Category: GECs

Mumbai: Sony YAY!’s The Giant Wheel Festival in Mumbai, opened the first weekend with an astounding turnout of close to 5,000 people. The event is expected to witness a footfall of over 10,000 people through the week, until its finale on 11 June.

The festival is a ticket to celebrate the endless excitement and adventure with the YAY! toons, for its audiences through an immersive interaction with their favourite YAY! toons and engage in fun thematic experiences that are planned at the event. Not just this, audiences also get to meet and interact with popular celebs like Karishma Kapoor, Kishwar Merchant, Mahi Vij etc., along with their favourite superhero – Spiderman.

With such a great response for the Giant Wheel Festival at the Dublin Square Phoenix Marketcity – Mumbai, the first weekend of the festival proved to be a great success.

Sony YAY! marketing, communications & OAP head Sujoy Roy Bardhan said, “We curated The Giant Wheel Festival with an objective to further build the experience of ‘Happyverse’ for kids. With kids and families turning up in overwhelming numbers to experience the festival, we are looking forward to having the same excitement through the coming weekend.”

Phoenix Malls VP – marketing Mayank Lalpuriya stated, “We are thrilled with the response we received on the first weekend of The Giant Wheel Festival. At Phoenix Marketcity, our constant endeavor is to create unparalleled experiences for children and families. It brings us great joy to collaborate with Sony YAY! on this immersive and exciting project.”

Mumbai: On the occasion of World Environment Day, Sony Pictures Networks India has taken the opportunity to highlight the significance of sustainability efforts in the M&E space through a social media post.

Here’s a glimpse of SPNI’s eco-action undertaken for an upcoming show being filmed at the locales of Manali, where SPNI partnered with Pradeep Sangwan and his team at Healing Himalayas to reduce their footprint by segregating waste and reducing food wastage. For this shoot, the crew was successful in diverting over 1350 kgs of waste from landfills and the usage of over 10,000 plastic bottles was mitigated. The initiative also got on-board artists including Neena Gupta, Ratna Pathak Shah among others to share their sentiments on the media and entertainment industry’s step towards Zero Waste Production.

 

 

 

 

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With a goal to achieve Zero Waste to Landfill, SPNI has implemented a comprehensive waste management approach for both the organisation as well as its content production teams. In Mumbai, SPNI is associated with G.A.M.E (Greening Advertising Media Entertainment) as the sustainability consulting partner, as part of the initiative for the various shows filmed in the city.

Mumbai: DistroTV, one of the independent, free, ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) apps, has announced that it is expanding its content offerings to Cloud TV. Now millions of Cloud TV users can stream DistroTV’s impressive and diverse content line-up with 270 Channels globally and 180 channels in India for free, anytime on the Cloud TV platform.

DistroTV features more than 270 Channels globally and 180 channels in India and growing, with everything from news, sports, movies, music & entertainment, and lifestyle content. This includes original content and new channel offerings that cater to Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Marathi, English, Punjabi and adding more languages and channels.

“We are thrilled to partner with Cloud TV as we expand our presence in India. We are extremely excited to bring Free streaming content to users across all genres and languages. We will continue to provide audiences with the entertainment they crave including the best of Indian and global content to our distribution partners in India,” said DistroScale co-founder & CEO Navdeep Saini. 

“We want to empower the content owners and broadcast partners by expanding their reach and building new streams of revenue in the wake of the growing CTV and mobile ecosystem. This partnership also enables Cloud TV users to get free premium content on their smart TVs,” said DistroScale CEO India, SEA and MENA Vikas Khanchandani.

Commenting on the association, CloudWalker Streaming Technologies COO Abhijeet Rajpurohit said, “We are extremely excited to introduce Free Live TV streaming to Cloud TV users. TV channels are an integral part of India’s TV viewing habit and our partnership with Distro TV empowers our users to watch Live TV channels without the need of a DTH box or stick. Distro’s impressive and diverse library enables users to enjoy a wide range of global and regional content directly on the TV homepage.”

Mumbai: 48.2 crore viewers tuned in to the live broadcast of TATA IPL 2023 (first 66 matches) on the Disney Star Network – the highest ever reach for any edition of IPL surpassing the previous highest registered in 2019.

Four more matches register a peak concurrency of three crore in week seven taking the tally of matches with a Peak Concurrency of three cr to 40 for the tournament.  

CSK v KKR registered the highest peak concurrency in week seven of 4.2 cr (the highest for the tournament is CSK v GT with 5.6 cr peak concurrency)

Year-on-year growth in weekly TVR stands at 43 per cent for week seven; Overall growth of 32 seven in TVR compared to the last edition (after 66 games)

Source: BARC data for the live broadcast of the first 66 matches

Mumbai: For all those who have been speculating about  the future of NP Singh, one of the most spotlight-shy CEOs, at Sony in India following the impending merger with Zee Entertainment, there is no need to keep guessing. Singh’s future is not only secure, but his role is actually going to be expanding,  in the overall scheme of the Japanese MNC. 

This is amply evident from the fact that Singh shared centre stage at Sony’s annual corporate strategy day presentation in Tokyo mid-last week, along with group chairman & CEO Yoshida Kenichiro and Sony COO & CFO Totoki Hiroki.

At the meet, Sony executives reiterated that  India is one of its pivotal markets.  Singh  highlighted that Sony Research India is actively collaborating with Sony Pictures Releasing India to develop AI models, such as video analytics, recommendation engines and speech recognition. This aside, Singh pointed out to other successful initiatives such as  Sony Talent Ventures  (with Sony Music) and the Hero project initiated by Sony Interactive Entertainment that is grooming game development talent, which are being ramped up even further..

The affable and soft-spoken Sikh  revealed that its streaming service SonyLiv has managed to sign on 33.3 million subscribers globally, with an annual ARPU of Rs 573, according to a report in The Mint.

Singh emphasised that “India is a global economic powerhouse and an opportunity destination for artists, content creators, game developers, studios, platforms and technology companies. Our efforts in India are aligned with Sony’s purpose of filling the world with emotion and we strive to push the boundaries and go beyond what is expected.”

As far as the merger with Zee is concerned, Singh pointed out that  it is still awaiting regulatory clearances. The expectation is that it should be completely green-signalled by the first half of this financial year. “Upon closing, it will enable us to expand our kind of content creation and strengthen connections with diverse communities within India,” he stated.

As has been reported, Singh is slated to get bumped upstairs as the chairperson of the combined entity, while current Zee MD & CEO Punit Goenka is to be given the former’s charge.

However, since the marger still has some distance to go, Singh has since reorganised SPNI with Danish Khan being handed Sony’s digital initiatives and Neeraj Vyas being made responsible for the company’s GEC broadcast business. 

Mumbai: Times Group is set to split as the dispute between brothers Samir Jain and Vineet Jain has reached a resolution. The separation has been finalised and entails a partition of assets and responsibilities.

As per reports, Samir Jain will assume control over the print business segment, including digital assets aligned with print operations. Meanwhile, Vineet Jain will take charge of the broadcast, radio, and entertainment divisions, along with their associated digital assets. Furthermore, Vineet will receive a substantial cash settlement, commensurate with the size and prominence of the print business, which boasts the flagship publication, The Times of India.

In addition to the aforementioned divisions, the equally valued assets of Times Internet and the real estate holdings will be equitably distributed between the two parties.

Mumbai: Sun TV Network Ltd., one of the Television Broadcaster in India, operates Satellite Television Channels across six languages of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bangla and Marathi, airs FM radio stations across India and own the SunRisers Hyderabad Cricket Franchise of the Indian Premier League, SunRisers Eastern Cape of Cricket South Africa’s T20 League and the Digital OTT Platform Sun NXT.

For the quarter ended 31 March 2023, the Revenues for the quarter were at Rs 813.53 crores as against Rs 833.01 crores for the corresponding quarter ended 31 March 2022. The Advertisement revenues for the quarter was at Rs 338.37 crores as against Rs 337.13 crores for the corresponding quarter ended 31 March 2022. The Subscription revenues for the quarter was at Rs 406.11 crores as against Rs 416.03 crores for the corresponding quarter ended 31 March, 2022. EBITDA for the quarter ended 31 March 2023 was at Rs.487.60 crores as against Rs 553.33 crores for the previous quarter ended 31 March 2022. The Profit after taxes for the current quarter stood at Rs 365.82 crores as against Rs 404.35 crores in the corresponding quarter ended 31 March 2022.

For the year ended 31 March 2023, the Standalone Revenues for the year was higher by ~4.46 per cent at Rs 3,661.37 crores as against Rs 3,504.88 crores for the corresponding year ended 31 March 2022. The Advertisement revenues for the year grew by ~7.95 per cent at Rs 1,403.96 crores as against Rs 1,300.60 crores for the previous year ended 31 March 2022.The Domestic Subscription revenues for the year was at Rs 1,619.71 crores, as against Rs 1,657.31 crores for the previous year ended 31 March 2022. EBITDA for the year ended 31 March 2023, was up ~3.78 per cent at Rs 2,349.28 crores as against Rs 2,263.78 crores for the previous year ended 31 March 2022. The Profit after taxes rose by ~1.81 per cent to Rs 1,674.53 crores for the year ended 31 March 2023 as against Rs 1,644.80 crores for the previous year ended 31 March 2022. During the year, the Board of Directors declared four interim dividends cumulating to 300 per cent, i.e Rs 15.00 per share.

For the year ended 31 March 2023, the Consolidated Revenues was up ~5.22 per cent at Rs 3,772.09 crores as against Rs 3,584.82 crores for the corresponding year ended 31 March 2022. EBITDA for the year ended 31st March 2023 was higher by ~4.61 per cent at Rs 2,392.99 crores as against Rs 2,287.49 crores for the previous year ended 31 March 2022. The Profit after taxes(after accounting of share from joint venture) also remained higher by ~3.96 per cent at Rs 1,706.92 crores for the year ended 31 March 2023, as against Rs 1,641.91 crores for the previous year ended 31 March 2022.

Mumbai: Warner Bros. Discovery in India has launched its latest TVC featuring Kareena Kapoor Khan to promote its new network channels bundle including Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, TLC, Discovery Kids, Cartoon Network, Pogo, Eurosport, Discovery Turbo, CNN, Dtamil, Discovery Science, and Investigation Discovery. 

From Bear Grylls’ thrilling adventures to Tom and Jerry’s rivalry of the century and unravelling the Secrets of Kohinoor, the new subscription bundle aims to enhance viewer satisfaction and cater to the evolving preferences of audiences across India.

Available now, fans can enjoy Warner Bros. Discovery’s SD channels, with access to a plethora of genres such as sports, food, wildlife, and kids and entertainment, all conveniently accessible under one comprehensive network and at one single price point of Rs 15.

The TVC opens to Kareena Kapoor Khan shooting for the ad where she is left appalled at the attractive pricing the cluster has to offer. With her unmatched talent, Kareena Kapoor Khan seamlessly personifies the brand’s vision of delivering unparalleled viewership experiences to its esteemed audience.