JYOTSNA VIRIYALA, VICE PRESIDENT, STAR MOVIES
We can not afford to be a laidback channel, so we creat a lot of buzz which instills freshness into the channel
How has been the journey of Star Movies in India?
Star movies is the no. 1 channel in the country. Journey of the channel has been good in India especially when the CBS mandate was in a rush. Even today it’s going great with a 40% market share in terms of viewership.
Who is your target audience?
In demographic terms our audience primarily resides in 8 metros. We are not specifically active towards any particular gender, but yes, we primarily look at viewers in the age group of 15 to 34. We look at SEC A & B. All our content is decided on basis of these demograpics.
How do you differentiate yourself from your competitors?
To be a premium English movie channel, the strength of my product offering lies in how well I cater to what the viewers want to see. Today I have ‘Die Hard’ franchisee, HBO has ‘Mission Impossible’ franchisee and Warner Brothers has ‘Lord of the rings’ franchisee, but all these are block buster Hollywood movies. So it is extremely difficult for a title driven category to have something which is differentiated on basis of personality. And it does not make sense also. More so for the fact that we are operating in a genre, which is niche. So what we do is stay relevant and contemporary to create a lot of buzz. We can not afford to be a laidback channel, so we keep on doing lot of action, which shows that the channel has a lot of buzz, be it on online touch points or on TV itself.
How have you positioned yourself in the market? Do you any specific positioning strategy for DTH?
See, we are a movie channel. But in India English is consumed very less as compared to Hindi and other regional languages. That’s why we are still a niche player... So it’s all about the English movie channel service. Talking about our positioning on DTH, we don’t have anything like specific positioning to DTH. It’s just a platform. Be it analog, digital or DTH, channels do not need to have a different position for a platform.
What factors do you consider while selecting a movie title? How do you decide on the repeat rate?
Importance of a movie title generally depends on how big a movie is, or how much time and money we have spent to acquire it. Also there may be some titles where we know that the movie will do good or that it has a decent repeat shelf life. So such titles automatically move up in our priority list. To acquire these titles we choose a number of different platform and media vehicles. But yes, sampling happens, because English movie channels cut across several demographics due to specific genres like action, romance, drama, comedy and so on. Moreover, every airing has natural repeat rate and it entirely depends on the title. For example, a title like Wolverine, the repeat rate will be a lot different from some other title like Project A.
What are your future plans? Do you intend to diversify into serials?
Future plans! Yes, there are many plans in the pipeline. Though I do not have the liberty to disclose now, I can say that the channel will soon come up with something very exciting. About diversifying in serials, we don’t believe in it. Movies have made us no.1 and through this only we will continue to grow further.
We can not afford to be a laidback channel, so we creat a lot of buzz which instills freshness into the channel
How has been the journey of Star Movies in India?
Star movies is the no. 1 channel in the country. Journey of the channel has been good in India especially when the CBS mandate was in a rush. Even today it’s going great with a 40% market share in terms of viewership.
Who is your target audience?
In demographic terms our audience primarily resides in 8 metros. We are not specifically active towards any particular gender, but yes, we primarily look at viewers in the age group of 15 to 34. We look at SEC A & B. All our content is decided on basis of these demograpics.
How do you differentiate yourself from your competitors?
To be a premium English movie channel, the strength of my product offering lies in how well I cater to what the viewers want to see. Today I have ‘Die Hard’ franchisee, HBO has ‘Mission Impossible’ franchisee and Warner Brothers has ‘Lord of the rings’ franchisee, but all these are block buster Hollywood movies. So it is extremely difficult for a title driven category to have something which is differentiated on basis of personality. And it does not make sense also. More so for the fact that we are operating in a genre, which is niche. So what we do is stay relevant and contemporary to create a lot of buzz. We can not afford to be a laidback channel, so we keep on doing lot of action, which shows that the channel has a lot of buzz, be it on online touch points or on TV itself.
How have you positioned yourself in the market? Do you any specific positioning strategy for DTH?
See, we are a movie channel. But in India English is consumed very less as compared to Hindi and other regional languages. That’s why we are still a niche player... So it’s all about the English movie channel service. Talking about our positioning on DTH, we don’t have anything like specific positioning to DTH. It’s just a platform. Be it analog, digital or DTH, channels do not need to have a different position for a platform.
What factors do you consider while selecting a movie title? How do you decide on the repeat rate?
Importance of a movie title generally depends on how big a movie is, or how much time and money we have spent to acquire it. Also there may be some titles where we know that the movie will do good or that it has a decent repeat shelf life. So such titles automatically move up in our priority list. To acquire these titles we choose a number of different platform and media vehicles. But yes, sampling happens, because English movie channels cut across several demographics due to specific genres like action, romance, drama, comedy and so on. Moreover, every airing has natural repeat rate and it entirely depends on the title. For example, a title like Wolverine, the repeat rate will be a lot different from some other title like Project A.
What are your future plans? Do you intend to diversify into serials?
Future plans! Yes, there are many plans in the pipeline. Though I do not have the liberty to disclose now, I can say that the channel will soon come up with something very exciting. About diversifying in serials, we don’t believe in it. Movies have made us no.1 and through this only we will continue to grow further.
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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2010.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).
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