Colors steps up its game

'Infinity' has a new alliance and some new shows as it looks to entice the young urban viewer

Colors Infinity is hoping for an early mover advantage as it ties up with Sony Pictures for releasing an Amazon Prime show in India at the same time as the US. As a first step, the two have agreed to simultaneously air the first season of the US adaptation of the British comedy 'Mad Dogs'. The first show will be broadcast on Saturday, January 23. The alliance is expected to give the channel access to a new and a different kind of content library and set it apart from the others in the English general entertainment category.

Colors Infinity was late to get into the English general entertainment channel (GEC) space. Launched mid-2015, it was up against veterans Star World, Zee Cafe and AXN as well super niche channels like HBO Defined (now called HBO HD) and Star World Premier HD. It took a while, but the strategy that Colors Infinity adopted - to flood the channel with shows, instead of repeating the same shows several times over - seems to have worked. Currently it has 15 shows running through the week, a number significantly higher than its peers and it has been the fifth most watched channel through the first two weeks of January.

 

Ferzad Palia, executive vice-president and business head, English cluster, Viacom18 (owner of the Colors brand) stresses that this is part of the channel's strategy to be a cut above the rest. "In the past six months that Colors Infinity has been around, we have had some big hits. There is no dearth of content and audiences want variety. So we have drama, superhero shows, reality shows and much more. That is the reason we have almost double the number of shows a week than our peers."

More shows have led to more advertisers. Palia says that the channel has attracted nearly100 brands as advertisers/sponsors for their programmes over the past six months. Advertisers however are notoriously fickle when it comes to channel associations and are going to be looking at the changing viewership trends in the country as they plan for the coming year. Chances are that there will be a significant overhaul in this space in the months to come. Consider the recent Vuclip Global Video Insights report for 2015 which shows that 75 per cent users today view video content on television, 55 per cent view it on PC's/laptops and smartphones in India. Audiences are turning what is called screen agnostic when it comes to viewing shows and movies.

The entry of Netflix could also be a gamechanger though the channels deny that it will impact them in any significant manner. Netflix is a paid service and an expensive one at that, they point out, while television content is not. However, as a recent report in the New York Times points out, "Netflix isn't an ordinary TV producer. Like Amazon, it is amassing a cache of intelligence on what customers want, and it's using that data to create content that appeals to a wide range of demographics globally."

But the team at Colors Infinity is not worried. 

Speaking about 'Mad Dogs', Palia says that the original British show aired on the channel a while back and found a big viewership. So when Amazon Prime decided to put the first season of the American adaptation on its platform in the US, Colors Infinity saw an opportunity. Palia says that they decided to air the show at the same time as in the US because today viewership is a lot about instant access.

Such an initiative has its own share of challenges, however. For one, the editing team will be on its toes chopping off scenes as per Indian censorship rules in real time. Simultaneously, English subtitles will be added to the show as it goes on air. This is a practice Colors Infinity says it follows for all its shows, even those in the 'Instant Premiere' property, where episodes are aired in India within 12 hours of their international airing.

Apart from buying shows from international studios, Colors Infinity is developing local content and unique formats for Indian audiences. It did that with 'The Stage', a singing reality show conceptualised, developed and executed entirely out of India, which aired in the last quarter of 2015. The show looked for talented Indian singers adept at Western forms of music. The channel owns the IP for the format, and it has had a few international studios seeking licenses to air the programme in other countries. A second season of 'The Stage' is also scheduled in the second half of the year. "While 2015 saw so many new shows burst to the scene and give us the initial impetus, 2016 will be about building on that momentum. A lot of the successful shows like Flash, Arrow etc will have their next seasons while there will be new shows like Shades of Blue (currently on air) and Legends of Tomorrow. We will also scale up the local productions this year," says Palia.

(The show 'Mad Dogs' is distributed by Sony Pictures; Colors Infinity has acquired the India television telecast rights for all 10 episodes)