Dubai: After making a splash with ‘Colors’, the Indian TV broadcaster Viacom18 is out to build relations … literally. The company is launching the Middle East version of ‘Rishtey’ (which translates as relationship in Hindi) as its second general entertainment channel after Colors, which lists the hugely popular reality shows ‘Bigg Boss’ and ‘Jhalak Dikhhla Ja’ among its offerings.
But there will be a subtle difference between the Rishtey offerings beamed in India and what will appear on Rishtey Asia, meant for this region’s audiences.
“It’ll not be a rerun channel for Colors — instead our subtle endeavour with Rishtey Asia is to create a wider audience among Arabs as well as from among the other South Asian viewers based here,” said Anuj Gandhi. Group CEO of IndiaCast, a joint venture between Viacom18 and TV18, whose other channels include MTV India and News18, as well as in other Indian language.
“That means Rishtey Asia will show Turkish programmes dubbed in Hindi. There will also be programme from Pakistan — it will be a platform for hybrid entertainment offerings or more localised content.
“The hard-core Hindi language audiences will continue to have their fill with Colors. And Colors will continue to be the vehicle for our premium content.”
The broadcaster had taken a similar approach with Rishtey’s launch, in the UK during 2012. It was a year later that the Indian version made its debut.
Indian broadcasters such as Zee and Star have also widened their audience reach through multiple channels with varying degrees of separation from their flagship channels. In the Gulf markets, such segmentation is all the more necessary — advertisers will value them more if their viewer demographic shows sizeable numbers of Arabs following their content.
Over the last three years, Colors’ regional reach has grown to touch 2.1 million viewers. And it is something that Gandhi expects Rishtey Asia to attain within the first 12 months or so.
“While the Colors’ Middle East beam was introduced five years, it’s over the last three that it has taken off,” said Gandhi. “The advertising support has grown in tandem in sync with the viewership gains around successful content as Bigg Boss, Jhalak Dikhhla Ja and the serials.”
On whether there is a chance that any substantial audience gains for Rishtey Asia could cannibalise Colors’ ad billings, Gandhi said: “I don’t see that happening — we are creating enough points of difference on the production content. It will also be reflected in the ad rates.”
As for its operations in India, Gandhi said that the transition to full digital and 4G networks will create “more niche channels” in the medium-term. “From that perspective, the Indian (satellite TV) market is far from being saturated.
