How ZEE5 is gaining traction with its bullish push for Telugu content

With the tremendous surge in content consumption across OTT platforms, there has been a significant uptick in content generation, especially in regional languages that are widely spoken in the Indian subcontinent. With back-to-back superhits in Telugu, ZEE5’s regional hold is growing stronger and to add to it, and the OTT platform recently added another blockbuster – ‘RRR’ – to the list of hits available on the platform. With an extensive range of Telugu shows and movies, ZEE5 is disrupting the Telugu entertainment industry and growing its dominance in the market. Riding on this wave of content consumption and following an aggressive approach, ZEE5 is all set to announce its Telugu content slate for the year.

In conversation with Adgully, Anuradha Gudur, Chief Cluster Officer-Telugu, ZEEL, speaks at length about the new Telugu content slate, how dubbed content is helping increase the viewership base and much more.

Speaking about Telugu original content on ZEE5 till date, Gudur said, “As of today we have around eight original content lined up. But in the coming year, we have a line-up of 16-plus Originals. What we are tabling today is around 11-plus original content line-up. So, it’s almost like one or two shows releasing every month.”

Elaborating on how these Originals are making ZEE5 a differentiator amongst the diverse competition, she said, “Firstly, nobody is offering this scale of content. Second, is the size itself, and third part is the kind of people we have associated ourselves with to be a part of this exercise. We have producers who have had great experience in films, like ‘Bilrajugaru’ director Harishankar Pravin Sakhar Garu, and writer Kona Venkataro who has written ‘Satya’. We have directors like Anandranga, who are writing content for us. We also have a lot of debutante writers who have shown great enthusiasm as well as great creativity in coming up with very nuanced regional writing. I think that is the space which the competition probably would not be able to match up in terms of both the scale of the content, the size of the content, the nuanced narratives and also the themes that we have picked up. Genre wise also there is a very distinct offering. We have Romcoms, family dramas, thrillers, high stories and socially relevant themes like honour killing. We have a story like ‘Mahishkana’, which is set in rural Andhra in the 90s. We also have a legal drama called ‘Black Court’, which talks about the legal system.”

Shedding light on the growth of Telugu content in the last one year, she said, “Viewership has grown significantly. It is almost 5.2X in terms of active viewers for SVOD, and if you see overall, it is almost 3.2X overall active viewers – the subscription in Telangana has gone up by 1.5X, while in Andhra Pradesh it is up by 1.8X. It is a significant growth for us in terms of the overall numbers.”

When asked about ZEE5’s strategies behind balancing the TV and the OTT Original content, Gudur said, “We believe that there is an overlap of audience, because we have natively been AVOD and we don’t want to de-market by saying this is going to be a distinct single viewer who is going to watch content in isolation. But we see the offering as a very group-watching kind of content. It could be friends, family or anybody. Hence, the strategic approach to marketing or selecting content has been to what it is it that we have failed to reach out to in the earlier narratives that we can do for those OTT spaces. So, definitely the viewership profile itself is slightly distinct.”

Talking about the market that ZEE5 will be focusing on for its upcoming Telugu slate, Gudur said that the platform will be focussing across regions. “We have some which are pitched from Rayalaseema, but I think the interest would be like how ‘Mirzapur’ worked for the rest of India. I think being nuanced only makes it seem real, so it doesn’t kind of demarket the rest of the viewers from watching it, but I think they get much more connected because they get to see a region which they have not seen up close. We have a lot of stories which are set in Rayalaseema, a couple of them in urban techie companies in Hyderabad. We have a couple of stories coming from interior Andhra, one in Bundor, one in Rajmantry and there are a couple of stories which are set in the slums of Hyderabad, which is the old city slum. So, it is a combination actually. We are there in each space and we have covered almost most of the regions.”