ITV

Tag: Srivastava

  • Times’ Srivastava says entertainment channels aiming for 33% ad rate hike, Movies Now 2 rebranded as MNX

    MUMBAI: Times Network, with seven movie channel, has decided to rebrand its Movies Now 2, now renaming it as MNX. The brand, the Network believes, is now ready to stand on its own feet with its unique identity as a brand.

    With the legacy brand setting up high standards, the Network claims, its time for MNX to take up the challenge. With what the Times Network called ‘a full blown’ cross-platform promotion without naming, MNX is being promoted in print, outdoor and radio.

    “Increase in the viewership leads to increase in ad rates as well. The Times Group garners one-third of the English viewership in India. And so, we are aiming for 33 per cent increase in the ad rates,” Times Network EVP & head – entertainment cluster Vivek Srivastava told Indiantelevision.com

    MNX will showcase movies from its 4-5 different libraries which has a collection of around 1500 movies. MNX has lined up its properties for the weekdays and weekends: Wild Ones: Weeknights (Mon – Fri), 11 pm, Xtreme Nights: Weeknights (Mon – Fri), 9 pm, WTF (What The Flicks): Weeknights (Mon -Fri), 7 pm, Bad ass Weekends: Sat -Sun, 9 pm, Stacked Sun 9am-9pm, Get Lucky, Xterminator: Dusshera special, Xplosive Nights: Diwali special and Call X – Viewers Choice.

    “Movies Now 2, which was launched a year ago, worked excellently — with its distinct identity, library and positioning. As the channel grew, it started giving tough competition to the top three players, and it was necessary to give it a new identity from the current and future perspective,” the EVP said.

    “Movies Now 2 was not doing justice to the legacy brand — Movies Now. Therefore, it was essential to rebrand it,” he said, and claimed the “response from the sponsors has been fantastic.”

    MNX was unveiled with the telecast of its first Big Bang Movie – Mad Max Fury Road on 15 July 2017. Adding to the bandwagon of fun-filled movie festivals will be properties such as Xtreme Nights on Weeknights at 9pm.

    Xterminator will be a special movie festival during Dussehra (September 21 – September 30) which will showcase movies such as Olympus Has Fallen, The Mechanic, Hobbit and Journey to the centre Earth, to name a few.

    Finally, for its viewers, the channel will give them a chance to get lucky with awesome and super cool gadgets daily with MNX Get Lucky Contest as part of their Watch and Win Movie Festival.

  • ‘Vishkanya’ spawns two new tales on &TV & Colors, period drama on Star Plus in making

    MUMBAI: New content, different styles of story-telling, mythology-based programmes and old wine in new bottle — have all done reasonably well on the Indian television from time to time. Now, Peninsula Pictures, the makers of Vishkanya, is bringing ‘Shree Krishna’, albeit with a twist in the original tale, and Dev Anand, a detective series.

    Peninsula co-founders Nissar Parvez and Alind Srivastava told Indiantelevision.com that their year-long ‘Paramavtar Shree Krishna’, a mythological show, will be aired on &TV from 19 June, and the 26-episodic ‘Dev Anand’ will be aired on Colors in July. “We are working on another show with Star Plus (reportedly a period drama of a king and its three daughters), shooting for which will start soon,” Parvez and Srivastava said.

    “We have treated the legendary character of Kans with a fresh perspective. Kans has always been portrayed as a ‘cruel character’ from the maternal side of Lord Krishna, but we are presenting him as an entertaining character,” Parvez and Srivastava said.

    “Dev Anand is an interesting show — the past story of his life will be revealed as we go ahead episode after episode. In every episode, he handles a new case. There is also an inbuilt story there which reveals as to how he became a detective — so, there are a lot of twists and turns in the show,” Parvez and Srivastava informed.

    The Peninsula Pictures’ duo said: “Shree Krishna’s story revolves around the life of Krishna. It focuses on Radha differently. But, we are primarily focusing on the journey of Krishna — the reason behind his birth, what was going on the earth that warranted a new avatar to come, and how this incarnation is different from other avatars.”

    Whether mythology and fantasy concepts work in India, the duo replied in the affirmative. “They work in India, especially since we have improveed a lot in terms of VFX and other technology. The visuals now are real and believable. So, it works and also excites the youth.”

    Parvez, who once worked with Four Lions Productions and Gul Khan, later founded Peninsula with Srivastava, to explore things on his own. Vishkanya, Peninsula’s first show to hit the screens, that had different kind of graphics and visual effects, was a story of a female protagonist who was drawn into revenge in the midst of a blossoming love story. The show, which was launched on Zee TV on 28 March in 6.30pm band from Monday-Friday, failed to garner positive ratings. According to BARC data, in week 18, the show garnered 2029 Impressions’ 000s whereas, in week 19, the channel witnessed a slight hike, but, in week 20 and 21, ratings nosedived with 1648 Impressions ‘000s and 1347 Impressions ‘000s, respectively.

    “It was an experiment — It didn’t work. Although it ran for five to six months, we think the time slot was too early for this kind of a story. If it would have been telecast in prime time, probably there could have been a different outcome. Some things work, some don’t, but it’s always good to learn and not repeat.”

  • Go for the young, but be alive to the downside

    Go for the young, but be alive to the downside

    MUMBAI: “Made in India – Made for a Young India”. A celebration of youth and the paradise of riches lying there for the pickings by those who could succesfully tap into this demographic.

    This could be termed as the gist of what constituted one of Friday’s high powered sessions at Frames 2006 in Mumbai that was chaired by Zee Telefilms CEO Pradeep Guha.

    According to Ashutosh Srivastava, CEO, GroupM, South Asia, “With half the population under 24 years of age, combined with increasing levels of disposable income and rapid penetration of new technology, attitudes and behaviour are undergoing a radical change – and this will have far reaching impact of the kind of entertainment, and also the way it is consumed by this young India.”

    “This is the most media savvy and exposed generation. It is also a lot more very self expressive ‘me’ generation, seeking its own identity, and has an opinion of everything. And, driven by the widespread penetration of mobiles and the internet, it is also the most socially networked generation,” Srivastava said.

    The downside of all this was thrown in (almost inadvertantly one thought) by KSA Technopark managing director Arvind Singhal who said for this generation, there was an intense aspirational sentiment at play as well as strong ambitions to “make it”. And to achieve this success, if the law was twisted towards this end so be it. The end justifies the means. Singhal used the character (small time con artists) of the lead protagonists in a recent hit film Bunty and Bali as an example. That Singhal didn’t seem to see this as a dangerous trend seemed a tad worrisome though.

    Even more bizarre was Singhal’s contention that in aspirational terms, India’s youth did not see themselves as being Asian but looked westward (specifially the US and the UK one would assume). This stands out in even starker relief stacked up against the common world view that points to Asia as being where the action is, India and China in particular and the rest of Asia in general. Where he fished this piece of data from might be worth a separate study.

    After the rather depressing dose of Singhal’s “world view” on India’s youth, it was refreshing to here from Rakeysh Mehra, director of the recent blockbuster hit Rang De Basanti, who introduced a cautionary note into the discussion. That there should also be awareness that in the midst of the hype and hoopla around the celebration of a young India, efforts to build a strong (ethical) foundation for a not so young india of the future was also needed was the point he tried to bring forth.

    Said Mehra, “It is important to harness the emotions of the young in the right direction and in a poetic way.” He added, “For the young India, it is essential to create a new idiom rather than copying one (from the West).”

    That new idiom was what Star India executive VP marketing and communication Ajay Vidyasagar focussed his presentation around. Vidyasagar believes that the creators of content, in order to connect with the young Indian, have to speak the language of the youth.

    The core message from all the panelists: It’s a whole new generation out there, with new mindsets, habits and working styles. As Srivastava pointed out, “This has huge implications for the industry. We will be forced to rethink current business models. Today, the consumers pay very little and and get exposed to all kinds of messages and content. In the future, they will pay and trade personal information to access the messages and the content they want, through different multimedia devices, at a time and place of their choice.”

    So what of the “40+ fossils”? What’s to become of them? This question was raised by some in the audience though the response from the panel was half-hearted to say the least. But then, this was a session that had all to do with the promise of youth. For the “fossils”, maybe another forum would be in order.