KOLKATA: Netflix takes a new route to bring more consumers to the platform. It will now let viewers sample some of the most popular content without an account. It has launched a page dedicated to Netflix's original movies and TV shows that are free to watch globally.
It is offering the first episodes of popular episodic originals like Stranger Things, Our Planet, Boss Baby: Back in Business, When They See Us, Love is Blind, Elite, and Grace and Frankie. Films like Bird Box, Murder Mystery, The Two Popes.
Amazon Prime Video and Amazon Studios SVP Mike Hopkins is a 30-year vet old in streaming veteran, having overseen the developed of products such as BTN2GO and Fox Now as head of Fox distribution and later led Hulu on a rapid growth path as its CEO. He spent a short stint at Sony Pictures Television Networks as its chairman before being lured away by Jeff Bezos to lead Prime Video just before the pandemic hit the world.
Hopkins is quite charged up about the opportunity that lies ahead with Prime Video. Speaking at APOS he said that Amazon has 150 million plus Prime members globally and Prime Video is a key driver of the service.
Hopkins expressed that growth for Prime Video lies primarily in international territories. “Before I arrived the company had made some really smart investments in serving customers around the world,” he said. “And we intend to double down on that investment over the next couple of years. We will continue to invest in local and global content and that is very critical,”
Most of the investments are going towards creating originals in 15 of the 200 markets Prime Video is available outside the US. “People in many countries have an affinity to US content,” Hopkins added. “But increasingly customers also want to see stories about them their culture and issues written and produced by people in their countries and played out by actors who look like and speak like them. Our teams have been building a home for talent and attracting the top creators all over the world.”
The content acquisition teams, Hopkins revealed are also making smart bets and doubling down on investments in acquiring SVOD content and TVOD catalogues. This apart, Hopkins, stated that Amazon’ sports team has also been inventing and reinventing spots, taking bets in properties and that is going to increase going forward.
Hopkins went on to add that the second big opportunity for Amazon Prime Video lies in improving customer experience. “We have probably the most complicated business model of the SVoD players, so that makes the customer experience more important for us,” he expressed.
He revealed that members can look forward to improvements in how they can navigate and use the service over the next year or two. “Customers can rent and buy movies and TV shows and they can also subscribe to TV channels in many markets,” he highlighted. “Making it easier for them to understand what’s what and how they can get to the content is important and we will prioritise this along with content investments.”
He explained that he sees Prime Video offering a variety of content to its users, right from the SVOD content to TVOD to channels. “We want to offer them a one-stop-shop for their entertainment needs and (adding) channels is going to be a major focus for us.”
Hopkins stated the pandemic has not impacted its pipeline of content going forward. “We have about 40 shows in various stages of production,” he said. “We have a very deep library, we have licensed content. We have a lot of originals. We are going to launch the second season of The Voice and several other shows. But what we will see is a slowdown in terms of premieres in the first half of next year. The thinning of these shows will be more than made up by the TVOD content in movies and the channels members can subscribe to.”
He pointed out that Amazon Prime Video had gone in early into India as an SVOD service and the way forward is becoming be super aggressive in the market from an originals. “We will have more than a dozen originals in each of the markets we are investing in by next year or so” he revealed. “And India is one of our priority markets.”
KOLKATA: ZEEL is working towards creating a digital dominance in the Indian media and entertainment market. Their plan has been on track as ZEE5 has significantly grown in the last one year.
At the second leg of APOS2020, ZEEL MD & CEO Punit Goenka reported the last quarter’s financial results of ZEE5 for the first time since its launch. He mentioned that 80 per cent of ZEE5’s revenue is currently attributed to India, and the rest comes in from Asia.
Goenka shared that the platform has not seen a lot of revenue coming in from the western world till now as ZEEL’s linear business is pre-dominantly still running there. Goenka thinks this part of the world could offer the next phase of growth for ZEE5.
ZEEL will shut its linear business in the UK and Europe sometime around the end of this year and ZEE5 will carry the content instead. Later, the move will be repeated in the US and other developed markets. Given the Indian diasporas demand for content, it is presumable that ZEE5 will certainly see fair traction in traffic.
However, the plan is not similar in APAC, MEA, and Africa due to different market dynamics. As TV and digital co-exist in these markets yet, ZEEL is not planning complete digital migration immediately. But, Singapore and Hong Kong exceptionally provide an opportunity for such migration although the timing is not decided yet.
“We have to understand ZEE5 will be played out in the Indian context very differently compared to the developed world. In India, we are still a 97 per cent single TV household market. Therefore, the consumption of television still remains prime. What happens in the digital world or on ZEE5 is that we get consumption in individual capacity which is private consumption. We don’t have enough penetration of alternate screens like PCs or laptops that you see around the world which can replace television,” he states.
“In India, the second screen is usually a mobile phone. You can never replace the TV experience on the phone. Therefore, the consumption of ZEE5 while at home will be replacing television for all people who are either not TV consumers or have moved out of television because of the sheer kind of content. I look at ZEE5 or digital content consumption as an incremental consumption of content. It is not TV versus digital,” he further opines.
ZEE5’s advertising revenue has been impacted in the second quarter of the calendar year as well due to the unprecedented situation as it largely depends on television content. But like the linear business, Goenka is confident that ZEE5 will see a resurgence in advertising from the second or third quarter onwards as it comes out of the Covid2019 situation.
“The biggest thing I had said as a part of the agenda last year was to take ZEE5 ahead and build ZEE5. I put a five-year horizon where it could be as much as 30 per cent of the total business of the company. The business of the company is growing at healthy 12-13 per cent on a CAGR over five year period. That would mean, even on today’s context, ZEE5 revenue could potentially go up by 4x or 5x in the next four years,” Goenka puts it as.
KOLKATA: The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has recently released the guidelines for unlock 4.0. While as a part of the guidelines cinema halls will continue to remain shut, leading players are looking at direct premieres. Jumping on the bandwagon, Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. (ZEE) has announced the launch of its ‘Cinema2home’ service ‘Zee Plex’. It is scheduled for launch on 2 October. With this new offering, consumers will now be able to watch their favourite new blockbuster releases in the comfort of their homes, along with their entire family at an attractive (per film) price point.
The new C2H service from the network is for both television and digital platforms. Along with convenience for consumers, this new movie distribution model will enhance the overall commercial ecosystem for the film producers, enabling them to present their creative work, to a wider range of audiences on established entertainment platforms.
“We are very excited to bring this new offering to all the movie buffs across India and around the globe. While we all love to catch the latest movies at the nearest theatres, we sensed the need for a solution like Zee Plex, which gives the consumers flexibility and convenience, to catch their favourite films in the comfort of their homes, along with friends and family. We have received great interest from producers and are looking forward to release a strong slate of blockbusters across languages,” Zee Studios CEO Shariq Patel said.
With new releases every month, Zee Plex aims to bring the theatres right to the consumers’ homes, offering them a quality family viewing experience at an attractive price-point. ZEE has partnered with leading television distribution platforms in India and has also established strategic alliances with distribution partners in the international markets. Zee Plex as a C2H service will also be available on ZEE5 globally.
Mumbai: UK-based nature sports and wellness video platform, Horizon Sports has licensed its catalogue to Indian entertainment streaming platform MX Player. Under this agreement, Horizon Sports will provide 500 hours of content relating to action, endurance and adventure sports and wellness to over 200 million monthly active users in India, on MX Player. It’s unique content – covering Iron Man triathlons, ultra-trail running, sports documentaries, mountain sports, water and underwater travel and competitions – will now be available to MX Player’ large user base to stream for free.
Horizon Sports, a producer and aggregator of nature sports and wellness programming that caters to people who hike, run, cycle, love mountains, want to be healthy and more active in nature.
With over 75 million daily active users (DAUs) in India – MX Player is the largest entertainment platform in the country, present on one out of every two smartphones. It currently operates on an ad-supported model and is free to use the app for premium content.
MX Player integrates its offline video playing capabilities with a wide library of over 150,000 hours of premium content across 10 languages, including a critically acclaimed slate of MX Original originals, movies, web series, TV shows, news, audio music and games.
MX Player‘s content acquisition & syndication head Mansi Shrivastav said, “With Everytainment as our brand philosophy, we cater to all the entertainment needs of our large user base that spans across categories like web series, films, live channels, news and video content across genres. We are delighted to add the Horizon Sports catalogue to our diverse range of offerings with content that is sure to drive new users to the platform.”
MANSI SHRIVASTAV BELIEVES HORIZON SPORTS WILL
ATTRACT NEW USERS
Horizon Sports’ CEO & co-founder Laurence F. Hopper said, “We are delighted to be carried on MX player and be able to bring the hugely popular and growing world of endurance sports, wellness and exciting adventure videos also to India.”
LAURENCE HOPPER IS DELIGHTED TO BRING
ENDURANCE SPORTS TO INDIA
Ria Media MD Alex Zecha said, "I am very excited about the opportunity to help introduce the actions, emotions & well-being, which are associated with the programs of Horizon Sports, to the Indian markets and their enthusiastic viewers. MX Player is an ideal partner with which to launch these auspicious activities. The horizon never looked better!"
ALEX ZECHA SAYS MX PLAYER IS AN IDEAL PARTNER
India Spark syndication & distribution head Khalid Khan said, “We along with our partner Ria Media are thrilled to facilitate the deal between MX Player and Horizon sports. Apart from being available in the U.S, Canada, U.K, Ireland, France, Mexico and various countries in Latin America, Horizon Sports will now be available in India as well. During these unprecedented times, the one realization that has come about globally is the importance of health and fitness. Launching Horizon Sports on MX Player is a big step in bringing the nature sports and wellness programming to the Indian viewers in hopes to inspire more people to be active in nature and achieve a healthy & active lifestyle…which is now, just on the Horizon.”
INDIA SPARK'S KHALID KHAN FACILITATED
THE MX-HORIZON DEAL
MUMBAI: ZEE5, today announced key appointments in their product and technology team. As part of the strategy to further drive the next stage of growth and innovation, ZEE5 has onboarded Anjul Sachan as Adtech chief architect, Manit Kathuria as user experience head, Prateek Pant as video engineering head and Mandar Deodhar as technology (payments) director.
Sachan, a graduate from IIT Bombay, will be leading the AdTech architects team at ZEE5. He will be responsible for the R&D as well as technical execution of all AdTech projects including adserver, self-serve, and optimization engine among others. He brings with him a rich experience in building and managing ad recommendations, content feed personalization, and a self-service portal for advertisers and publishers. In his previous avatar, Anjul has led AdTech growth strategies and product roadmap for Times Internet Limited Adtech division, while working on some solutions for ad platforms, data forecasting, audience data management, ad-blocker, ad-fraud identification, and so on.
Kathuria brings over 14 years of design experience with him. In his new role, he will lead the CX experience from a product perspective. His key focus involves solving consumer problems across platforms effectively and quickly; building a seamless experience for both AVOD and SVOD users. He will lead the product design team to achieve these goals at ZEE5. An alumnus of the University of Washington in Seattle, he has also been instrumental in building companies such as Rooja.com, Exclusively.com and Prophesee during his early days in the fashion and SAAS space. He has formerly worked as design and UX head of for companies like Snapdeal, Fabhotels among others. Before joining ZEE5, he was a part of Magicbricks as user experience head
Pant, with an experience of over 18 years in technical leadership experience in video technologies has led the design and development of several multimedia CE products and OTT platforms. In his new role at ZEE5, he will be handling end to end video engineering from transcoding, encoding, CDN, and all player playability across platforms and will also be focussed on video pipelines for meta generation. He is passionate about IoT, video inferencing using AI/ML, AR/VR and cloud computing. Prior to this, he has worked with leading firms like Astro, Technicolor, Cisco, Maxim Integrated, Samsung Electronics, and DRDO.
Deodhar joins as technology director. He will be responsible for end to end technology requirements for subscription, payments, and all third-party integrations. Mandar is an IIT Bombay alumni from MTech 2005 batch and has worked in different companies like Indiagames, Disney, Citrus Payments, Hotstar and HERE Maps
MUMBAI: Raj Malik, the producer of the acclaimed film Madaari has now joined Miraj Group as film production and acquisition business head.
Miraj Group’s recent release was Pati Patni Aur Woh starring Riya Sen. The show was launched on MX Player. The organisation wants to accelerate its efforts towards producing engaging content that would find resonance with audiences across revenue streams. Malik will be leading the film production business for Miraj Group and build a slate of films, and OTT offerings.
With a career spanning over 22 years in the M&E sector, Malik in his earlier assignments has held senior positions at Rhiti Group, Cinestaan, Krian Media, Walt Disney, Eros and Warner Bros.
Miraj Group is a 34-year-old organisation with a diverse portfolio of businesses like food snacks, printing, and packaging, pipes and fittings, engineering, hospitality, retail, real estate and film production besides the award-winning “Miraj Cinemas”, India’s fifth-largest multiplex chain with 121 Screens across 33 cities.
MUMBAI: ZEE5 has appointed Amit Nevrekar as head of account planning (strategy and revenue operations). Previously, he was working with Zapr Media Labs for one year as industry evangelist where he was responsible for television and digital integrated media planning & measurement through Google Ad Id overlap.
Nevrekar started his professional journey with Kantar IMRB and has over 16 years of experience in marketing and media research. He had a six-year stint with IMRB International, where he worked on brand health management for Unilever Indonesia, PepsiCo APAC, Johnson & Johnson, Nestle and was MarCom lead for P&G home care and health care.
He also worked with MRUC, a non-profit organisation as a research head, where he managed process and enhancements for the Indian readership survey.
Nevrekar has also worked with TAM, Mediacom, Chrome Data Analytics, IAMAI, and Adoroi in different capacities.
He was also serving as the vice president, digital at BARC (Broadcast Audience Research Council) India and was in charge of leading the RFI and RFP digital measurement proposal evaluation. He has been an advisor to organisations; specialising in opportunity identification, new product development, media strategy, brand management, and product marketing.
KOLKATA: Voot’s Akash Banerji has put down his papers after a five-year stint with the digital arm of Viacom18. He will join Amazon India’s centralized mobile business development unit as marketing head in September end. At Voot, Banerji was serving as a business head for AVoD.
According to sources close to the development, Banerji will work closely with different businesses of Amazon ecosystem as well as the multiple strategic distribution partners (including telcos). In his new role, he will foster synergies with partners and create new product expansion strategies with the aim to drive subscription numbers and revenues.
Banerji joined Voot back in 2015 as vice president and head of marketing and partnerships. He was associated with the launch of the OTT platform which has now become one of the leading players with over 100 million monthly active users.
Being a media and marketing professional, he has worked across leading brands including Star India, Marico. During his stint at Star, he led the successful marketing launch of Hotstar as well as the marketing launch of the new Star Sports network.
We tried reaching out to Banerji, but he was not available at the moment.
MUMBAI: From spring breaks to summer holidays, the pandemic has disrupted travel plans globally as lockdown measures keep much of the world’s population at home during some of the peak seasons for traveling. While the world is yearning to explore the world, ShortsTV is all set to take you on a virtual tour to some of the best destinations across India. Available across Tata Sky, Airtel TV, Dish TV, and d2h, ShortsTV launches its new segment, Safarnama. This will feature episodes from popular shows such as Way Back Home series, Return to Kenya, and many more that will take you on a voyage to the enchanting cities and countries captured in a beautiful documentary.
Way Back Home series is an independently produced Indian Travelogue series – a first-of-its-kind audio/visual franchise from India that explores the original narratives of young, authentic, passionate travellers as they embark on a road to self-discovery. A Himalayan Travelogue, filmmaker Rohan Thakur, aka Ronnie, a young Himachali boy, embarked on an introspective journey of self-discovery across the seven valleys of the Lower Himalayan ranges. With a mission to travel, not tour, Ronnie took the audience along with him on an unforgettable ride in true authentic style.
Return to Kenya is a seven-part series that received an IMBD rating of 8.8. The series is about Kenyan-Indian chef Anita Kerai returning to her birthplace after 22 years to retrace her culinary roots and the inspiration that made her into the chef she is today. Anita visits some of Kenya's and Africa's most iconic locations as she cooks her way around the country. A Hindu faith combined with African hardships lends flavour to 100 percent vegan & vegetarian recipes that intentionally reduce food waste.
Fuel your wanderlust with ShortsTV’s Safarnama, every Sunday at the comfort of your homes.
ShortsTV is available on Tata Sky ShortsTV, ShortsTV Active, and Airtel ShortsTV.
