The English movie channel space has seen a shake-up. The power centre has been upset with the growth of Pix and the onslaught of new entrant Movies Now. From being a two-horse race, now there are four – Star Movies, HBO, Movies Now and Pix.
Having acquired the library of its parent Sony Pictures Entertainment, Pix is making a bigger push in a market that is getting more competitive.
In an interview with Indiantelevision.com‘s Ashwin Pinto, Pix business head Sunder Aaron talks about the rise of the channel, the challenges the genre faces and the opportunities to grow the market.
Excerpts: |
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What have been the focus areas of Pix this year? |
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How far has Pix gained from the output deal with parent Sony Pictures Entertainment?
Among our target audience, we have beaten HBO since January. The aim is to become No. 1 eventually. We will continue to focus on getting the right content and building distribution. |
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Could you talk about how Pix has evolved since launching five years back? |
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What are the changes you have brought on the programming front?
Younger audiences come in during the 12:30 pm-4 pm time band. Our programming is geared towards addressing that audience who are mainly college going.
In the last few weeks, two new things have happened. One is ‘Awesome Saturdays‘ where we have lined up the evening with popular movies. And on Sundays we focus on the 12 pm-4 pm time slot with an initiative called ‘Sunday Breakout‘. This is how we are pushing the weekends.
We are doing the Dynamite Diwali festival, which takes place on weeknights at 11 pm. In November, we will have an even bigger stunt. It will probably be called ‘Big Guns of Hollywood’. |
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What about thematic blocks? |
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When Pix launched, it skewed towards 25+ audiences. Now where do they come from? |
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Is this genre seeing more of appointment viewing than say two years back?
People watch movies in different ways - DVDs, online, on their ipad. So why would you have to make an appointment at 9 pm to sit in front of a channel to watch a film? I don’t think that channels compete on this basis anymore. Competition is on the basis of content, perception and profile. |
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Is channel loyalty falling? |
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Has the market dynamics for the genre changed dramatically? |
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Movies Now has made an impact by focussing on popular films. Does that mean that premieres have lost a bit of their value?
But I wouldn‘t say that it diminishes the value of premieres. It does show that Indian audiences still have an appetite for movies that are familiar to them. But when Pix showed ‘The Karate Kid‘, it was a premiere and propelled us to the No. 1 spot. |
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Is there going to be more focus on original shows like ‘Gateway’? |
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How is the deal with the NBA working out? It is working out well. The big challenge, though, is that the NBA is in a lockout; they have not started the season. The players’ union has not come to an agreement with the owners to start the season. The season will get delayed. |
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Are you looking at more sports properties to build reach? We are careful. The NBA is enough; if we put more, it will look like a sports channel. |
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How are you pushing distribution?
I don‘t want to rely so much on ad revenue. But we don‘t get our due in terms of subscription income. Carriage fees rise every year while subscription revenue is not keeping pace with it. |
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Between the different mediums, how is your spend split?
I would say that online is a very effective medium. It is highly flexible. |
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Could you give me a couple of examples of innovative campaigns that have been done this year?
For ‘The Social Network‘, we could not use Facebook as a medium. So we used radio and hoardings. People knew Mark Zuckerberg but not the film’s star Jesse Eisenberg. The thought for the campaign was the sexiest man alive; this created an intrigue. |
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How are you growing consumer contact initiatives like the Pix Movie Club? We have touched 10,000 members. We are in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore and we want to take it further down next year. We haven‘t decided on whether or not to rope in advertisers for this. |
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Are you looking at more marketing initiatives? We are looking at doing something online. We are working on the details. For me, online marketing is about an idea and not just taking out a bunch of banners across sites. |
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