Tag: Colors Super

Prepare for three months of fireworks as COLORS SUPER premieres Bigg Boss Kannada – Season 6

MUMBAI: Television viewing has never been the same, since the introduction of reality programming kingpin – Bigg Boss in India, and right from the onset Bigg Boss Kannada has entrenched its spot at the zenith becoming a favorite of viewers. Bearing testimony to its soaring ratings and expanding advertiser base, season after season, viewers have been treated to a form of entertainment, that’s not only hypnotic but also unrivalled across television industry. In season 5, Bigg Boss Kannada brought together the most volatile mix of celebrities & commoners under one roof, and this season, viewers will bear witness to their daily hour of flammable entertainment getting even more explosive. Lighting the fuse to this dynamite of reality content, host Kichcha Sudeep once again takes the reigns as host of Bigg Boss Kannada – Season 6, premiering this Sunday, October 21 at 6pm, on COLORS SUPER.

Forecasting yet another successful season, Ravish Kumar, Head – Regional Entertainment, Viacom18, commented, “Keeping our viewers at the core of every decision, we’ve struck the right chords, while determining our offerings. Over the course of 3 glorious years, COLORS SUPER has ascended to unprecedented heights in terms of ratings, programming variety and advertiser interest. Bigg Boss Kannada is the epitome of entertainment buffet that tethers viewers to the television screens for the entire duration of the show. Being leaders in the industry, proffering the best of reality television, coupled with an unmatched fiction line-up, our Kannada channels have been championing the regional cluster of Viacom18.”

“Despite being the youngest, COLORS SUPER has arisen as the fastest growing GEC on Kannada television and we continue to accelerate our endeavors to entertain viewers. Following the success of Bigg Boss Kannada – Season 5 and our scintillating line-up of fiction shows that keeps viewers glued, we’re now ready for another exciting season of Bigg Boss Kannada that will exhibit human character. As Sudeep yet again takes up reigns of the host, along with a combination of popular celebrities and deeply driven commoners, this season as well, we guarantee to enhance the all-round family–watching experience for our viewers.” added, Parameshwar Gundkal, Business Head – Kannada Entertainment Cluster, Viacom18.

Puppeteering the strings of the housemates in Bigg Boss Kannada, host Kichcha Sudeep, elaborated “Bigg Boss Kannada is not like any other television show, and season after season, it continues to surprise not only viewers but me as well. As much as films, music, cricket and cooking are a part of my life, I feel this show is now ingrained in me. With umpteen surprises in store this season, I am extremely excited to continue as host for yet another year of this epic reality show.”

Abhishek Rege, CEO – Endemol Shine, said "We at Endemol Shine India are motivated to create yet another blockbuster season for Bigg Boss Kannada. With nothing but pure entertainment driven content, this season too, will be high on twists and surprises for the housemates. And with Sudeep presenting a dynamic and interesting group of celeb and commoner contestants, this is sure to be one of the most intriguing seasons of Bigg Boss Kannada"

Available on Viacom18’s video-on-demand platform – VOOT, within hours of its airing, fans of the Bigg Boss Kannada, will never miss a single moment of their favorite show.

Targeting audience across the spectrum with a strategic combination of marketing mix including Outdoor, On-air, Print, Radio, Activations and Digital, COLORS SUPER has upped its promotional efforts to compliment the exceptional assortment in entertainment of Bigg Boss Kannada – Season 6.

October 17, 2018
Viacom18 solidifies regional presence with Colors Kannada Cinema

MUMBAI: Hot on the heels of its foray into the Tamil market, Viacom18 is all set to launch the third channel in the lucrative Kannada market, Colors Kannada Cinema.

Viacom18 group CEO Sudhanshu Vats said that the network’s top priority is to complete its portfolios in the regions that it already exists. “We will continue to dial up our library in the slate as well because this business is a lot about availability,” he said.

He added that this move would help the network to increase its market share, both in terms of viewership and revenue, in the country’s third biggest regional market.

Furthermore, Viacom18 head- regional entertainment Ravish Kumar said that the only reason to enter the Kannada market is that it is the strongest market and the movies genre contributes about 11 per cent of the total television viewership in Karnataka. “While we continue to strengthen our regional bouquet with strategic channel launches in multiple languages, we are also committed to expanding vertically to offer a more segmented and wholesome entertainment to our loyal viewers,” he added.

As far as the reach of the regional space is concerned, Vats said that people communicating in the regional languages outside of Hindi is close to 59 per cent. He added, “The growth rates in regional are far in excess. As we measure deeper and measure more of India and what India watches, you will see that the indexation of regional will go up further. You will also continue to see more investments as we go forward and as I have also said when we look at deepening, we look forward at doing in the same geographies.”

After Rishtey Cineplex, Colors Kannada Cinema, a 24-hour movie channel, highlights the network’s expansion within the movies broadcast category while reinforcing the network’s objective of strengthening its regional presence. It reaffirms Viacom18’s leadership position in the Kannada space along with its GECs – Colors Kannada and Colors Super – which currently occupy about 46 per cent viewership share in the market. Equipped with blockbuster movies, the channel will unfold its FPC from 24 September 2018.

Giving further details about the channel, Viacom18 business head- Kannada entertainment cluster Parameshwar Gundkal said, “With a robust library of over 450 films, we have strategically curated our movie line-up to appeal to a wide range of audience.”

Apart from films, the channel will also have an interesting mix of programmes like behind the scenes, trivia around the film and sneak peeks into houses of stars giving all the more reason to our loyal patrons to sit back and enjoy a good film with their family.

While Star, Zee and Sony are all present in the English movies space, Viacom18 is visibly absent. On asked about the network’s presence here, Vats said, “We need to play a role which cuts across TV and digital rather than just trying to do something in television particularly in the English space. We are now looking at the content very comprehensively; let it be on TV screen or digital.”

September 11, 2018
Colors makes push into Bangla, Kannada with new shows

MUMBAI: The Mukesh Ambani majority owned Viacom18 is firing ahead on two regional markets: Kannada and Bangla. Its flanking Kannada GEC Colors Super is all charged up to roll out eight show come 11 June, while Colors Bangla is unveiling a new season of the Who Wants to be a Millionaire format – Ke Hobe Banglar Kotipoti.

The reason: the channel’s management is hoping to build up on the momentum the two have been gathering. While Colors Super has grown by 280 per cent in terms of reach and viewership in just the past year, Colors Bangla has seen its viewership double while its reach has gone up from 28 per cent to 40 per cent and its share has leapfrogged to eight per cent. So much so that it ranks third in the regional pecking order after Colors Kannada and Colors Marathi for Viacom18.

“We are the one who understood the Kannada viewers wonderfully and understood what they wanted and we ran out of slots for our ideas. Because our existing shows are doing so good in a way and we have a couple of other plans so we needed another platform to execute them,” says Viacom 18 regional entertainment head Ravish Kumar. “The top shows were rating ninth, tenth and eleventh and there is lot of length left in the story, so I had no choice other than launching another channel. You must have seen the same network having several channels of kids, music, GEC but you have not seen a network having two channels of the same genre in the regional space.”

The Colors Super offering appears to be a bit of a smorgasbord, spanning genres: socio mytho, family drama, romance, sitcom (which was an ETV Kannada property called Papa Pandu), a legal-based show with CLF for weekdays and two singing reality shows on weekends. These shows will be followed by Bigg Boss Kannada which will launch in September – October. A point to note is that Bigg Boss Kannada, helped polevault Colors Super to the No 2 spot in the non-fiction genre.

A specially created promo ‘June Tingalu Super Tingalu’ has been hitting the channel for the past few days.

Adds Ravish: “We built up a certain viewership base and we wanted to grow that even further and each one of these shows has helped us to do that. We could have continued with the current line-up. But since we at Colors feel that June is a month of change, we thought of coming up with new shows which I hope people will like more.”

With two years being crossed for Colors Super, the channel felt the need for more powerful narration and even giving a break to newcomers. “We liked their talent and decided to give them a break. I hope they will do a good job,” says Kumar. Among the old ones are Majaa Bharat and Majaa Talkies with the latter being produced by Kannada superstar Srujan Lokesh. The packaging has been entirely done by Colors in-house team.

The Bengali version of KBC is produced by BIG Synergy with the usual fanfare of a quiz show. The Bangla version will premiere on 16 July 2018, every Monday to Friday at 9 pm. Taking the reigns as the host will be Bengali cinema stalwart Prosenjit Chatterjee.

According to Kumar, the regional entertainment market is extremely dynamic in nature and the viewer appetite for quality content is fast increasing. He feels that Chatterjee is the host with the right mix of intellectual appeal and grandeur.

Indiantelevision.com’s Poulami Sengupta spoke to Ravish Kumar on the sidelines of the show launch about the network’s plans to expand the Bangla and Kannada markets. Excerpts from the interview

How has Colors’ distribution been in the Bengal market?

I think our distribution is good. We are at par with other channels. What we really need to overdrive is the sense of excitement from the brands. This is what we are trying to do with KBC. Over time everyone starts to get very comfortable with their choices- the moment something comes it needs to be different from what is already there in the market. We come from a legacy of ETV, we work hard to modernise it across all our markets to make it contemporary and in line with the footprint of Colors.

Who were the sponsors on board?

The sponsors are yet to be decided. The show is still about 45 days away. So while a lot of conversations are going on, we would be finalising the sponsors in the next 15 to 20 days.

Is the format going to change this time for KBC Bangla?

KBC is the property of Big Synergy. So I think the format will follow the course. The difference comes in when you have different hosts, participants, questions and the emotions behind that.

We will continue to look at the market where we were not present and we will continue to grow in a more meaningful way in the market where we are already present.

Viacom18 head of regional entertainment Ravish Kumar

Why Prosenjit Chatterjee as a host?

So, when we thought of a host we thought of someone who would embody excellence, who people could look up to but at the same time not being intimidated by him. Chatterjee is a fabulous host- he is highly regarded in this market. He remakes himself with every grooming and so have a huge number of fans across Bengal.

What are the marketing strategies?

For all the big ticket shows we have the 360 degree campaign. So we are promoting through print ads, billboards, radio, cross channel promos and also the ground activations. In our case, since we have the call for the entries, so we have already started with the marketing. We will have a nice lead up to the show breaking. We have got about 45 days and we will ensure that all touch points of the consumers get powered. So it’s a massive campaign on the backend. Additionally, we also have the calls for entries happening, which, itself is a marketing campaign.

How has KBC’s response been from all the Bengali speaking people across India?

We have got a lot of response from Bengalis across India. But the counting is still on as the phone lines are open till today 7.30 pm. So, only after this, we will get the final answer. The promo will go live tonight at 8 pm and now it’s open for entries. We are already getting 14,000 to 15,000 entries a day. The promo will only be available on Colors Bangla but the news is going to cut across through all mediums.

The Bengali GEC market is worth more than Rs 800 crore. I am very fond of this market. I think the talent in this market is incredible. This market has evolved a lot. There was a time when this market didn’t have much to offer and that changed when more broadcasters came and with them came a variety of genres. The shows are getting bigger and better and the kind of stories and concepts that are coming these days are incredible. This market is absolutely second to none and there are shows from this market that have been remade in Hindi and other languages.

What are your plans for regional expansion?

Right now we have two things in our mind. One is we wanted to expand our footprint market where we were very strong, so in Kannada we launched Colors Super. Then we wanted to do something for that market where we have not set our footprint, so we launched Colors Tamil. On the ongoing process, we continue to follow both these strategies- we will continue to look at the market where we were not present and we will continue to grow in a more meaningful way in the market where we are already present.

What is Colors Bangla’s programming strategy for the upcoming festive season?

So we include festive season as a part of our programming line-up. We will have some specials, we will also have events, and we will also have a lot of ground activation. In West Bengal, throughout the year many festivals are celebrated. In Bengali, there is a famous proverb ‘baro mashe tero parbon’ which means thirteen festivals in twelve months. And we all know that Durga Puja is the most significant of all celebrations in Bengal. Then they have the Poush Mela in December. We will cater to that in our own way- we will have special episodes where that particular festival will get reflected. We also do lots of events and we are planning to do this year as well.

How are you planning to give a tough competition to your competitor channels in the Bengali market?

We have already started giving them a tough competition to them by launching more and more non-fiction shows. If you look at Zee, they tend to follow a certain pattern in terms of non –fiction and they never change their formats and Star Jalsha has stopped doing non-fiction altogether. So I think non-fiction is a genre which a whole family can watch and one should keep on introducing new formats of non-fiction shows.

Who is the target audience for Ke Hobe Banglar Kotipoti?

Our audience is, of course, the families and it’s a format where everyone can sit together and watch or play along as well.

May 29, 2018
Bigg Boss Kannada is a success story

BENGALURU: A few weeks ago, some film producers from Sandalwood held a protest in front of Innovative Film City in Bidadi, where the Bigg Boss house is located, demanding the actors not to participate or host reality shows on television. Season 4 of Endemol’s global format Big Brother through Endemol Shine India was and is still being held there. The current season will run through 100 days to culminate on 15 January this year on Colors Kannada.

During the protests the Kannada film fraternity bigwigs also tried to impose a ban on the show because of its popularity affecting the performances of movies in the box office. These few opening lines indicate how much of an impact, how much of a success Bigg Boss has been in its Kannada avatar.

Right from the first season when the show was aired on ETv Kannada (now Colors Kannada), Bigg Boss has been a huge hit. Even during season 2, when Star India’s Kannada GEC Suvarna TV brought the rights, the show ended up with about 25 percent increase in viewers for the channel say industry sources. “We at Suvarna could not capitalise on the success and ended up losing money on the show,” revealed a source at Suvarna TV.

Bigg Boss returned to Viacom 18 though it’s now renamed channel – Colors Kannada and grew even bigger for season 3, which was shot at Film City Bidadi for the first time. The location for the first two seasons of Bigg Boss Kannada was near Pune. And as for season 4, as mentioned above – is history.

A channel and its shows are successful because of the people behind them. With his vision of making Colors Kannada emerge as the ultimate storyteller, Parameshwar Gundhkal joined the channel in September 2012 as Business Head. Based in Bengaluru, he has escalated the growth of the channel from a number 4 player to being numero-uno. Gundhkal, who began life as a journalist, has experience as fiction head and later as programming head at the Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited (Zeel) Zee Kannada.

“Today Colors Kannada continues to retain its number one position with a significant margin,” Gundhkal told www.indiantelevision.com

Gundhkal has been personally involved in Bigg Boss as a de facto director say people at Colors Kannada. Season 4 has 55 cameras and 300 people working around the clocking recording the happenings in the house, picking up stories that could interest viewers and following them up.

“Bigg Boss is a study of human behaviour when cut off from the outside world. Their core character comes out because of the isolation. Though contestants sometimes become predictable, Bigg Boss is all about characters that really surprise you, some of whom have a very salted approach towards life, they will never become predictable,” explains an enthusiastic Gundhkal.

A big chunk of the success of Bigg Boss Kannada must be attributed to its weekend anchor. All the four season have been hosted by Sandalwood superstar Kiccha Sudeep whose name has become synonymous to the show and its format in the Kannada entertainment world. Rumours allege that Sudeep has signed a Rs 18 crore five season deal starting with Season 3 with Colors Kannada to host the show.

A special home has been setup for Sudeep at the Film City in Bidadi. The actor comes in on Friday nights, watches the interesting stories picked up for broadcast and then with the channel and production teams scripts the questions and the remarks that he will make for the weekends when he is host. So passionate are they for the show that the star and the channel head often work through the night for the weekend episode and sleep for a short time at about 500 am on Saturday revealed Gundhkal.

On rumours that the drama on the show is a scripted, induced and does not come out from within the characters, Gundhkal explained, “It cannot be induced. Bigg Boss’s intervention is limited to tasks. Eventually when the participants come out, they will definitely share notes when they meet and would speak out if the show were scripted. More than 50 contestants have taken part in the show so far. It would be difficult to control the participants because they will have some level of disagreement with the direction team. Each of the contestants wants to be popular, to win, and there can be only one winner. At the end of the day it is a 90 minute piece of content per day telecast picked from a 24 hour period shot with multiple cameras. Of course the initial part where Sudeep speaks during weekend episodes is scripted, but then the continuation is not. Based on the response, Sudeep has to react, respond himself, often impromptu.”

Continuing on Sudeep and his role in questioning the contestants for the weekend episodes, Gundhkal explained, “We take a very neutral stand as far as any contestant is concerned. Based on our interpretation – Sudeep’s and my own, we script the questions and the possible follow-ups for these episodes.”

The show has been drawing in sponsors like a magnet does a piece of iron. For season 1 Bigg Boss Kannada was presented by jewellery brand Bhima and powered by slipper brand Paragon. The number of brands increased for season 3 which had OLX as the main sponsor and was co-sponsored by food brands Nisargalaya Brahmi Oil, Gemini Cooking Oil and Eastern. Season 4 has five brands associated with it- Vaseline as the presenting sponsor and it was powered by Nutrigain for the first 50 days. Special partners for the current season are Airtel 4G, McDowell No.1 Soda and MTR.

The show is aired on Colors Kannada and Colors Kannada HD simultaneously from 9:00 PM to 10:00 PM every day. This is the first season of Bigg Boss Kannada to be shot and aired in High-Definition. A spin-off show, Bigg Boss Night Shift is being produced and aired on Colors Super from 10:00 PM to 11:00 PM every day.

January 5, 2017
Bigg Boss Kannada is a success story

BENGALURU: A few weeks ago, some film producers from Sandalwood held a protest in front of Innovative Film City in Bidadi, where the Bigg Boss house is located, demanding the actors not to participate or host reality shows on television. Season 4 of Endemol’s global format Big Brother through Endemol Shine India was and is still being held there. The current season will run through 100 days to culminate on 15 January this year on Colors Kannada.

During the protests the Kannada film fraternity bigwigs also tried to impose a ban on the show because of its popularity affecting the performances of movies in the box office. These few opening lines indicate how much of an impact, how much of a success Bigg Boss has been in its Kannada avatar.

Right from the first season when the show was aired on ETv Kannada (now Colors Kannada), Bigg Boss has been a huge hit. Even during season 2, when Star India’s Kannada GEC Suvarna TV brought the rights, the show ended up with about 25 percent increase in viewers for the channel say industry sources. “We at Suvarna could not capitalise on the success and ended up losing money on the show,” revealed a source at Suvarna TV.

Bigg Boss returned to Viacom 18 though it’s now renamed channel – Colors Kannada and grew even bigger for season 3, which was shot at Film City Bidadi for the first time. The location for the first two seasons of Bigg Boss Kannada was near Pune. And as for season 4, as mentioned above – is history.

A channel and its shows are successful because of the people behind them. With his vision of making Colors Kannada emerge as the ultimate storyteller, Parameshwar Gundhkal joined the channel in September 2012 as Business Head. Based in Bengaluru, he has escalated the growth of the channel from a number 4 player to being numero-uno. Gundhkal, who began life as a journalist, has experience as fiction head and later as programming head at the Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited (Zeel) Zee Kannada.

“Today Colors Kannada continues to retain its number one position with a significant margin,” Gundhkal told www.indiantelevision.com

Gundhkal has been personally involved in Bigg Boss as a de facto director say people at Colors Kannada. Season 4 has 55 cameras and 300 people working around the clocking recording the happenings in the house, picking up stories that could interest viewers and following them up.

“Bigg Boss is a study of human behaviour when cut off from the outside world. Their core character comes out because of the isolation. Though contestants sometimes become predictable, Bigg Boss is all about characters that really surprise you, some of whom have a very salted approach towards life, they will never become predictable,” explains an enthusiastic Gundhkal.

A big chunk of the success of Bigg Boss Kannada must be attributed to its weekend anchor. All the four season have been hosted by Sandalwood superstar Kiccha Sudeep whose name has become synonymous to the show and its format in the Kannada entertainment world. Rumours allege that Sudeep has signed a Rs 18 crore five season deal starting with Season 3 with Colors Kannada to host the show.

A special home has been setup for Sudeep at the Film City in Bidadi. The actor comes in on Friday nights, watches the interesting stories picked up for broadcast and then with the channel and production teams scripts the questions and the remarks that he will make for the weekends when he is host. So passionate are they for the show that the star and the channel head often work through the night for the weekend episode and sleep for a short time at about 500 am on Saturday revealed Gundhkal.

On rumours that the drama on the show is a scripted, induced and does not come out from within the characters, Gundhkal explained, “It cannot be induced. Bigg Boss’s intervention is limited to tasks. Eventually when the participants come out, they will definitely share notes when they meet and would speak out if the show were scripted. More than 50 contestants have taken part in the show so far. It would be difficult to control the participants because they will have some level of disagreement with the direction team. Each of the contestants wants to be popular, to win, and there can be only one winner. At the end of the day it is a 90 minute piece of content per day telecast picked from a 24 hour period shot with multiple cameras. Of course the initial part where Sudeep speaks during weekend episodes is scripted, but then the continuation is not. Based on the response, Sudeep has to react, respond himself, often impromptu.”

Continuing on Sudeep and his role in questioning the contestants for the weekend episodes, Gundhkal explained, “We take a very neutral stand as far as any contestant is concerned. Based on our interpretation – Sudeep’s and my own, we script the questions and the possible follow-ups for these episodes.”

The show has been drawing in sponsors like a magnet does a piece of iron. For season 1 Bigg Boss Kannada was presented by jewellery brand Bhima and powered by slipper brand Paragon. The number of brands increased for season 3 which had OLX as the main sponsor and was co-sponsored by food brands Nisargalaya Brahmi Oil, Gemini Cooking Oil and Eastern. Season 4 has five brands associated with it- Vaseline as the presenting sponsor and it was powered by Nutrigain for the first 50 days. Special partners for the current season are Airtel 4G, McDowell No.1 Soda and MTR.

The show is aired on Colors Kannada and Colors Kannada HD simultaneously from 9:00 PM to 10:00 PM every day. This is the first season of Bigg Boss Kannada to be shot and aired in High-Definition. A spin-off show, Bigg Boss Night Shift is being produced and aired on Colors Super from 10:00 PM to 11:00 PM every day.

January 5, 2017
Viacom 18 launches second GEC – Colors Super for Kannada audiences

MUMBAI: Viacom 18, after ruling the rating charts in the Kannada market for 62 weeks, now is set to launch its second GEC in the same space. Come 24 July 2016 Karnataka will have a new channel, Colors Super offering new programming. The channel will launch with four hours of original programming with mainstream genres per day during weekdays and a movie premiere on Sundays. Colors Super will be available on all the major DTH players.

Speaking on the launch of new channel, Viacom 18 group CEO Sudhanshu Vats said, “In terms of market size in the Indian television scenario, regional entertainment is next only to Hindi general entertainment, as a category. This translates into a sizeable ad market, growing at a CAGR of 15 per cent, similar to the overall TV ad market, over the next few years.”

Elaborating further, Vats stated, “Within the regional entertainment pie, the Kannada GEC ad market alone stood at an estimated Rs 500 crore in FY16. As we cemented our dominance on this market, we realized we had a lot more to offer – both in terms of content and brand solution opportunities. Colors Super will expand our offering to both the viewer, by bringing in missing genres into the market, and the advertiser, by increasing the available ad inventory, thereby plugging in existing gaps in the current market.”

Viacom18 has planned a marketing blitz across 179 major towns of Karnataka, targeting both the urban and rural markets of the state. The group is selling the channels separately. Colors Super has roped in Vizeum as a media planning company from Mumbai. The channel will aggressively use 360 degree to market the channel across platforms including television channels, print, outdoor and digital. The channel is spending more than Rs 5 crore on an ad campaign.

With the launch of Colors Super, the group’s aim is to create a superb family viewing experience by offering viewers an exciting mix of stories and genres that are currently absent but much in demand. The two channels Colors Kannada and Colors Super will complement each other and offer viewers holistic and superlative entertainment. Viacom 18 regional channels (Colors Kannada, Colors Super and Colors Bangla) project head Ravish Kumar explained, “The biggest point is the kind of content we will be airing is different from the shows that there are in the market today. We have many ideas but we were not able to do execute them because of limited number of time slots and were not just able to do them. Hence we realized that there is a very strong demand from the viewers on the content. Therefore the logical step was to launch the new GEC.”

With an eclectic mix of content, spanning mythology, fantasy and supernatural, romcoms, reality television and world satellite premieres of movies, Colors Super promises to induct a diverse mix of genres in the Kannada general entertainment market. Kannada heartthrob Yash, who started his career with Colors Kannada, will be leading the marketing campaign for Colors Super.

In todays’ time, Hindi general entertainment channels are extending their prime time. Talking about the trend in the Kannada market, Kumar explained, “If you look at the Karnataka GEC market in the past people have experimented with the morning programming. Even in Colors Kannada we used to have the original slots in the morning, we used to have original programming in the morning and over a period of time we discovered that the original programming was not working for us. Later when we started the repeats of the original programming they started rating better than the original. So, the buzz for the prime time is from the 6 pm to 10.30 pm. 6pm time slot is still early but the core prime time is from 7pm to 10pm.”

As mentioned above, Colors Kannada ruled the rating charts for 62 weeks – Kumar added on being a competitor of its own channel, he said, “We want to compete with ourselves because that brings out the best in us.”

The new offering provides significant opportunity for content innovation and business growth and is set to emerge as a high decibel entertainment destination for the viewers.

July 8, 2016
Viacom 18 launches second GEC – Colors Super for Kannada audiences

MUMBAI: Viacom 18, after ruling the rating charts in the Kannada market for 62 weeks, now is set to launch its second GEC in the same space. Come 24 July 2016 Karnataka will have a new channel, Colors Super offering new programming. The channel will launch with four hours of original programming with mainstream genres per day during weekdays and a movie premiere on Sundays. Colors Super will be available on all the major DTH players.

Speaking on the launch of new channel, Viacom 18 group CEO Sudhanshu Vats said, “In terms of market size in the Indian television scenario, regional entertainment is next only to Hindi general entertainment, as a category. This translates into a sizeable ad market, growing at a CAGR of 15 per cent, similar to the overall TV ad market, over the next few years.”

Elaborating further, Vats stated, “Within the regional entertainment pie, the Kannada GEC ad market alone stood at an estimated Rs 500 crore in FY16. As we cemented our dominance on this market, we realized we had a lot more to offer – both in terms of content and brand solution opportunities. Colors Super will expand our offering to both the viewer, by bringing in missing genres into the market, and the advertiser, by increasing the available ad inventory, thereby plugging in existing gaps in the current market.”

Viacom18 has planned a marketing blitz across 179 major towns of Karnataka, targeting both the urban and rural markets of the state. The group is selling the channels separately. Colors Super has roped in Vizeum as a media planning company from Mumbai. The channel will aggressively use 360 degree to market the channel across platforms including television channels, print, outdoor and digital. The channel is spending more than Rs 5 crore on an ad campaign.

With the launch of Colors Super, the group’s aim is to create a superb family viewing experience by offering viewers an exciting mix of stories and genres that are currently absent but much in demand. The two channels Colors Kannada and Colors Super will complement each other and offer viewers holistic and superlative entertainment. Viacom 18 regional channels (Colors Kannada, Colors Super and Colors Bangla) project head Ravish Kumar explained, “The biggest point is the kind of content we will be airing is different from the shows that there are in the market today. We have many ideas but we were not able to do execute them because of limited number of time slots and were not just able to do them. Hence we realized that there is a very strong demand from the viewers on the content. Therefore the logical step was to launch the new GEC.”

With an eclectic mix of content, spanning mythology, fantasy and supernatural, romcoms, reality television and world satellite premieres of movies, Colors Super promises to induct a diverse mix of genres in the Kannada general entertainment market. Kannada heartthrob Yash, who started his career with Colors Kannada, will be leading the marketing campaign for Colors Super.

In todays’ time, Hindi general entertainment channels are extending their prime time. Talking about the trend in the Kannada market, Kumar explained, “If you look at the Karnataka GEC market in the past people have experimented with the morning programming. Even in Colors Kannada we used to have the original slots in the morning, we used to have original programming in the morning and over a period of time we discovered that the original programming was not working for us. Later when we started the repeats of the original programming they started rating better than the original. So, the buzz for the prime time is from the 6 pm to 10.30 pm. 6pm time slot is still early but the core prime time is from 7pm to 10pm.”

As mentioned above, Colors Kannada ruled the rating charts for 62 weeks – Kumar added on being a competitor of its own channel, he said, “We want to compete with ourselves because that brings out the best in us.”

The new offering provides significant opportunity for content innovation and business growth and is set to emerge as a high decibel entertainment destination for the viewers.

July 8, 2016