STAR-Jupiter set to take on Sun TV in South India

Ad market at Rs 1,200 crore.

The competition for the Rs 1,200 crore television advertising market in South India is set to intensify. Sun TV, which has a strangle hold on this market with more than 50 per cent share, is expected to face the heat from the freshly minted STAR-Jupiter combine.

Jupiter Entertainment, prior to the joint venture with STAR, had presence in Malayalam for close to a decade through Asianet and during the past two years has launched Kannada network and has recently entered the Telugu market.

The joint venture with STAR brings the Tamil network, STAR Vijay to the table, thus completing the bouquet of general entertainment channels.

“With plans to launch round-the-clock movie and music channels across the four languages, STAR-Jupiter is set accelerate its growth and close the gap with Sun TV in around 2 years time,” an industry analyst noted.

Currently, the new company has Rs 200 crore of the advertising market in South India, a third of Sun. According to a STAR-Jupiter statement, they are planning to make additional investments towards developing and launching new channels in South India in the coming months.

Uday Shankar, CEO of STAR India said: “South India represents the next big growth story for Indian television. With this strategic partnership, we should be able to capture this growth opportunity and create a much bigger platform for creative talent that would offer the South Indian a lot more exciting content. The partnership also offers an exciting opportunity to those advertisers, who are looking at nationwide reach vehicles and reinforce this with strong regional channels."

Zee Network is another player, which attempted to bridge this gap with Sun TV but has not been able to establish itself across the four languages.

According to industry players, while STAR brings its global expertise and scale to the joint venture, Jupiter Entertainment which owns Asianet knows the ground reality and has the expertise to bring in effective changes to the network.

Paul Aiello, CEO of STAR, said: “This is a game changing partnership for STAR. It allows us to connect deeply with the rapidly growing South Indian audience. And by adding the South Indian channels to our extensive portfolio of Hindi and regional language channels, STAR takes a big step towards becoming a truly national broadcaster in India.”

STAR and Jupiter are also exploring a wide range of new areas of cooperation including film co-production by Fox STAR Studios India and Indigo Movies, Jupiter Entertainment’s movie production arm.