It’s one year since India’s largest listed entertainment company – Zee Entertainment Enterprises (ZEE) – unveiled its new roadmap (ZEE 4.0) for a future where the media & entertainment companies are competing with global tech giants. The move saw organisational restructuring where Punit Misra, former chief executive of the domestic broadcast business, was given charge of the entire content piece – TV and digital – as well as international markets. The mandate was to increase market share on TV and build ZEE5, the OTT platform of the group, into a formidable player. In a candid interview with ET’s Gaurav Laghate, Misra spoke about his vision, content strategy and an ambitious target of getting ZEE5 in the top 2 OTT platforms in the country with 50-100 million subscribers.Edited excerpts… GL: As content head for ZEE, are you going to take bold bets or play safe? What is going to be your content strategy for the group?PM: There are no bets as inherent in this question is something that’s not good for business. My job is not to make individual pieces of content. We are in this game to win consistently. We can only do that when we have absolute clarity and an established method by which we will keep creating output that wins the viewers. I am putting in place a strong process, a great team and a set of great partners. That’s what we are after.GL: We are seeing a clear shift in strategy at ZEE5. Earlier you launched many shows, but there was no buzz. But it seems to be changing now, first with ‘Radhe’, then ‘Friends Reunion’ followed by TVF partnership and now Leander Paes-Mahesh Bhupati show. What should one make of it? PM: All the platforms are currently in that phase of establishing themselves. Let’s not forget that it’s a history of 3 years. It is important at that stage of the life cycle of the product to make itself known and understood as to what the platform is. In that phase, the content piece drives that belief more than the platform itself because the content starts to build the perception about the platform. Currently, we are choosing the pieces of content with the same belief system that we are essentially obsessing over the viewer. And we are after 50-100 million users and not 5-10 million. So if that’s where we want to be, it won’t happen overnight. At this stage of its existence, we are very clear and we are putting a lot of design thinking into how we are choosing these content pieces so that we are talking to the right set of consumers and building the perception.Another thing we are doing very consciously is that we are trying to work with a lot of partners who come from this sensibility and resonate with this conversation. GL: So when do you see the perception of ZEE5 changing? Currently, if we take a poll, it won’t be in the top 5. Many users will ask why they should subscribe to the app?PM: Currently, our obsession is that we need to create great content, which gets people to subscribe for the annual subscription and starts building a perception. Our efforts are in the direction that you as a consumer should see us doing what we are doing over the next 6 months and find value in buying our annual subscription. We believe, ultimately, people will have 2-3 apps on their mobile and we want to certainly be in the top 2. That’s where the whole perception about the platform is important. We will get there.GL: Being in the top two is a very ambitious target. By when do you hope to achieve that? A: My boss would want it yesterday, and I am comfortable with that stretch target.Q: In the case of TV, the general perception was that people watch content and not the channel. Is it true in the case of OTT too? Do you think a Scam 1992 would have done the same if it was not on SonyLIV but Amazon or Mirzapur on Hotstar?PM: It’s about the life stages of the platform. In the early stages of the platform, it’s just a brand, you haven’t experienced the product. There are two products – one is the UI/UX, other is the content. UI/UX is hygiene, content is where in the early stages you will decide to buy the subscription or not. And it isn’t about one piece of content; you have to believe in that for the annual subscription. Once the dust settles, you would have built a perception about the platform, and then am I in the top 2 or 3 for it to stay on your device is where you say you have become platform loyal and yet if the content does not appeal, that loyalty is as good as next year’s subscription. So it’s a treadmill and a fallacious argument to say if the platform is more important or content. There is a cycle and then over a period of time it plays one or the other. GL: But the content on your platform ranges from TVF to ‘Break Point’ and catch up of ZEE shows to the ALTBalaji content. It’s like too many different things for building a perception...PM: We are after 50-100 million subscribers and every consumer is a segment of one. If anyone tells me that they will only do only one type of content, I would like to understand the insight behind it. I keep giving this analogy that we are not an investor in one company. As a platform, we are a mutual fund. We are building a bouquet, to talk to several consumer cohorts. I cannot get to 100 million by doing only one type of content. However, as you design your journey you have to craft it in a way that every single step of the way you are building towards that endgame and not somewhere losing the plot on how you will build this journey. It is crucial to get that journey right and that’s what we are after.GL: As you don’t have an international studio backing, does it affect your overall offering on OTT in a similar way to your English entertainment offerings on TV?PM: It again goes back towards our ambition. If my ambition was 5 million I would obsess about it. Because if you want 5 million homes with a certain price point in mind, you will need to compete with that kind of content because as a percentage of consumption, it may be a higher consumption. But when you talk about 50 or 100 million, this may no longer be a big reason for your existence or certainly a big part of your investment.GL: But, the supposedly premium customer is consuming more English content…PM: Strategy is about choices and competing where you have a right to win. It’s as simple as that. Also, knowing what’s my playground? I am playing in a different playground.GL: What do you see as the right content mix for ZEE5… more of originals or syndicated content or films?PM: We are talking about winning 50-100 million and you can only do that by knowing who your viewers are and what they will like. That’s what will give you the competitive edge. That’s the algorithm you must build and DNA you must inculcate if you want to keep winning for the next 50 years. Look at what we have done on TV. You cannot depend on someone else creating that piece of content that you now believe will work. The other thing is we are not playing in one market. By design, we are playing in every language market and every culture is different. That’s the edge we will build. Of course, we will still acquire content including movies, and we will certainly keep our eyes open to content that fits within our design philosophy… but if I don’t have that muscle in-house, I cannot compete to win on a long term basis.GL: How are the recent guidelines for the OTT sector going to impact your content creating abilities?PM: We are very comfortable with the guidelines as I am talking about 50-100 million consumers. I am not competing with the free platforms, where you can search and get anything you want. We are very comfortable with the idea of the new framework. I think where its execution is something we want to keep watching out for, just to make sure that the stated design philosophy is also there in the execution and that it is not something that weighs down heavily on the actual creative processes that people start to hold back on creativity. That’s something that then we as creators have to keep pushing the boundaries. If we then take a step of ourselves not doing it, then we are to be blamed. I would like to stay on the side of the stated objective and then keep pushing our boundaries, as I say freedom within the framework. How much that framework gives us freedom is for us to stretch the boundaries and see. The other principle is self-regulation. We are absolutely clear that this is going to be driven through self-regulation. We are told that is the intent and objective, so we have to see how it plays out. But the responsibility and boundaries to which it gets stretched is something we have to arrive at. We are certainly watchful and I would say cautiously optimistic. The onus is on us. GL: But the creators seem to be worried. Do you think it may result in self-censorship?PM: When there is any change, there are always concerns. When the dust settles and the actual practice happens is where the new framework starts to live. We have to be mindful that we should not allow this to become a constraining factor. Within the framework, you have all the freedom and we have to figure out - as creators - how do we take that framework and keep scoring within that.GL: So coming to TV, ZEE has launched so many channels at a time when people are talking about cord-cutting being a reality and pay-TV being squeezed at both ends. How does that make sense?PM: The world of television has been there and we would know it. But even then, it is only us who have been consistently winning with the kind of things we have done. In the last 2-3 years and even during the pandemic, we have gone ahead and launched new channels. One could have argued that those were the established markets, and yet, we managed to succeed, whether it’s the launch of Keralam, Punjabi, Zest, Picchar, Thirai, Chitramandir or Vajwa. There are so many channels and genres across languages and every single one of them - you can ask the competitors if we are doing well there or not. So it’s a method and design approach in an established industry like TV that we follow and now bringing it also to this new medium of OTT. GL: Yes, new launches have worked, but what about the share in the existing TV pie? Marathi, which has been a stronghold for ZEE, is losing now, so are few other markets?PM: Marathi we have been market leaders for 9 years and currently we are nowhere near where we want to be. It has been a humbling experience for the team. We are going back to the basics and trying to understand what it is that the viewers didn’t like about what we were serving, what they liked. We are evaluating a lot of things and I will say watch this space. The same one could argue about Tamil, where we are battling more for the love of our viewers and we stay focused on what we believe in, which is how do we create the next level of content which will win with those viewers. Last year, sometime in Aug-Sep, somebody said the same to me in the Telugu market. We had dropped from 23% share to 17% share, eight months later we are sitting at 28% share, which has never happened in the past. I think big brands have to demonstrate resilience and bounce back and that’s what we will do.GL: What kind of synergies are you seeing between TV and Digital, and where are you going to focus more?A: We have always been saying that this desire to make it one versus the other is such an unfounded thing. We see huge opportunities for both. TV is still growing with 7% odd growth in TV homes or viewers at a national level. And OTT is growing dramatically. So we see a play with both. They feed into each other. TV content is there on ZEE5 for AVOD users and it feeds into that traffic. So we have the pleasure and privilege of having our viewers experiencing us on TV and as an alternative, on OTT. Which means I have them on my platform. They may not be paying for the content which is behind the paywall, but that’s the job for us to give them content that is attractive behind the paywall that they also choose to subscribe to. But there is a bigger synergy which we are more excited about. The world of content keeps thinking of itself as either content or platform. What we are after is to build a strength which is about knowing people in every market. So, if I am creating content for the Tamil market, I should know the viewer there intrinsically. Then comes the audiences’ preference of either watching TV or OTT or both at different points of time. I am playing in both and I have a creative ecosystem that has to cater to both. So if I can build a meta-skill in my team to be able to understand the hopes, fears, aspirations and cultures of the Tamilian audience, irrespective of what they consume, then add the layer of them as a consumer on TV or OTT, I have to build that meta-skill first and then how we innovate to get that viewer. We are building a strength that will be impossible for many of our competitors to replicate. That is the synergy we are after. GL: Pay TV is under pressure from both ends – the top end is moving to OTT, while the bottom ones are going to free-to-air. In that sense, what are you doing for that TV consumer and is it becoming the lowest common denominator approach?A: I think there is certainly a need for content creators for pay-TV to step out of thinking about what works or what worked. You have got to move with how the narrative around you and society is moving and when they experience different things, it doesn’t mean they will give up certain things. It’s just that their expectations would be starting to shift. Cinema is a great example of that. What worked in the 70s and 80s may not have worked in the 90s and 2000s. You had to keep reinventing yourself to stay relevant. That is why you will find that more and more stories that we are telling, the social context is different. There is a challenge in this country that 95% of homes are single TV homes and this is a spectrum that goes from SEC A to SEC E and a very different set of audience. So we have to look at creative strategies in how we play different time bands, weekdays vs weekends, primetime in the evenings vs primetime in the day we have to create. Those are the strategies that need to be looked at and certainly the kind of storytelling we have to tell. It’s not about one getting squeezed. We are a very large country still under-penetrated on TV. There will be some people who move out, but there will be a huge number of people who will keep coming in. Plus within the stack of the socio-economic class (SEC), there are shifts. So as people keep moving on the spectrum, what are the kind of stories one should tell, that’s what keeps changing.GL: You spoke about SEC A to E and single TV households. So how relevant is BARC in giving the true sense of what people are watching?PM: We as an industry created a certain design philosophy and thought process which remains true even today. The fact is it will be a sample-based study for a country as large as ours. We may say we want 100% data, but who will pay for it? Now while its relevance as a principal stays, it is its execution and the way it’s played out in the public domain is where the challenge is. A smart buyer knows whatever gaps the measurement system may have. Overall, by design, we should stay unsatisfied with a sample-based study and figure out what is better because when you don’t have something, you settle for what’s best possible. GL: The Bombay HC has struck down the second of the twin conditions of the amendments to the tariff order (NTO 2.0). Does this help or bring a lease of life to the lifestyle/premium channels?PM: The whole NTO 2.0, we are still going through the details, but more flexibility on the creation of the bouquet is what we understand as an outcome, which is good. There are still a lot of unanswered questions and at this stage, I think a lot of introspection and understanding is happening. Hence, I am reserving comments right now. But, when NTO 1.0 came, we were all for it. We were the first broadcasters to declare the pricing of our bouquet much before others. We believed that it is pricing as a variable being allowed as a new thing for us and if we build brands – and (Philip) Kotler taught us that the biggest thing about brands is that you can charge a premium vs others because you have a great brand. So we were very excited. I think where we lost a bit of excitement was that it should be open market combinations and that’s where this whole debate has been. But let’s see where it goes.GL: As a lot of channels moved to FTA, so from the content perspective are we confusing between free and rural audiences? Do you think there is a very big audience that is under-served even on TV?A: It’s a mistaken notion that people (we) are serving content as is. Every piece of content that goes on Anmol is relooked at by the team which knows that viewer and we repurpose it. We have never believed that it is something you can serve as is. There are many shows which are hugely popular on our pay platforms that are not taken on FTA. For example, we have never put ‘Saregama’ on Zee Anmol. Now is there a huge set of the audience out there that needs to be served? The fact is that we did go back on the FreeDish platform after a year and three months. And it was for two reasons - firstly because the movement from FTA to pay was not happening as fast as we thought it would. And second, again maybe because of Covid and rural income stress and the fact that the under-penetrated markets seemed to be first coming onto FreeDish and then they might move.So there is the audience and we are all figuring out what the right balanced strategy is to do that. We definitely focus on that audience, which is why we went back on the FreeDish platform. In fact, we have multiple offerings on that platform, perhaps more than any of our competitors.While the content strategy for FTA cannot be the same, equally the P&L part of it is something we are obsessive about as well. I keep using the phrase ‘we do business with sanity, not vanity'. I have no doubt that the power resides with the viewer, doesn’t matter if urban or rural. They will throw you out if you’re not good. The value consciousness of a rural viewer is always more. It’s an open market and a great competitive one.
from Economic Times https://ift.tt/3eoEMJ0
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