UTV New Media forays into audio cinema

The media house will release one movie every Friday in four languages.

Mobile users can now have a personal multiplex on their handsets — the catch is that it can only be heard. UTV New Media, the digital arm of UTV, has launched ‘audio cinema’ which will be a 60-90 minutes edited movie with a voice over that would narrate the story including famous dialogues in the actors’ voice.

Under its banner UTV@play, the media house will release one movie every Friday in four languages. The first release for, Hindi language users will be Fashion and Sholay. While Dalapathi in Tamil, Gang Leader in Telugu and Prem Loka in Kanada will be released for regional language listeners. The services will be available through all the national carriers except Loop.

“During the All India Radio days listening to movies on the radio was a great attraction for listeners. But with the FM phenomenon radio channels have focused more on music. With this launch we will bring the abridged version of movies to the listener,” said T N Prabhu, CEO of UTV New Media. UTV has acquired digital rights for over 300 movies in four languages.

But how viable would be audio cinema? Prabhu believes that there are enough takers for this new offering from UTV. “We carried a trial of these services on a base of 35,000-40,000 sample spread across India. The maximum interest for these services came from regions like UP, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra for Hindi language films. While Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka topped among the Southern states. With each listener spending on an average 10-12 minutes,” said Prabhu.

In states like Bihar and UP the test samples were over 4,000. Prabhu further adds that the company is targeting users on tier II and III cities. “Users in the metro cities will not need such entertainment as they have access to several avenues, so from a city like Mumbai we did not get much samples. But as we went into the interiors of India the interest was greater,” he added.

Keeping in mind the user profile the pricing has also been kept attractive. “You would be surprised to know that the users were ready to spend Rs 30 per month for a subscription model. Besides the disposal income that the younger generation has in these cities is much more than what a college goer will get in metro cities,” said Prabhu.

The pricing will be different according to each telecom carrier. But the average price will be around Rs 30 per 30 minutes or Rs 6 per minute.

For UTV this is a very important launch. The company’s new media segment contributes around 2 per cent to the revenue. The company expects that the New Media business will contribute about 3-4 per cent to its overall revenues by 2010. New Media is a year old business for the media house.