Viacom18’s Youth Music and English Entertainment cluster, unveiled their content plans for FY22-23. The YME cluster has been entertaining its audience with engaging programming and exciting innovations throughout the year,
The cluster continued its winning streak and witnessed a remarkable growth with 9.8 billion impressions on content across TV, social media and the networks streaming/OTT platform Voot in the past year. The business unit was also able to draw viewers during non-prime time through exciting sports content. The sports content clocked a watch time of 80 million viewing minutes in 2021. LaLiga season of 2021-2022 garnered a cumulative reach of 14 million and a new audience from the rural markets.
YME unit recently launched the Fully Faltoo NFT platform that saw more than 3000 digital collectibles sold out within a couple of hours. The hugely successful marketplace is now set to offer another range of diverse digital collectibles from its iconic brands like MTV, Vh1 and Comedy Central.‘KaanPhod’, a brand-new business division will provide emerging musical artistes an opportunity to showcase their talent. Season one of ‘Mic Test’ on KaanPhod, will introduce 10 promising new artists and their original tracks, which will also be made available for viewers on television (MTV, MTV Beats, and Vh1), social and streaming platforms.
At the virtual meet, MediaNews4U spoke to Anshul Ailawadi – Head – Youth, Music and English Entertainment, Viacom18 on the growth, the line-up of fresh content, the NFT marketplace and much more
Growth in FY22
For FY22, revenue side has been strong and ratings across TV, social and OTT also have been great. We now track metrics that are aggregated because that helps. There’s been significant growth.
Launch of Fully Faltoo
We realised that the touchpoints are fragmented substantially. People are now consuming 30 second content, 3 minute content, 8 minute content, 30 minute content and even one hour of content. And interestingly, it is not different content, it could be the same content done in different forms and different aspects. So we decided to enter this space which is interesting and realized to start creating new monetization across different avenues, through short form video or through clips that we can give out. This is also our way of getting into the creator economy of the next generation of content creators. MTV has always done that. We have always been the guys who brought new faces, discovered them and so on and so forth. It’s just that now that discovery is on multiple platforms. Fully Faltoo will see a great bunch of faces, many well established, many who are new, but definitely most who haven’t necessarily worked with us already. It will offer fun snack able content that you can watch anytime.
Sports on MTV and the Tier3 & 4 connect
We are a mainstream television platform. So by virtue of being on us, you can reach audiences that you possibly wouldn’t have before. And in the case of the NBA, 50% rural viewership is an example of that. In the case of La Liga, it’s more about people who are fans of La Liga and wanted to come wherever it was, and this is what unlocked the markets for us. India is at a stage right now, where, we have been talking about being a multi-sport nation for quite a few years now. Maybe in the next five years, we look back at 2022-23 and say that this was the inflection point, and we have seen that in terms of younger audiences. So for example, a rate of growth of football might be more than another mainstream sport in this country for young kids aged four and five. This is a good time to expose the country to different life experiences and we trying to do that.
The NBA example is mostly HSM markets. Hindi Speaking Markets that you’ve seen, for example, Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat etc. are the markets.
Pandemic and growth of audience
We saw quite a few. But again, we tracked them on TV, OTT and on social. In 2021, we saw 9.8 billion impressions across TV, OTT and social which is more than 20x the TV viewership of the FIFA World Cup the happened last year. In the aggregate sense, we saw numbers weren’t spiking, but it’s not a trend that is too surprising because, we ran across all three. If you are only tracking TV, you would see a substantial difference. When the lockdown hit, viewership went through the roof for MTV Beats.
Launch of ‘Kaanphod’
We had our ears to the ground and a lot of feedback that we got was about people coming up to us and asking us to review their music. We felt that some of the music was really cool and with a little hand holding could go a long way. We therefore decided to design an offering, KaanPhod, where emerging artists come up with a song. We will invest in that song, in the production of that song and the music and then release it on our TV channels, social platforms and streaming platforms and own the IP. It is not a full-fledged music label. It is good for us from a business perspective as well as community perspective. We’re doing what we think we know best.
NFT Marketplace growth
It’s been phenomenal. The first loot collection got fully sold out within 36 hours of launch and we are extremely happy about that. But the secondary trading for some will start now in couple of days. You’re going to hear more from us in this space. We have some fun stuff lined up and are looking at dialling it up further. We will announce more NFTs and you should stay tuned for that.
Branded Content
This is a game where I must say, we are the OGs in branded content. You will see a lot of branded content now, but we have been doing it since 2003. We have organically built in brands into the narrative. We have worked on a lot of projects. There are a couple of associations which we are very proud of. Unwind with Unacademy, Supermodel of the Year with Livon. We did style in 60 with Philips recently with 26 episodes of 2 minutes each. We did a hunt for a Comic Reality show with Center Fresh which turned out very well. This is the legacy we continue to build on. Branded content is core to what we do.
Performance of Comedy Central and fresh content
Comedy Central is very sharply segmented. It has been our spike, through good times and bad. And in the recent past, unfortunately, there have been more bad times than good for most people. So I think that’s a steady companion. What we learned also was that, comedy now means so many different things to so many people. You can experiment in different sub genres and we have mega index space. So ‘Corporate’, for example, is a really interesting show. Paranormal too, is in a very unique space. People haven’t seen this kind of comedy in India and the idea is to make it available.
Implications of NTO 02
As a network, we edged this risk as a long time back. The idea was to ensure that as long as people want to see the content, they will get to see that in a form of their choice. Having said that, NTO 2.0 has come with its headwinds for the entire industry. There are no doubts about it. But I also feel the situation is still evolving. As long as you understand the consumer, you’re able to get to the consumer, eventually you will find a way. Business solutions will come but consumer solutions are always most important. A country like India is too large. And with OTT, we are not realizing, unfortunately, there are obviously a lot of benefits of the medium, but we tend to get caught up in our own echo chambers. In OTT, subscription is some amount of prize, some come at the free supposedly, but they also come at a cost of data. So a country like India, there’s still a lot of headroom for TV.
Out of the box marketing initiatives
With the youth marketing study, we did a sale of merchandise for which the proceeds went to fund Covid rehab efforts. We did something very interesting which is a partnership with an agency on music for Alzheimer patients. We worked with a few hospitals as well. Basically music helps and there’s a bit of science too. Music helps Alzheimer patients build their ability to recall things since they have a lot of memory loss. And for show launches also, you will see some interesting stuff. Roadies is the big one coming out now.
Content line up for FY22-23 across the cluster
Immediately after Roadies, we are going to Hustle 2.0 and then Splitsvilla. We are also working on two new properties. Last year we did ‘Anything For Love’, a new show. This year we will do more. We will work on bringing different and unique content.
