Discovery takes different route to digital: To launch 4 new channels

Unlike its peers, Discovery will launch these channels on Republic Day, to be distributed across video platforms

Discovery Communications India, the television network housing the Discovery, Animal Planet and TLC brands, announced its digital foray on Thursday.

Unlike its peers, however, the network is not going the video streaming platform route. Instead, it has announced the launch of digital/mobile-first channels starting January 2018.

The majority of broadcasters have launched own over-the-top services (the term for delivery of film or TV content via the internet, without requiring users to subscribe to a traditional cable or satellite pay TV). Star India has Hotstar since 2015, Viacom18 launched VOOT in 2016 and Zee is expected to launch Zee5 in the coming weeks; it already operates two video streaming services in the form of Ozee and Ditto. Sony Entertainment Television operates its OTT service under the Sony LIV brand.

Apart from this, telecom entities Vodafone, Jio and Airtel have their own content streaming platforms. So do content creators Balaji Telefilm (ALT Balaji) and Eros (Eros Now). International players include Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and HOOW.

In sum, the past two years have seen an explosion in the number of OTT platforms in the country; it is now a norm for all broadcast entities to have a digital presence. Realising the potential, Discovery will now take the plunge, using the route of digital-first channels distributed across online platforms like YouTube, Facebook Video and telecom players, including Vodafone Play and Reliance Jio.

"While it's important to be present on digital, it's also important to have sound financial prospects for the venture. We realised, by observing the industry in India and through our global experience that launching an OTT platform, while easy, might not be the best way for us. Instead, we're putting out content that will appeal to the audiences that have moved online," says Karan Bajaj, senior vice-president and general manager, Discovery Communications India.

The network will launch four digital-first channels, each for a different genre - military, food, automobiles and 'girl power'. The first of these to launch will be a military themed channel called Veer, going live on January 26. Followed by Rise, a channel with women-centric content, in the same quarter. The other two channels will launch in the following quarters.

The network has identified an opportunity in that India has no major at-scale digital/mobile-first channel. All OTT services mostly offer long-form linear content on digital, though the consumption trends indicate 76 per cent of all online videos watched are short-form (less than 10 minutes long). The mobile-first channels from DCIN will have bespoke digital-first, mid-form and short-form content. In the first year itself, Veer by Discovery and Rise by TLC will offer consumers 100-plus hours of original content.

Zulfia Waris, vice-president at Discovery Communications India, said, "The clutter-breaking digital-first content proposition of Veer by Discovery and Rise by TLC is designed to help us achieve our ambition of being the #1 mobile content brand. These will be independent digital channels and not catch-up TV -- from the best in military to girl power to automobiles and world food, our aim is to create and nurture passionate interest-based communities with edgy world-class content that resonates."

Bajaj is hopeful that this route will "make Discovery more salient as a brand in the viewers' psyche." This is an India-specific initiative for the global network.

Veer will house the Breaking Point franchise which provides insight into elite training institutions of the army, navy and air force. It will also have a show around iconic military operations (Battle Ops) and a series on women fighter pilots. Rise aims to be a platform that provides women a strong voice on a variety of issues in an entertaining manner, urging women to move forward, to move society, to challenge norms and ideologies, to move beyond preconceived limitations. It will include shows like Queens of Comedy (hunt for female stand-up comics) and Stories in a Song, where women singers, songwriters and musicians combine to tell women empowerment stories via narration and songs.