Tag: Uday Shankar

Cricket World Cup 2015 sets new viewership record

MUMBAI: The ICC World Cup 2015, till the semifinals stage, garnered 635 million viewers, which makes it the highest viewed event in Indian television.

The unprecedented 635 million reach signifies that every second Indian tuned in to watch the biggest extravaganza of 50 overs cricket.

A record 309 million Indians (TAM Panel CS4+ extrapolated to the universe using a standard conversion factor) tuned in to watch India’s semi-final clash with Australia on their televisions, as the two best teams in the world battled for a berth in the World Cup finals. The pivotal game was the most-watched cricket match of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015, and bettered the blockbuster India versus Pakistan group stage clash in terms of reach. The match rated 15.0 TVR across the Star network including DD and 12.7 TVR on Star Network and 2.3 TVR on DD. (TAM data M15+ ABC)

This World Cup was truly a ‘Cup for All’ as the tournament was showcased in six different languages – Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada, apart from English and Hindi. The regional feed strategy proved successful with Hindi and regional feeds contributing to 77 per cent of the overall viewership.

Star India CEO Uday Shankar said, “The ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 has been an epic event in terms of scale, reach and following. With over 600 million viewers, largest aggregation of advertisers ever, and one of the most talked about marketing campaigns, this edition has validated that there is nothing bigger than the World Cup for Indian consumers. Fittingly for an event of such scale, Star India took the game of cricket to the next level redefining the viewer experience. The fans’ unflinching faith and passion for the game has abetted our efforts to make this World Cup bigger and better than ever before.”

Led by Star India’s disruptive campaign on India’s World Cup journey, the passion and fan following for cricket as a sport scaled new heights. The ‘Mauka’ campaign, which met with tremendous response online and on social media, was inundated with spoofs and iterations making ‘Mauka’ the buzzword during the World Cup. The campaign went viral with over 33 million views online making it amongst the most viewed campaigns ever on digital in India.

On the back of regional feeds, this edition saw advertising options for brands looking to associate with the World Cup. With many first time World Cup sponsors advertising on this edition, the advertiser count for the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 has been the highest ever, 50 per cent more than the last edition held in India (2011).

India was talking cricket online too with the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 scoring strongly on social media dominating conversations through the tourney; a record 750,000 authors driving 3.6 million conversations with a reach of over 44 billion potential impressions.

April 2, 2015
Star India ropes in new brands; hikes ad rates for World Cup

MUMBAI: As Dhoni and team prepare to face Australia and book a berth in the final of the biggest cricketing event, Uday Shankar and his team at Star India have roped in more brands as partners to make the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 one of the biggest revenue generating sport event in India.

Before the start of the semi final rounds, Star India roped in many new sponsors across categories like Amazon, Snapdeal, indiaproperty.com, OLX, Voltas, Dell, Panasonic and Toyota.

Sources in Star told Indiantelevision.com that the ad rates have also seen a substantial hike. “A 10 second slot during India VS Australia bout will cost around Rs 18 – 22 lakh and the later the brand comes in, the more it pays,” the source added.

The cumulative reach of the tournament soared up to 576 million viewers and is expected to grow further if India qualifies for the finals.

In the other semi final, New Zealand face South Africa. While both teams played numerous semi finals, neither have managed to qualify to the final of the flagship tournament. A highly nail biting match is expected and hence the ad rates have been hiked to Rs 14 – 16 lakh for a 10 second slot.

Star had a slow start to the tournament as Indian performances prior to the tournament was below par and fans had low expectations from the team. However in a way, this did Star a big favor as circumspect brands endorsed till certain stage predicting limited progress of Indian team. “People thought India won’t qualify for the final stages and bought slots till certain rounds instead of the full tournament. Due to that, in the later stages there are slots available, which is enabling Star to rope in brands at such high pricing,” said a media buying and planning expert.

March 23, 2015
Star Sports-Sony spar over World Cup, IPL performances

MUMBAI: Even as the national sides are battling it out on the pitches in Australia-New Zealand to decide who will take home the World Cup in the quarter final stage, a behind the scenes slugfest is taking place between two rival broadcasters, which have both laid big bets on the sport. We are referring to Star India and Multi Screen Media (which runs the Sony Entertainment Television network in India).

The former is telecasting the World Cup and has the rights to India cricket internationally, while the latter is gearing up to telecast the cricket league – the Indian Premier League (IPL) in the next two months, apart from Euro 2016 qualifiers, FIFA International friendlies and various Fight sports. At stake is close to Rs 4,500 crore that is likely to be spent by advertisers on sports television this year. Of this ginormous pie, approximately Rs 2000-2,200 crore is estimated to be spent on the World Cup and IPL. It’s no wonder then that the two are resorting to sledging within the confines of advertisers’ and media agencies’ cabins and to journos.

Star India began its World Cup innings just about three weeks ago – rather shakily. A Sony spokesperson reveals that the Star ad sales team had just about managed to raise Rs 100 -150 crore or so in ad and sponsorship deals before the once-in-four-years tourney began. “They were really desperate,” he says. “India were performing abysmally on their tour overseas.”

The Star spokesperson is quick to respond, “In the first two weeks only, the advertiser as well as sponsor count for the 2015 ICC Cricket World Cup was 50 per cent higher than 2011 edition as well as the IPL.”

The Sony spokesperson’s rejoinder to this is that India’s stupendous display against Pakistan in their opening encounter helped bail out Star Sports. Advertisers flocked to its doors, cash in hand ready to pay premium to air their TVCs. Estimates are that Star India will raise anywhere from Rs 800 – 900 crore from this year’s contest, which ends late in March.

And even as Star has been screaming that this year’s edition has generated the highest ratings ever, and in its trail ad revenues, Sony’s spokesperson has been rubbishing the numbers. Says he: “The ratings in this edition have seen a substantial decline when compared to the 2011 edition. Moreover fans had to wait for a week to witness an India match; the decline is constant in the non-India matches too. Whereas in IPL, each and every match is entertaining and is showcased on prime time.”

He adds, “After 31 matches, the bouts involving India are generating 6.1 TVRs, which was 10.3 during the 2011 edition and the decline is constant in non-India matches too wherein it has dropped from 3.6 TVRs to 1.3 TVR.”

Terming those figures as absolute no-balls, the Star India spokesperson asserts, “The cumulative reach of the ongoing World Cup touched 534 million viewers after the first 29 matches (TAM data CS4+ extrapolated to the universe using a standard conversion factor). In terms of TVRs, the India vs Pakistan match garnered 14.9 TVR, India vs South Africa got 12.7 TVR, and India vs West Indies managed 13.1 TVR and the non-India match ratings are fluctuating from 2 to 2.5.”

Media observers also point out to the fact that the reporting of the ratings has also changed since 2011. “In those days, LC1 towns were not factored into the ratings. Hence, a pure comparision is also not possible,” says a media expert. “It’s like comparing apples and oranges.”

The Star India spokesperson in turn takes a dig at MSM’s telecast record of the IPL, saying the trend is clear. “The IPL reach has declined continuously since season one and sharply in the last three years. Post World Cup in 2011, the tournament suffered as both foot fall and engagement dropped.”

Terming these allegations as “baseless,” the MSM official shared the cumulative reach of IPL since its inception.

The official also added, “Not only in terms of cumulative reach every year but also in terms of ad revenue we witnessed an eight – 10 per cent increase. IPL is an established entity and considering the fact that the tourney has survived through many ifs and buts in past years, the asset is now beyond question.”

The Star spokesperson says that MSM has a major challenge on its hands over the next few weeks. It is going to telecast the IPL very soon after the World Cup ends; at a time when the sports ad spends appetites of some advertisers may have been satiated courtesy the World Cup. However, to MSM’s advantage is the fact that most big spenders are beginning new financial years (the year end for most large corporates in India is 31 March) and hence will have fat wallets. Nonetheless, Sony has to raise anywhere from Rs 900 to 1,200 crore to make this year’s IPL outing pay off.

The Sony spokesperson quickly reverts that this is a given. “While we don’t comment on internal financial figures, we will meet and maybe even beat the revenue target we have set for this year’s IPL,” he says. “Advertiser interest is rising thanks to the excitement that is building around cricket.”

Even as they are taking digs at each other’s performances, the fact remains that both broadcasters are well aware of the importance and valuation of the two flagship tournaments. Moreover the fact that Star’s Hotstar platform is the digital partner of IPL and Max was the destination of the World Cup not long back, proves that the two desire both the tournaments equally. Star India probably is hungry for growth in sports. Its CEO Uday Shankar has outlined the broadcast network’s intentions very clearly: it wants to pitch in a big way to grow the sports ecosystem in India. And in the process, also bring in mountains of revenues for his network.

When the next bidding process for the IPL begins by next year or so, you can be sure Shankar and his team will be on the frontlines making a definitive attempt to acquire its rights. Of course MSM’s NP Singh will be up front too. The rivalry will continue.

March 19, 2015
Team India’s winning run against the West Indies scores 13.1 TVR

MUMBAI: Three weeks on and still in the league stage, the viewership for the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 rose to over half a billion viewers. The cumulative reach of the ongoing World Cup touched 534 million viewers after the first 29 matches (TAM data CS4+ extrapolated to the universe using a standard conversion factor).

With the defending champions on a roll, the India versus West Indies game rated 13.1 TVR across the Star network and DD (TAM M15+ ABC). The match rated 10.9 TVR on Star network and 2.2 TVR on DD (TAM data M15+ ABC). Close to 262 million viewers (TAM data CS4+ extrapolated to the universe using a standard conversion factor) tuned in to watch team India chase down the West Indies’ total to register their fourth consecutive win in the ongoing ICC Cricket World Cup 2015.

Viewers across the country cheered for team India across multiple feeds with Hindi, English and Tamil emerging as the preferred languages. Hindi and regional language contribution continued to be high with 80 per cent of the viewership coming from the non-English feed.

Star extended the ‘Mauka’ campaign for the India West Indies game incorporating the festive celebrations on the occasion of Holi receiving overwhelming response from the fans. The India West Indies promo was watched by over 2.7 million fans as the campaign overall crossed over 17 million online views.

March 12, 2015
Rs 20 crore salary cap set for Indian Super League season 2

MUMBAI: The first season of the Hero Indian Super League (ISL) was indeed a success for the sport in India as it achieved a rare status of being the fourth-most watched football leagues in the world.

Now in its second edition, the controlling body of the ISL, the Football Sports Development Ltd (FSDL), formed through a joint venture between IMG-Reliance and Star India, has decided that the ISL clubs will have player’s salary cap of Rs 20 crore for the second season to be held this year.

The board has also decided that the ISL will have an auction for Indian players who have played in the senior national teams but missed out on the inaugural ISL season.

Each club will be eligible to add only one such player from the auction list consisting of maximum 12 to 15 players. Those not picked through auction will form part of the Domestic Players Draft.

Commenting on the development, an Indian Super League spokesperson said that the new set of rules are defined to encourage clubs in player retention, assist them in managing player costs and provide a level playing field for each club to prepare for the second season with a reasonable and broadly equitable chance of winning the league in 2015.

“The inaugural year of the ISL brought to fore many new faces of Indian football other than the known international names. The league encourages the Clubs to retain such players to help them build an identity and fan base,” added the spokesperson.

In terms of player retention, a number of decisions have been taken at the first Governing Council to review the inaugural season. The Governing Council committee consists of all eight ISL participatory club representatives and officials from FSDL.

For marquee players it has been decided that each club must have a minimum of one marquee player. Clubs can retain their marquee player from the inaugural season but are free to sign one from the open market, with prior approval from the League. For international players, clubs can retain a minimum of one and maximum of five international players. Additionally, clubs are allowed to contract international players by themselves through the market directly.

It has also been decided that a minimum of one and maximum of six domestic players can be retained by a club. Players, who are not part of the retention list of clubs, can be signed by any ISL club in the open market until April 2015. In case they are still without contract, such players will be listed in the Domestic Draft.

Each club is to have a minimum of 22 players, with a mandatory two developmental players in the squad. Each team would consist of one marquee, eight international and 13 domestic players including the compulsory two under-23 developmental players. A club can have a maximum squad size of 25. Additional quota of three players can have maximum two international players it has been decided.

March 10, 2015
India – Pakistan match registers 288 million viewers

MUMBAI: The most anticipated clash of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 created Indian television history as 288 million viewers (TAM data CS4+ extrapolated to the universe using a standard conversion factor) tuned in to watch India take on Pakistan on 15 February, 2015.

The game was the most watched television event in India in the last four years, since the finals of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011.

The match between archrivals rated 14.8 TVR (TAM data M15+ ABC) across Star network including DD. The match rated 11.9 TVR (TAM data M15+ ABC) on Star network and 2.9 TVR (TAM data M15+ ABC) on DD. The India – Pakistan game delivered across town classes led by the top six Metros rating 17.2 TVR and 1million+ towns rating 15.5TVR (All data TAM data M15+ ABC).

Star India CEO Uday Shankar said, “Nothing is bigger than the ICC Cricket World Cup and the Indian fans have shown their unflinching faith and passionate following for Team India as they began their World Cup campaign with a bang. As the country’s leading broadcaster, our efforts have been to showcase the best of cricket, have wider coverage, offer multiple languages and take the sport deeper by reinventing the viewer experience. With a host of innovations, we are committed to make this edition of the ICC Cricket World Cup the biggest ever.”

Star unleashed a host of innovations for the biggest spectacle in the country. The first ever broadcast in six languages of the India – Pakistan game received 76 per cent of the viewership from Hindi and regional feeds and the balance 24 per cent from English validating the multi-lingual strategy pioneered by Star.

A disruptive ‘Mauka’ ad campaign, which went beyond cricket on the field and leveraged fan passion in a unique way, went viral with over 17 million views online. Star roped in the most prominent voice in Indian cinema, Amitabh Bachchan, for India’s biggest game as he debuted as a commentator with the Star Sports panel of Kapil Dev, Shoaib Akhtar, Rahul Dravid and Sanjay Manjrekar for the India – Pakistan game.

The India – Pakistan clash at the World Cup took social media in India by storm as 324,000 consumers spoke 500,000 times about the match, generating a potential three billion impressions. The match dominated conversations on Twitter, with 10/10 trends on Twitter Web, and 15/15 trends on Twitter Mobile, India spoke about nothing else. Indian fans were hopeful of India’s victory, and #Indwins was used 90,000 times, starting well before the game ended. The Star Sports campaign #wontgiveitback was used 24,000 times, and the second installment of the ‘Mauka’ campaign was viewed half a million times within hours of its release.

February 26, 2015
Star India acquires broadcast business of Maa TV

MUMBAI: Star India has acquired the broadcasting business of Maa Television Network. The company operates four Telugu channels namely – Maa TV (Telugu general entertainment channel), Maa Music (music channel), Maa Movies (movie channel) and Maa Gold (youth channel) – which offer an opportunity for creative content innovation in the Telugu television market.

Pertinent to note here is that in 2007 Star had inked a joint venture with Balaji Telefilms to enter the Telugu market. Plans were to float a separate company for a Telugu language channel. However, the JV between the two companies ended in 2008. Star has now finally made its entry by acquiring the broadcast business of Maa TV, which industry sources peg at approximately Rs 1000 crore.

Also interesting to note is that in 2012, Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) had entered into a strategic deal with Maa Television Network to pick up a 30 per cent stake, which however didn’t see the light of day. Nonetheless negotiations were on between the two companies and it seems as if Star has now pipped Sony in the acquisition race.

The acquisition will give Star India access to the highly attractive Telugu TV market (the second largest regional market in India in terms of revenue potential), where it has a very limited presence till date. Maa Television Network is the number one broadcast network in Telugu language content and has a strong trajectory of growth driven by fiction content and movies.

The strategic deal will come into effect upon complying with the necessary regulatory formalities and the broadcast business of Maa TV will be integrated with the business of Star India, once the policies and procedures in the acquired broadcast business of Maa TV are aligned with those at Star India.

With the expansion into the Telugu market Star looks to continue its tradition of innovation in content, building on the strong track record established by the team at Maa Television Network.

“The Telugu market is an important market however the pace of innovation has been slow. We are keen to change this by acquiring a local presence and fundamentally changing the content quality paradigm. We were very impressed by the solid creative core and quality and depth of the management team at Maa Television Network. In a short span of time they have built a leading business which is poised to take the next leap. The acquisition fills a vital gap in our portfolio allowing our advertisers targeted access to a critical market,” said Star India CEO Uday Shankar.

“The strategic decision to align with Star India and be part of a global media group will be a big leap in our efforts to take the Maa TV Network to the next level and strengthen the positioning of Maa brand in the entertainment industry. Star’s leadership in Indian media and entertainment industry and its parent company’s proven expertise in media business on global scale will enable Maa to offer more innovative, rich and differentiated entertainment content to the Telugu Diaspora worldwide,” added Maa Television Network chairman Nimmagadda Prasad.

“We see a lot of synergies and complementary strengths emanating from the strategic deal and it will be a win-win proposition for Maa and Star. Telugu TV viewers will stand to gain significantly from this initiative through greater access to a wide variety of qualitative entertainment content,” Prasad concluded.

February 11, 2015
“Working with channel partners globally to make this a widely covered WC”: Uday Shankar

MUMBAI: This year’s mammoth ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 will soon begin and host broadcaster Star Sports is gearing up its production to make sure that people who have access to the live pictures from more than 200 territories around the world, enjoy a spectacular experience on their viewing platforms.

Star India CEO Uday Shankar speaking on the networks broadcast plan said, “Star won’t rest on its laurels and would ensure that fans feel closer to the game and their heroes, like never before. We will be working closely with 45 of our channel partners across the globe, making this one of the most widely covered ICC Cricket World Cup.”

Shankar further commented that four production teams with seven state-of-the-art technology kits will cover the action from each of the 49 games across the 14 stadia in Australia and New Zealand in 44 days, to create an exciting visual spectacle for fans all around the world.

“Whatever the outcome in cricket’s greatest face-off in Australia and New Zealand, this edition of the Cup promises to be bigger and better,” he added.

Star India will broadcast the World Cup in seven languages, brought together by Star’s expansive world feed, Hindi and regional commentary panel consisting of 13 former skippers, 20 World Cup winners and 26 World Cup semi-finalists. The production of the World Cup will be in the high definition (HD) format and audiences will enjoy the riveting experience as each and every match will be covered by at least 29 cameras, including Ultramotion cameras, Spidercam at 13 matches and the drone camera at all the knock out matches. Technology in use includes Real Time Snicko and LED stumps. Other innovative features will be introduced for the latter stages of the event.

For the first time ever cricket will be covered using 4K technology. To bring its viewers closer to the game, Star Sports will produce live coverage of seven matches in 4K, including the semi-finals and the final.

Meanwhile ICC chief executive David Richardson said: “We expect the World Cup to be the most viewed cricket event in the history of the game. With a great line up of commentators and innovative features, it promises to be an event to remember and the biggest and greatest sporting event anywhere in the world this year.”

Richardson also said that for those who can’t be there in person, Star Sports and its broadcast licensees’ coverage will ensure that 2.5 billion people can view every single game from across all 14 venues in Australia and New Zealand.

In addition to the live coverage of the 49 tournament matches, Star Sports will also produce live broadcast coverage for the warm-up matches from Adelaide and Sydney.

The live broadcast will feature more than 30 commentators. These include Wasim Akram, Russell Arnold, Michael Atherton, Ian Bishop, Allan Border, Ian Botham, Simon Doull, Rahul Dravid, Damien Fleming, Sourav Ganguly, Sunil Gavaskar, Matthew Hayden, Michael Hussey, Dean Jones, Nasser Hussain, Brendon Julian, Nick Knight, Brett Lee, David Lloyd, Sanjay Manjrekar, Damien Martyn, Mpumelelo Mbangwa, Tom Moody, Shaun Pollock, Rameez Raja, Mark Richardson, Michael Slater, Ian Smith, Scott Styris, Mark Taylor, Shane Warne, Mark Waugh alongside Harsha Bhogle, Mark Nicholas and Alan Wilkins.

To complement the television coverage, live online and mobile streaming will be visible on digital channels of most official broadcasters, while starsports.com will also stream the matches live in territories where television broadcast is unavailable.

In Australia, national broadcaster Australian Broadcasting Corporation will be broadcasting all matches live while CrocMedia will provide live coverage of all Australia matches, the semifinals and the final. In the other host country New Zealand, Sport Radio will provide radio coverage. Outside of the host countries, the event will have ball by ball commentary from the BBC (UK), All India Radio (India), SLCB (Sri Lanka), SABC (South Africa), 107 FM (Pakistan) and Channel 2 (Middle East and the USA).

ICC has also tied up with news access agencies SNTV, Perform and Thomson Reuters to provide news broadcasters around the world with 90-second match highlights, subject to these highlights being used in bonafide news programmes within 24 hours of end of the relevant match, for editorial purposes only.

February 7, 2015
Star India’s hotstar.com to premier Star Guild Awards 2015

MUMBAI: In the US, Netflix, Hulu and Amazon have taken the lead by streaming original series like House of Cards, Transparent, Orange is the New Black, Arrested Development, The Hot Wives of Orlando to their subscribers.

Indian over the top services (OTTs) like BigFlix, Spuul, BoxTV, Sony Liv, ErosNow, DittoTV have been serving as aggregation models to stream linear channels or programmes to subscribers simultaneously or after they have been aired on TV.

Now stealing a march on them is the Star India promoted online streaming services hotstar.com. In a first for India, Indya Interactive Services (which runs hotstar.com) announced that it will be premiering the Star Guild Awards 2015 on the video on demand service on 17 January from 7 pm onwards. The awards will be aired on Star Plus a day later on 18 January.

A source close to the development says that this is the next big step towards change in the way content will be delivered to viewers and consumed by them.

The Star India network, however, is going easy on the promotion of the VoD premiere: ads were released today in leading dailies, even as 92.7 Big FM and YouTube had promos and commercials airing. “The platform is still in the testing stage,” revealed the source. “Hence, it is just seeding the service to potential subscribers.”

But at first glance, the hotstar.com service seems interesting as it offers a vast programming catalogue on mobile and the web. With everything found under one roof, the platform has all the genres that the network dabbles in – from popular dailies to live sporting events.

In all it has around 20,000 hours content spread across seven languages, which include 120+ full length TV shows, 500+ movies and live screening of popular sports like cricket, football, tennis and kabbadi.

A media planner labelled the Star Guild Awards VoD premier an experiment. Said he: “I believe it is just an initiative to kick start hotstar.com. It is just for their internal learning process as the platform is still in its beta version. The Star Guild Awards will allow them to try and test whether the platform can manage the traffic and whether it can deliver a good experience to viewers. It also allows them to correct any errors if they do crop up.”

Media observers believe that premiering the awards show is not going to really ruin the telecast on Star Plus on 18 January in terms of viewership ratings. He said: “People like you and me know about it because we are in the space. But do the millions of people who watch television also know about the VoD premier? However, as a test, an experiment I think it is good as it could attract some subscribers to try the hotstar.com service.”

That would be music for the Star India management ears. Under the leadership of CEO Uday Shankar it has been making some pioneering moves and initiatives; hotstar.com is another one of them.

January 17, 2015
Is Star’s VoD ‘hot’ enough?

MUMBAI: “At Star, we have always focused on dramatically enhancing the overall consumer experience. Smart technology, combined with powerful content, can be disruptive…,” had said Star India CEO Uday Shankar when the network launched its online sports platform starsports.com.

Two years have passed since then and keeping up with the changing times, the giant network is back with a new platform. Christened hotStar, the video on demand (VoD) portal, currently running in beta version, will change the way people view content on television or digitally.

With everything found under one roof, the platform has all the genres the network dabbles in. From popular dailies to live sporting events, a click will please many.

The network labels the platforms as the “most compelling catalogue ever offered over-the-top on mobile and the web, making it the most the most complete video destination for consumers.”

With around 20,000 hours content spread across seven languages, which includes 120+ full length TV shows, 500+ movies and live screening of popular sports like cricket, football, tennis and kabbadi, hotStar caters to a very large and diverse audience.

Available across devices, the VoD is not the first such platform launched by a television network in the country; Ditto TV was launched by Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (ZEEL) in 2012. There are many other such platforms like Biscoot and Zenga also available today.

Believes Shotformats Digital Productions CEO and managing director Niyati Shah that though the platform looks nice but the concept of launching the same isn’t clear. “On television there is appointment viewing and in the digital world it is all about snacking. And with only Star content available on the platform, I don’t know what will be the scalability.”

The free to view platform has a simple and easy user interface. However, what stands out is the logo which though is a star but is quite different from that of the networks logo. The tilted star has bright neon green and yellow colours. Its name is another feature that stands out.

“It does sound like a talent show,” says FCB Ulka Digital creative head Sudarshan Sudevan but quickly adds, “But for a site of this sort, it’s not the name that’s critical, it’s the content. And the users will get a hang of it in due course of time.”

Sudevan is excited that Star India is finally into video on demand. “With a good mix of TV shows, movies and sports … I am sure the video friendly population of today is going to have a treat. The network’s idea to enter the space that has been dominated by international players like Netflix and Amazon will be of a pleasure for fans here,” he adds.

Agrees L&K Saatchi & Saatchi India CEO and managing partner Anil Nair that today people want to view content on the move.

However, Shah isn’t convinced. “If I’m a Star TV viewer and miss something, maybe then I would come on the portal. Otherwise I have doubts who would log on,” she states while emphasisng on the fact that through the networks’ strength, the platform might get marketed well but the future will tell the true story.

Nair too points out that today when there are aggregators like Youtube and Apple TV, the lack of genres available on Star’s new platform might become a hurdle. “Hopefully, in the future, the app will add more genres to its bouquet otherwise this can become a reservation for a viewer.”

Highlighting that digitisation will change the mediums in the country, the experts are optimist that with many leaps to take, service providers have a lot to offer.

The network has already started the ground work and a click on any of its current websites (apart from StarSports.com) directly takes the viewer to the new platform. The soft launch has successfully been able to create the buzz and now one just has to wait for the big band launch.

January 10, 2015