Mumbai: In the midst of an economic slowdown, Zee Entertainment Enterprises has strengthened its regional portfolio with the unveiling of four new channels this week – Zee Punjabi, Zee Biskope (Bhojpuri), Zee Thirai (Tamil) and Zee Picchar (Kannada).
Zee’s regional presence is across eight regional languages such as Marathi, Bengali, Oriya, and Bhojpuri in HSM and all four southern languages, with 12 SD and 8 HD channels.
With the upcoming launches, the network will be expanding into Punjabi; further strengthening its presence in Kannada, Tamil, and Bhojpuri.
All these 4 channels beautifully portray the extraordinary kaleidoscope of cultures and will continue the journey of winning the hearts of viewers across. With a range of shows that promises to engage with the audience to the fullest.
At the select media roundtable Prathyusha Agarwal, CMO, ZEEL said, “TV had around 183 million households in FY18 and FY19 will be finishing at 197 million. The number is further growing and even the TV audience count has gone up to 836 million which shows that it’s only thriving.”
“The overall TV penetration across India is at 66 percent which still leaves a huge room of growth at 34 percent.”
Talking about launching a GEC channel in Punjabi she said, “These 4 channel launches are to capture the growth in the North cluster and in the South cluster and we saw a huge need gap in Punjab, where there is an 88% market penetration but 18.5 hours of consumption. If you compare that to a Marathi GEC which is 4 hours more, or any of the South channels where time spent per user is much higher, there is obviously an opportunity.”
Punjab has 88% market penetration but only 18.4 hours of TV, which is four hours less than for Marathi. Given that percentage, the audience knowing the language is higher in Punjab.
Adding she said, “It’s a higher refined audience because there’s no Punjabi original content. There’s a huge need gap. And we basically want to make a big dent and create a category. 2019 has gone into delivering in these markets and getting on to new opportunities.
Agarwal mentioned that despite the fact that OTT is growing she mentioned that there are 836 million TV viewers and 68 million OTT viewers on ZEEL platforms. While it’s good to talk about new things, TV still has a reach which is 10 times that of OTT.
“TV reaches 90% of urban India whereas digital reaches 44%. If you look at rural India, TV has a 70% reach and no other media even comes close.” she mentioned.
Talking about the marketing strategies for these launches she said “There will be no ramping up of spends, as we always commit right for purpose spends. We have a large GEC support in each of these markets. Video is the best platform and our network, which gives us 70% reach and 1 hour of consumption daily, is the best there is. So, we will invest in our own channels in a big way.”
