MUMBAI: The regional arm of Viacom18 contributes to 25 per cent of company's growth. It is no wonder then that one of its leading regional channels, Colors Marathi, has increased its market share from 20 per cent in 2018 to 30 per cent in February 2020, according to the channel. This year it aims to expand its programming hours by exploring genres like kids animation, crime and non-fiction format in games.
Viacom18 regional entertainment head Ravish Kumar says, "In 2020, we will be expanding our hours of programming with more shows. We would like to get into genres which have not been tried in this market like kids animation, crime and within non-fiction we are already doing home-grown formats and international formats but we are also trying to consider formats which are new to the market. Game shows have been explored here but we are trying to do a game show which is different."
He says, "We have very limited hours of programming; the channel has 15 hours of programming in a week, which is less than what Zee Marathi is offering. It is significantly lower than Star Parvah. We are running our primetime originals only from 7 pm to 9.30 pm. Despite having only five original shows three of our programmes are in the top five shows."
Currently, the channel has three tentpole shows – Balu Mama, Jeev Zala Yeda Pisa and Raja Rani Chi Ga Jodi. He Man Baware, a romantic love story and Swamini, a historical story are the two other shows.
"Our goal is to try and come up with something meaningful for that market. Our content has to be family-friendly, deeply engaging and it has resonated with the viewers. Typically we pick up shows which hit this entire bracket. They have to be relatable and rooted. Our struggle is always for good stories; there are outstanding stories out there but that might not be right for us," he opines.
Kumar also tells that the regional space contributes around 25 per cent and he wants the space to contribute 50 per cent to the company in future. Kannada, Marathi and Tamil are priority markets for Viacom18.
He further says that advertisers are responding positively to this market because Marathi is growing in importance. "Marathi as a genre has grown much stronger and the quality of programming is amazing. We do Bigg Boss and we were the first in the country to ever take it regional. We started with Kannada, went to Bangla and now we are in Marathi as well. So, there is a lot of interest from advertisers."
The total TV viewership in Maharashtra has come down slightly since 2018. In 2018 it was 4,475 GRPs which has now come down to 4,000 GRPs. Within that the share of Marathi language GRPs has gone up from 23 per cent to 30 per cent.
The market witnessed many new entrants like Zee Yuva, Sony Marathi, Fakt Marathi and Shemaroo Marathi movie channel. "Between that and with the quality of content, viewership of Marathi is going up. Even if we look at the top five channels in the market, earlier it would always be Zee Marathi followed by a bunch of Hindi channels; now four out of the five top channels are Marathi channels. The share of Marathi viewership has gone up and the position of Marathi channels has improved slightly. With better content and more channels it is but natural that the share of Marathi will rise," he says.
Maharashtra has a rich history of folk and literature. Kumar says that the thrust for good content and nuanced storywriting is much higher in this market; it's less on drama and more on content. So, it's not special effects or high production value which can carry the shows but rather intelligent scripting. "It’s a great system of movie makers, writers, theatre and fabulous stories that have never been told," he concludes.
