Boom in Marathi channels

Growth in both revenues and audiences picks up

What is it with Marathi television? It has been in great form. Over the last three years the total number of Marathi channels has more than doubled from 5 to 11. The amount of time Indians spent watching TV in Marathi went up from 4.3 per cent to almost five per cent of national viewing time according to TAM Media Research data.

Not surprisingly ad revenues, growing at a brisk 30 per cent hit Rs 350 crore in 2011, going by Vivaki Exchange data. “The genre has grown tremendously from 500 gross rating points (GRPs) it is now 800 GRPs. Star Pravah has given huge competition to the other two general entertainment channels (GECs) Zee Marathi and ETV Marathi,” says Mona Jain, CEO Vivaki Exchange.

And the party continues. Maayboli, the twelfth Marathi channel will be launched in December this year by Sri Adhikari Brothers Television Network. While this still leaves Marathi way behind languages such as Tamil, Telugu or Bangla which have between 30-40 channels competing in each genre, it is a significant number. What then are the reasons for this boom in Marathi television? National broadcasters and advertisers going regional and the growth of Marathi cinema.

The market as it was
For very long Maharashtra, just like Bihar, was seen as a market that was a spill over of the national one. So Hindi worked equally well here. Sure there were Marathi channels such as Zee Marathi, ETV Marathi and DD Sahayadri. But they worked for a smaller audience. Nevertheless the genre grew reasonably well to hit a little over 2.9 per cent in audience share nationally by 2006. This was way lower than what Tamil and Telugu at over 12.9 and 9.6 per cent each did then. It was however roughly on par with Bangla and Malayalam the other genres comparable to Marathi.

Bangla and Malayalam are comparable not just because of size but because just like Marathi, the audiences in these states have a strong literary and theatrical connect. As a result, even if production values are not as polished as Hindi, the quality of programming in these genres is several notches above the popular levels. So, Marathi entertainment market settled into some kind of comfortable niche alongside others till about 2006. Advertising revenues for the genre had settled in the Rs 100-125 crore bracket.

The big boys come in
It was against this background that Star Pravah entered the market in 2008. It shook things up a bit, bringing with it a new energy. “We look at all GECs as our competition from a GRP point of view,” says Yogesh Manwani, vice president, marketing and communications, Star Entertainment Media. Star however is one example of a strategic shift that almost all big broadcasters are making – the one into regional television, of which Marathi is a critical component. As digitisation gathers pace, the network with the maximum variety in languages and genres has a better negotiating hand with cable and direct-to-home (DTH) companies and therefore the best chances of getting a decent share of pay revenues.

LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL
Year	2006	2009	2010	2011	H1 2012
Total number of channels	3	5	10	11	11
Share of genre in national viewing time (%)	2.9	4.3	3.95	4.65	4.9
Ad revenues (Rs crore)	na	170	245	350	na
Source - TAM Media Research, Vivaki Exchange and Industry estimates na - not available

Therefore the Rs 3,700-crore Star has been pushing hard in regional languages since 2008 when it forayed into everything from Malayalam and Kannada to Marathi taking its tally to 35 channels. From 5 per cent, the share of regional languages has gone to 27 per cent of Star’s (total) revenues. The Rs 3,040-crore Zee, Star’s closest rival, gets roughly 30 per cent of its total (advertising) revenues from regional channels.

This regional expansion coincides with advertisers’ need to reach out to the prosperous part of small town India. Of this, ‘rest of Maharashtra,’ as researchers label the state beyond Mumbai, is a huge chunk. What about the overlap with Hindi? Jain answers that, “There is an overlap but the idea is to increase frequency at low incremental cost. So a lot of advertisers are supplementing national activity by relying on local channels. They are using these (Marathi) channels to build associations and engage with consumers in a language and culture which they are most comfortable and familiar with. Also local channels have created opportunities for certain categories like durables to reach out to the Maharashtra market at lower entry level cost.” According to data from Vivaki, Marathi channels average a rate of Rs 9,000 to Rs 12,000 per 10 seconds while a similar Hindi GEC averages of Rs 35,000 to 50,000 per 10 seconds.

Much of this dovetails very well with one happy piece of news – the resurgence of Marathi cinema. “In the last 1-1.5 years movies have become very critical,” says Manwani. They feed the increasing demand for programming hours as the market keeps growing. And since the new wave Marathi cinema is seriously high-brow it appeals to the demanding Marathi TV audiences. This in turn increases the pull of TV. “Marathi television reaches more people than Marathi cinema. There are a lot intellectual films so viewership has increased,” says Markand Adhikari, Vice Chairman and managing director, Sri Adhikari Brothers Television Network.

This brings Marathi broadcasters in perilous territory because the industry though critically acclaimed is not very prolific. “With fiction and general entertainment things are more in our control. With movies the challenge is that we cannot steer the content offering being done outside,” says Manwani. So Star has been busy buying up all the Marathi movies it can to feed the Star Pravah hours.

This means rising programming costs and more pressure on revenues. Does the script sound familiar?