Executive Dossier

‘There is no major differentiation among the top 3 players’ – Mohan Gopinath

Published

13 years ago

January 24, 2013

Zee Cinema, the Hindi movie channel from the Zee stable, has seen it all since its inception in 1995. Right from being the uninterrupted ruler to seeing its territory being eaten into by new players like Star Gold and Max, the channel has weathered all kinds of climate. And it continues to be a cash cow within the Zee network of entertainment channels.

According to Zee Cinema business head Mohan Gopinath, there is no major differentiation among the top three players. “We are all battling for the same share of the slice and there is no huge lead to say that this channel is number one as that keeps oscillating,” he says.

Gopinath also believes that digitisation would throw open a lot of growth opportunities for the genre. Segmentation of movie channels would be one such area. He also believes that movie acquisitions would have to be in line with the business economics and strategies of the channel. In a conversation with Indiantelevision.com‘s Javed Farooqui, Gopinath talks about how Zee Cinema has managed to remain steady and relevant all these years despite the rise in competition and the changing consumption pattern.Excerpts:

What are the key takeaways for Zee Cinema from 2012?

The key takeaways were the premieres that we did. We did a premiere of Agneepath, English Vinglish, Agent Vinod and Joker. So those were the kind of refreshed content that was displayed on Zee Cinema. Then we had ‘Bollywood’s Most Wanted‘ festival during Dussehra which was a take on glorifying the villains. This has been a good year in terms of imagery and mileage that was displayed on Zee Cinema.

How was the content different from what was offered in 2011?
Refreshing content, that was the difference. We had heavyweight content which had superstars; and we also had English Vinglish which was so strong on content that people didn’t mind that it lacked a hero. Besides, we had Agent Vinod and Joker which also had stars which we as a channel could boast about.

Zee Cinema used to rule the roost as numero uno Hindi movie channel but now it is at the second spot on the ratings table?
In a scenario where you have very little to choose from, it is wrong to say that one is at number one or two because there is no major differentiation among the top three players. We are all battling for the same share of the slice and there is no huge lead to say that this channel is number one as that keeps oscillating. So I would like to believe that all three are on an even par and that is where the content resides at this point of time. The important fact is have you been able to maintain a steady base at the level that you were operating on and are you in the game right now because of so many environmental changes where certain channels have taken a huge lead and certain channels have gone off the boil. So a lot of things have happened in the last 45-50 days. It has been heartening to note that Zee Cinema has been rock steady and continues to do so.

Have you seen any drastic changes in the ratings post digitisation?
Not much. In fact competitor channels have fallen by certain points but nothing to suggest that any great upheaval has taken place. So all three are on the same even play. The averages for across the year and the past 13 weeks would seem to suggest so.

How do you think digitization will help Hindi movie channels?

The opportunity for broadcasters is the level playing field. In fact if I am not seen at all, then what is the incentive for me to say that whether I am good or bad. So I think digital (cable) will help cure that ailment in the sense that I will at least be seen. Then you can shout about the uniqueness that you bring to the table. Secondly, it becomes a completely viewer medium. All this while we were catering to a certain type of viewers who was interested in certain kind of movies but who also wanted to see something different. A case in point being classic: it is a very premium category that watches the the Bharat Bhushan’s and Dilip Kumar’s of the world. The newer generation may not know about them but they have always heard from their parents or grandparents that used to exist. So the quality of song will attract movie watching also. If per se I were to name an Awaara or an Arzoo, it will not ring a bell. But if I sing or hymn a particular song, you will say ‘let’s see that movie’ just to know what is in it that makes my parents rave about them. So that is a huge opportunity of how we can go about things.

You have already segmented the genre with channels like Premier, Action and Classic. Are these channels getting any traction and how do you see them faring in digital era?

We have to wait before we pass judgments on these channels because digital offers good scope. We are on the threshold of something that is about to explode, so in three-four months time we will be able to tell what has happened and what hasn’t. We are just waiting on the edge to appreciate it. The availability of these channels have increased. Zee Classic is getting carried across all the DTH operators. So I think that leads to a greater consumption of the channel.

Zee Cinema was not very aggressive in acquiring big-ticket acquisitions but last year you changed gears?

See, it depends on where you are and where you want to be in terms of taking the channel forward. Acquisition for the sake of acquisition will never work as you have to take into account the economics, the kind of strategy that the company has in place and the strategy that you (as a channel) have in place. It was a very informed call that this is the year we are going to make our presence felt in the market. You wouldn’t want to be counted out of the race of airing new movies, so that was clear decision and I am happy that it bore fruit.

But viewers also want more of new content on movie channels?

New and fresh content always appeals to the viewer but they do not let go the old content. There is this huge fallacy that viewers only like to watch new content. What is also important is do you have enough back-up content and plans in your kitty that once you are done with your premieres and once you are done with three-four telecasts (of new movies) do you have the library to sustain viewership and that is where the history and pedigree of the channel comes and that is where Zee Cinema is on a good footing at this point. We have a huge library to back-up the newer lot. It is so easy to say that I will buy everything in town but it doesn’t work even our competitors would agree it’s just a matter of what you have as a back-up plan.

What is the brand philosophy of Zee Cinema?

It carries along the company ethos with it which is that of being a family entertainment channel. We don’t want to be counted as a channel that does bizarre stuff and goes beserk with the kind of movies that we air. We have always been a rock steady channel keeping in mind the consumption pattern of the viewer. We believe that what appeals to us at a certain basic primal level will also appeal to viewers. The numbers (ratings) and the kind of response we have generated seems to suggest so.

Have movie consumption habits been changing particularly due to the emergence of new platforms?

It has impacted consumption habits a little bit, but to attribute everything to external factors will also not be right. People initially thought that DVDs would lead to the demise of movie consumption in theatres, but actually you have seen the theatre business grow multi-fold. I think they will co-exist because they are all appealing to a different set of TG.

How do you decide on the scheduling of content?

There is a lot of thought that goes into the scheduling because movie consumption can happen at any time. So am I at any given point satisfying the need of my viewer at that particular point in that particular mood? That is the kind of study that goes into deciding the schedule and acquisition of movies for that particular slot. There are lots of packages that are being done.

Like the branded slots that you have?

A case in point being ‘Dopahar Zee Cinema Par’ in the month of May. So those kind of things or if there have been new acquisitions that we will have to put into it to give it a different flavour and a different positioning. If I keep on scheduling movies, then not everyone will come to know about it by just running a promo. Here I am giving a different flavour, I am tapping into that aspect of a never before scene or a great content that helps you understand the ethos of the movie or what goes into the making of it.

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Executive Dossier

Game on, fame on as Good Game hunts India’s first global gaming star

Published

1 week ago

January 27, 2026

indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: Game faces on, pressure high India’s gaming ambitions are levelling up. Good Game, billed as the world’s first as-live global gaming reality show, has officially launched in India with a bold mission: to crown the country’s first Global Gaming Superstar.

Blending esports with mainstream entertainment, the show brings together competitive gaming, creativity and on-camera performance in a format that tests more than just joystick skills. Contestants will be judged on gameplay, screen presence and their ability to perform under pressure, reflecting how gaming has evolved from pastime to profession and pop culture currency.

Fronting the show are three high-profile ambassadors: actor and entrepreneur Samantha Ruth Prabhu, Indian cricket star Rishabh Pant, and gaming creator Ujjwal Chaurasia. The winner will take home Rs 1 crore ($100,000) among the largest prize pools for any Indian reality show along with the chance to represent India on a global stage.

Backed by a planned annual investment of up to Rs 100 crore, Good Game is also courting brand partners, promising a minimum reach of 500 million among India’s core youth audience. The creators position the show as a bridge between entertainment and interactive culture, offering long-format content, community engagement and commercial scale.

Auditions are now open to Indian citizens aged 18 and above, inviting amateur and professional gamers, creators and performers alike. Shortlisted candidates will be called for in-person auditions in Mumbai on 14 and 15 February, and in Delhi on 28 February and 1 March 2026.

With big money, big names and even bigger ambition, Good Game signals a shift in how India views gaming not just as play, but as performance, profession and prime-time spectacle.

Digital

SpotDraft hires new CMO and CFO to fuel global push for its AI contract platform

Published

2 months ago

December 3, 2025

indiantelevision.com Team

INDIA: SpotDraft has strengthened its senior ranks as it gears up for faster global expansion, naming Alon Waks as chief marketing officer and Amit Sharma as chief financial officer. The appointments follow the firm’s $54 million Series B round earlier this year and mark a push to scale across the Americas, EMEA and India.

The AI-powered contract-lifecycle-management platform has posted 100 per cent year-on-year growth in customer acquisition, counting Apollo.io, IPSY, Mixpanel, Oyster and Panasonic among its global clients. The firm processes more than one million contracts annually, with volumes up 173 per cent and nearly 50,000 monthly active users.

Waks, a veteran of Kustomer, Bizzabo, CreatorIQ, LivePerson and ZoomInfo, will steer global marketing and category positioning as legal teams adopt AI-driven tools. Sharma, who has led finance across scaling tech firms since 2016, will guide financial strategy, investor relations and market expansion.

Both hires aim to sharpen SpotDraft’s bid for a larger slice of the fast-growing legal-tech market, expected to exceed $63 billion by 2032. Co-founder and chief executive Shashank Bijapur said the company is focused on scaling go-to-market operations in the Americas, deepening leadership in EMEA, and accelerating AI capabilities for general counsels and legal-operations leaders.

Clients report shorter deal cycles and better alignment between legal and business teams. “What used to take weeks now happens in days,” said Abnormal Security senior legal operations manager Susan Koenig. DeepL head of legal operations André Barrow, said SpotDraft has helped reframe legal “from a cost centre to a generator of revenue”.

Executive Dossier

Outdoor Ads Get Smarter as LOC8 Shifts OOH from Visibility to Attention

Published

2 months ago

November 28, 2025

indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: Out-of-home ads were once the wallflowers of marketing seen by everyone, noticed by few. But in an age where attention has become the world’s most fought-over currency, even billboards are getting a brain upgrade. Enter LOC8, OSMO’s AI-powered attention engine, quietly reshaping the old OOH playbook by measuring not just who could have looked at an ad, but who actually did. The shift is subtle but seismic: impressions are out, impact is in and data, not gut instinct, is calling the shots.

In a landscape where marketers question every rupee spent outdoors, LOC8 is turning lampposts, flyovers and traffic islands into precision-mapped attention laboratories. By crunching dwell time, visibility zones, perceptual size and real-world obstructions, the platform is dragging OOH into a future where creativity meets computer vision and where the best ideas aren’t just eye-catching, but eye-measured. From automotive facelifts to FMCG novelty and real estate trust-building, the message is clear, outdoor has stopped shouting and started listening. Indian Television Dot Com explores more about it in an Interview interview with OSMO co-founder Nipun Arora.

On how OSMO is shifting outdoor advertising from a visibility-led medium to an attention-led one through LOC8.

Traditional OOH has long been measured by visibility and impressions i.e how many people could see an ad. OSMO, through its proprietary AI platform LOC8, is shifting that narrative more towards likelihood of being noticed. Using computer vision and machine learning, LOC8 analyzes real-world video data to measure visibility zones, obstructions, dwell time and perceptual size; bringing precision to how attention is quantified outdoors. It moves the focus from mere impressions to quality of impressions, making OOH a data-verified, attention-led medium comparable to digital in accountability.

On how marketers can use LOC8’s dwell-time, visibility and perception insights to craft more effective, emotionally resonant OOH campaigns.

LOC8 helps brands understand how people truly experience outdoor media how long they look, from what distance, and under what conditions. By quantifying dwell time, visibility duration, and perceptual size; marketers can plan campaigns that align with real human viewing behavior. This empowers creative and strategy teams to design emotionally resonant storytelling where messaging, visual hierarchy and placement are optimized for how people actually notice and process OOH creatives.

About what LOC8 has revealed through campaigns like Renault Triber and Namaste India on how categories such as auto, FMCG and real estate use attention metrics to drive outcomes.

Each category uses attention data differently but all share one common goal: to convert outdoor visibility into measurable engagement.

• Automotive | Renault Triber

For the new Renault Triber facelift, bold creative met data-led planning through LOC8. By analyzing on-ground video data, LOC8 measured real audience attention across placements factoring in visibility zones, obstructions, traffic speed and perceptual size. This enabled Renault to identify corridors that delivered maximum reach, saliency and engagement, optimizing media efficiency and ROI.

• FMCG | Namaste India

In OOH, innovation is the hook and assets are the bait. But bait often hides the hook. With Loc8’s attention metrics, we ensured the bait wasn’t a hurdle, rather it became the perfect stage for innovation to deliver its full impact! The insight proved that creative novelty, when validated by attention data, drives deeper engagement and measurable brand lift.

• Real Estate

For luxury and real estate campaigns targeting HNI/UHNI audiences, attention patterns differ especially between front and rear passengers, who are often the core audience segment for premium sites. LOC8’s ability to distinguish rear vs. front visibility plays a critical role here. It helps identify sites that offer longer viewing windows and stronger perceptual dominance from the rear seat where decision-makers are most likely seated making it a key differentiator for premium and trust-led categories. Together, these insights prove that auto optimizes for impact, FMCG for recall, and real estate for trust visibility showing how attention metrics adapt to category goals while ensuring measurable outcomes.

On how attention analytics will shape the future of brand storytelling and media planning as OOH becomes more digitised and data-driven.

As outdoor digitizes, attention analytics will inform not just where to advertise but how stories are told in public spaces. This evolution transforms OOH from a static broadcast channel into a dynamic attention ecosystem, where creativity is optimized through evidence-based insight.

On how LOC8’s data-led framework helps marketers quantify OOH impact and make outdoor a more accountable, ROI-driven medium.

LOC8 bridges the gap between intuition and evidence. By quantifying metrics like visibility duration, attention opportunity index, and visual saliency rank, it allows brands to benchmark site performance and justify investment. This data-led approach brings transparency, comparability and ROI measurement to a medium historically driven by perception.

On how OSMO ensures AI and computer vision enhance creativity rather than reduce it to numbers.

OSMO believes that technology should enhance creativity, not overshadow it. LOC8’s attention models reveal what naturally draws the human eye helping creative teams refine design cues, contrast, and visual hierarchy for greater impact. By merging art and science, LOC8 empowers creativity with intelligence.

About the creative best practices and design cues LOC8 has uncovered regarding what truly captures consumer attention outdoors.

LOC8’s visual cognition analysis has surfaced clear patterns across campaigns:

• High contrast and minimal messaging outperform cluttered designs.

• Motion cues draw significantly longer dwell times.

• The first two seconds are critical, creatives must establish focus instantly.

• Contextual alignment between the creative and its environment increases attention by over 30%.

These learnings offer a scientific foundation for creative effectiveness helping brands design OOH that’s visually magnetic and emotionally memorable.

On how attention metrics will integrate into omnichannel planning where OOH, digital and social work together for unified brand impact.

Attention can become the unifying KPI across OOH, digital and social to creates seamless storytelling continuity, where outdoor triggers digital engagement. The future of omnichannel planning lies in attention-led integration ensuring that campaigns don’t just reach audiences everywhere but truly capture and hold their focus.