And now, a male channel!

BY IMPACT Staff

Thus goes a promo for the recently launched BIG RTL Thrill channel – a JV between Reliance Broadcast Network Limited (RBNL) and the European company RTL - enticing advertisers to market their brands in an exclusively masculine environment. “Thrill is actually a genre-creator. Nobody has attempted anything like this. So it gives us the opportunity to lead the market. There are a huge number of brands looking to advertise for men... auto, financial services, etc. are segments targeting men and they have few options to advertise on,” explains Tarun Katial, Chief Executive Officer of RBNL.

According to him, Thrill’s positioning as an actionentertainment channel, with the tagline ‘Action ka Baap’, puts it in a larger-than-life action space for the consumer. But why call it exclusively ‘male’? Aren’t women equally hooked to action, adventure and extreme sports nowadays? “Yes, they are. But it is just about giving it a unique position among the competition that exists today. It isn’t telling women not to come and watch it. The content will be leaning towards men, but we will have many more women viewers than anticipated on the channel eventually. It is a bit like Femina - it’s a women’s magazine, but you have a fairly high male readership,” Katial says.

Because of a majority of single TV households in India, perhaps there will be no immediate bifurcation in terms of people’s viewing habits, but the content skew is expected to give the channel an audience skew to some extent. According to Sunil Kumaran, Business Head of RBNL’s Language Television Channels, “Traditionally, males have been skewed to extreme sports and extreme action and more reality type of content, which is the genre we are going after. It is likely that it will start skewing towards males.”

THE REGIONAL STRATEGY

The insight behind launching the channel first in Uttar Pradesh is that the state has the largest population of males in the country, and Thrill can also make use of RBNL’s strong media platforms in the region to create a market for itself. Besides, statistics and entertainment preference mapping indicated a heavy appetite for action content in the market. “BIG RTL Thrill is expected to dovetail and synergize with RBNL’s other media platforms - radio network 92.7 BIG FM and variety entertainment channel BIG MAGIC - to offer marketers good value for their brands. We decided to start from our area of strength and grow from there to the entire Hindi-speaking Market,” says Asheesh Chatterjee, Chief Financial Officer of RBNL, who expects the channel’s regional launch strategy to make advertisers see value in a focused male TG audience in that specific region. However, he chooses to remain silent about any ‘male’ brands that may already have come on board.

Thrill is also expected to help RBNL consolidate its position as a leading media platform in Uttar Pradesh. The channel is being marketed through a holistic multi-media campaign across television, radio, out of home, onground, print and digital. There is also a consumer engagement app on Facebook. The marketing budget is Rs 10 crore plus in Uttar Pradesh alone, with high spending in cinemas, to cash in on the audiences for Diwali releases.

CHARACTERIZATION OF CONTENT

Thrill has hand-picked action entertainment content from leading international production companies such as FremantleMedia, Endemol and Red Bull and then dubbed them in Hindi. In an effort to percolate the products down to the local level and make them as mass base as possible, it has taken maximum care that the shows are adapted to suit local sensibilities. “Our USP is characterization in our shows as part of the dubbing. So if you look at Cobra 11, we have characterized one person as a typical Punjabi male, one as a Maharashtrian… so that it feels real. It is not just regular dubbing. We put in that effort to make sure that the story and the essence never get lost. Sometimes in literal translation, the whole plot is lost, especially in humour and punches. We are avoiding that. An in-house team at Indore and a few vendors work on characterization, while another person does the whole scripting. Our effort is to make the content more real and consumable,” Kumaran states. Viewers not only get to see internationally renowned shows such as Fear Factor and Criss Angel (so far available in English) in Hindi, but also shows like Cobra 11 from Germany which will be seen in India for the very first time. A dubbed version of the latest round of Fear Factor is set to premiere on Thrill. The fact that these shows are dubbed in Hindi gives the channel the flexibility to pick up popular shows from anywhere in the world as against English channels which pick up shows only in that language. The channel aims to put out adrenaline rush, ‘edge of the seat’ entertainment including reality shows, action series, wrestling, extreme sports, game shows and movies. As of now, all content is international and fully dubbed.

MOVING TO THE NEXT LEVEL

Thrill will expand in a phasewise manner, and the next step is geographical expansion. Programming plans include getting into more mature late-night content, in the post 11 pm time band. Based on response, RBNL plans to move Thrill into other markets and evaluate if it needs to go into other languages. The channel will first go to other Hindi-speaking markets and then expand to other countries in the SAARC region. There are no immediate plans to go to South India or the North-east, which is highly action-oriented with a strong martial arts culture. “We are not averse to going to the South. We started in the North because we are very strong in the North,” Katial says. Thrill is RBNL’s seventh television channel, after Big CBS Prime, Big CBS Love, Big CBS Spark, Big CBS Spark Punjabi, Big Magic and Bloomberg TV, besides its popular radio network 92.7 BIG FM.

‘The target is 11 million viewers by Jan, 2013’

RBNL CEO Tarun Katial on BIG RTL Thrill’s agenda and more

ON WHAT THRILL MEANS FOR ADVERTISERS

The content won’t be femalecentric at any stage because it is against brand value and its core. But for advertising, we are open to all brands... That is the advertisers’ choice, and we have already had some advertisers talk to us from that standpoint. Also, India is a single TV household - so you would expect to see a lot of women viewership on male channels too. We are happy to go with that.

ON CENTERING CHANNEL IN REGIONAL MARKETS

The regional markets are very low on entertainment content specifically catering to them. There is a great need for media and media platforms from an advertising perspective. So from both consumer perspective as well as an advertising perspective, there is moderate to low competition in those markets. We are tapping on to that early on.

ON THRILL CONTRIBUTING TO RBNL’S REVENUES

It may not be a huge buster right upfront but in the long run, it will be significant. Thrill we be part of the RBNL bouquet. Eventually, when we roll on nationally, it will be available on all DTH platforms.

ON TARGET VIEWERSHIP

Thrill’s content will help it garner eyeballs in its launch market. We want to get a significant male viewership. Our target is seven million at launch, and we aim to reach 11 million by January, 2013

ON EXPANSION PLANS OF RBNL

The Phase III of radio which is knocking on our doors; hopefully we will do something very exciting there. Also, we have made our intent clear about being regional, so we will do something in those markets

ON CHALLENGES AHEAD

The current challenge in the Indian television business is that the measurement matrix is really poorly drawn out. Specific to Thrill too, the measurement matrix is very poor. The boxes in UP will be under a thousand for a market of 50 cities.

ON BEING A VIPASSANA PRACTITIONER AND LAUNCHING THRILL

I have done a bit of diving… I am not scared of heights, so I do a lot of this kind of stuff

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