For decades, Indian kids’ channels were surviving on syndicated foreign cartoons and content. That model is no longer viable for young children who can now access a wide variety of content on digital platforms.
In tune with the changed environment, Discovery Kids reinvented its content strategy, to create a new animated show called Little Singham, based on the popular cop franchise movies. “The show disrupted the kids genre, and in a hyper competitive market with 15 channels, we grew to number 2 rank from number 9,” said Uttam Pal Singh, business head of Discovery Kids at FICCI Frames, talking on capturing GenZ and millennials.
As the popularity of the Little Singham brand increased, the producers utilized the high loyalty rate amongst kids to co-monetise and launch a game that is all set to hit 10 million downloads.
Ronnie Screwvala, a film producer and the former owner of UTV, said that TV has been unable to catch the attention span of children. “A lot of them have moved away from TV,” he noted, speaking at the inaugural conference of the event. Where TV falls short, according to him, is the interactivity that young people demand as a part of their viewing experience. Slowly but steadily, however, TV channels are adapting by expanding their brands and content across platforms.
Not shunning TV yet
A large number of content producers and television channels are transforming to cater to the demographically key 360 million-strong Gen Z population aged below 25. Besides the opportunities this segment offers, they also pose a threat to content makers, being the most likely to make the shift into digital-only viewers.
MTV, however, had caught the winds of change 10 years ago, and spread their wings across platforms. “As much as 8.5 billion minutes of our content was consumed on digital service in the last 12 months,” said Ferzad Palia, head of youth, music and English entertainment at Viacom18.
Even as digital consumption is increasing, experts insist that this growth is not coming at the cost of TV. Today, MTV has 400-450 million consumers on TV, with 100-150 million use their digital service, VOOT. As the number of screens increased, screen time and content consumption expanded, providing opportunity to viewers.
Research by Viacom18 predicts that heavy TV consumption will continue over the next 4-5 years. “For every one person that has stopped watching TV completely, there will be five to six more who will come to it. There is a lot of headroom for growth,” said Palia.
The Second Screen Effect
Personalised digital screens have also expanded the variety of content created and consumed. “Today, we do not need market share. We have to identify a community and engage with them continuously to turn sustainable,” said Chanpreet Arora, the CEO of Vice-Media India. This also means new-age content will have cater to niche segments and their needs across the country.
While Vice wanted to produce a show based on the LGBTQi community, they barely found any advertisers. But another show, based on the commmunity’s real problems called ’10 Questions’ was one of its best performing.
“GenZ is very inclusive, and our audience has matured faster than our advertisers,” says Arora. And, these mature audiences are below 25 years of age.