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SET India CEO Kunal Dasgupta pointed out that films depicted the
social values of the existing times. He added that it was likely
that today's film makers were slow to pick up the changes in modern
society and highlight them through the medium of cinema.
Due to these reasons, Dasgupta felt that the film makers were not
connecting with the audiences. However, he mentioned that film-based
programming has the highest share of TV programming. Since the consumers
paid less than $3 for watching TV, they were being served with unoriginal
fare except for certain categories like news and sports.
Producer Mukesh Bhatt, who was part of the audience, squarely put
the blame on video piracy. He mentioned that his success could be
attributed to the fact that he believed in 'manufacturing glamour
without being a victim of it.' He claimed that high entertainment
tax rates possibly where proving a dampener. He additionally blamed
cheap Chinese VCD players for the crisis which has led to the penetration
of cheap pirated VCDs down the population starta.
KPMG entertainment business head Rajesh Jain claimed that the lack
of creativity, innovation and slick presentations were affecting
the content.
Reliance Entertainment chairman Amit Khanna felt that the film
industry had a higher propensity to propel doom in the 21st century
'Attention Economy' wherein films emulated products and services
in vying for the attention of the consumers. Amit Khanna blamed
the lack of professional marketing and promotions.
Khanna calculated a revenue of Rs 46 billion in box office for
the industry per annum. However, the reported figures of Rs 30 billion
indicated that there was serious misappropriation.
Manoj Desai, who owns several theatres and has produced many films,
blamed it on desperate producers who flooded the markets with prints
in order to capitalize on a high initial draw during the first few
days. He also mentioned that the budgets of the current films were
being boosted up unnecessarily.
Music industry woes:
Saregama India's VP - A&R Atul Churamani mentioned that
the music industry had taken the highest hit due to the box office
debacles. He also mentioned that the popularity of FM radio had
resulted in a 30 percent decline in audio sales. He added that the
crux was the matter lay in the fact that excess music was available
for free.
A CNBC report stated that the music industry still depended on
the film industry; around 65-70 percent of the content was still
sourced from films. He also mentioned that the global system of
music publishing rights could be adopted in India.
A Saregama representative added that an ordinary CD cost Rs 40
and has content (recorded songs) that cost the music industry millions
in terms of acquisition of music rights. She added that Saregama
had lost a huge proportion of their entire archives of old Hindi
film songs to the grey market.
A major hurdle was the high licence fee that constituted 65 percent
of the operating costs. He added that the industry had created opportunities
where none existed: capitalising on the situation where the markets
were flooded with cheap imports.
Lack of creativity in entertainment:
TV serial director Nupur Asthana blasted TV channels by claiming
that TV channels were the masters at stifling creative thinking
and content. She lamented the fact that every channel claimed to
know what the audiences wanted. She added that the audiences were
subjected to what the channel wanted to show rather than getting
a chance to decide what they wanted to see.
Ex-Sony Entertainment programming head and independent producer
Rekha Nigam claimed that the audiences today seemed to be affected
by the "I don't know what I but I want it now" syndrome.
She added that entertainment was not a formula. It had to be driven
by sheer passion. She added that the film writers were worse than
the TV serial writers.
Click here for more details of the opinions presented by the participants
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