed with emotions including grit, pride, fear and utmost patriotism, captures the life of 4 cadets – Mudit Tewari, Priya Sharma, Amogh Bhandralia and Kartik Thakur – who are in various stages of their training at the Academy.
The 4-episode series of Breaking Point: Indian Air Force Academy will premiere on Discovery Channel every Monday starting June 04 at 9:00 pm and on Veer by Discovery, India’s first dedicated military channel, available on JIO TV and YouTube.
The telecast of Breaking Point series on Air Force Academy follows the successful premier of the series on Indian Submariners earlier this year which has delivered impressive results – notching unduplicated reach of 1.7 crore* over the past two months (March 19-May 22) on Discovery channel and more than 59 lakh cumulative views on Veer by Discovery.
Breaking Point: Indian Air Force Academy has attracted marquee advertisers including Mahindra XUV 500 as a Co-presenting Sponsor; Co-powered by Airtel 4G and VIVO Mobiles while Blue Star Air Conditioning and Fortune VIVO are onboard as Associate Sponsors.
Speaking on the occasion, Air Vice Marshal SP Dharkar AVSM, Assistant Chief of Air Staff (Training), said, “The Breaking Point series on Discovery channel has emerged as the go-to series for all defence enthusiasts across the country. We are delighted to work with Discovery as we aim to a) inspire the youth of India to look at the Air Force as a career opportunity and b) inspire our countrymen, offering a never-seen-before insight into the life of an Air Force officer; their journey from a cadet to a Flying officer; the efforts they put in to flying the fighter jets and defend the nation when needed.”
“The Breaking Point series has clearly emerged as break through programming here in India. We are aiming to break the 2 crore unduplicated reach benchmark with Breaking Point: Indian Air Force Academy,” said, Zulfia Waris, Vice-President & Head, Premium & Digital Networks, Discovery Communications India. “The journey from civilian to earning your wings is tough and nerve wracking. Each stage of this course has its own story, its own trials and tribulations and Discovery gives you an all-access pass to witness these transformations.”
Watch Breaking Point: Indian Air Force Academy from 4th June at 9 PM only on Discovery Channel
Shedding some more light on the overall performance of Veer, Zulfia Waris, Vice-President & Head, Premium & Digital Networks, Discovery Communications India told Adgully that Our largest vision is to be a part of a very passionate community in India. Our first outing for the passion community is Military and we started a subscription based model on it. Within 4 months, we have crossed 150K subscribers and that for me is a huge round of success. Our videos are happily appreciated and also we are one of the fastest growing YouTube channels. It is something that we are really proud of. At the same time, we’ve been able to go very deep into the content. We had done various outings. We have recently done Indian Submariners and now Air Force and very soon we will be also looking at women fighter pilots. We have an entire roaster of things coming out and we are very excited about that.
Sharing the kind of research that went behind the content, she said, "I think before anything else you really need to spend time with the top brass of the Air force to understand what these cadets go through and then speaking with the cadets’ help you to structure the storyline that you will share with the viewers. Our first point of research apart from books, internet we have tried to understand what these actual people went through."
"One of the key elements on which discovery works is – “What is India curious about?” and all our pieces are slightly revelatory in nature. Revolution plays really an important role in our storytelling. We try to reveal some unknown facets or things which were previously not known about it." she added.
For Marketing Strategies, she opined, "We have a very robust digital campaign.Other than that we have also looked out at OOH. The Air force has also been very corporative and excited to see the product as well. They are way too happy to help and support us. There are other telecom partners but the thing is we have not confirmed it yet."
"By end of this year you would surely listen one more from our end" she revelaed.
*Source BARC Data; 2+ (All India)