MUMBAI: Even as Star Gold emerged as the number one channel in Hindi movie genre with the premiere of Salman Khan’s Bajrangi Bhaijaan, the movie has popped up in the sixth spot on the elite list of the Top 10 world television premieres from 2010 – 2015 as per TAM Media Research.
Going by the Top 10 world television premieres, it is clear that the Khans indeed rule the roost… be it on the big screen or the small. Aamir Khan’s 3 Idiots with 10.88 TVR leads the top ten list followed by yet another Salman movie – Bodyguard with 9.95 TVR in the second spot. Shah Rukh Khan’s Chennai Express with 9.50 TVR stands in the third spot, while Salman’sDabangg is on fourth spot with 9.19 TVR. In the fifth position is the Ajay Devgn starrer Singham with 8.72 TVR.
As per TAM, Bajrangi Bhaijaan received 6.8 TVR, which is 0.2 TVR above the blockbuster hit movie – PK starring Aamir Khan, which premiered on Sony with 6.6 TVR and is in the eight spot, just behind Ra.One’s television premiere on Star Gold, which garnered 6.72 TVR. PKshone as the best world television premiere for 2015… up until this week before it was dethroned by Bajrangi Bhaijaan. Akshay Kumar’s Entertainment movie premiere raked in 5.49 TVR on Zee Cinema and was in the ninth spot. In tenth place was the premiere of R… Rajkumar on Colors with TVR of 5.45.
In comparison, SRK’s Happy New Year premiere on Zee Cinema received 4.4 TVR, while Devgn’s Action Jackson on Star Gold bagged 3.1 TVR. ABCD 2, which aired on Sony grabbed 2.8 TVR.
What’s more, Star India is also planning to telecast Bajrangi Bhaijaan on its general entertainment channels (GECs) in the near future. “The movie will go from Star Gold to Star Plus as part of our strategy,” Star India Hindi movie business executive vice president and general manger Hemal Jhaveri tells Indiantelevision.com.
In week 42 of TAM Media Research data, Bajrangi Bhaijaan received approximately 14.6 million TVTs and the entire movie was sampled by nearly 40 million audiences that account to approximately 18.4 per cent of the entire TV owning audiences in the Hindi Speaking Market (HSM). It received a heavy time spent by viewers of 78 mins.
While as per BARC India data, the film garnered a whopping 25 million TVTs (HSM CS 4+ Urban and Rural), and 74.5 million people, across the country, tuned into the premiere, which is close to three times the number that watched it in the theatres.
Star Gold gained a massive 40 GRPs in this week, which is 53 per cent of the average of last four weeks, majorly owing to Bajrangi Bhaijaan according to TAM ratings.
Jhaveri said, “We are very happy by the responses we have received from Bajrangi Bhaijaan. The film’s ratings are a strong validation that our strategy is aligned with the viewers’ demands. It was completely a 360 degree marketing plan and the content that worked for us. Salman Khan is clearly a star loved across the nation and the movie itself is iconic in every possible manner. The content was awesome and I am very confident that we will do better for years.”
In most cases, channels acquire rights for 10 years from the production house for every film. Talking about the criteria of acquiring telecast rights of films, Jhaveri informed that the selection process is complex as it contains a lot of things while finalising the movie for the world television premiere. “It’s a combination of everything including actors, stories, performance and timing. It entails understanding of the content, some degree of popularity of actors and the production house. So it’s complex as it’s unpredictable whether a particular film will work or not. Over the past two years, we have become very selective in our acquisition process and are not as aggressive as we were earlier. And that is the trend that we will be following,” he said.
After the world premiere television of Bajrangi Bhaijaan, Star Gold is now prepping up to telecast other recent releases in the coming days. “We have many films in the pipeline. Our next deliverable will be Drishyam followed by Hero,” Jhaveri said.
As a part of its content strategy, after its premiere on television, Star also made availableBajrangi Bhaijaan exclusively on its over the top (OTT) platform Hotstar.
