With the advent of digitisation in India, more international broadcasters are looking to launch channels in the country. A case in point is E! Networks. It runs E!, which focusses on Hollywood news, stories and features. It will also launch its fashion and lifestyle channel Style internationally later this year.
E! Networks is looking to launch at least one, if not both of these channels before the end of the year in India. It is in talks with distribution networks to negotiate deals. Indiantelevision.com's Ashwin Pinto caught up with Comcast Entertainment Group, International president Kevin MacLellan to find out more.
Excerpts:
Could you give me a brief overview of E!'s international business and the content it offers? |
|
How important is Asia in terms of content consumption and revenue vis-?-vis Europe and the US? Which are your top three markets in this region? We have 12 feeds globally not including the US. In Asia there are three feeds. |
|
India is going through a period of digital transition with Cas and DTH. How do you view this market in terms of potential and has a timeline been set to launch E! and Style? Now it has become apparent to me that due to the upper echelon of Indian society in terms of the wealthier people with larger disposable incomes they have a significant interest in Hollywood films. From our perspective, India is a big market to reach for in Asia. The problem was that E! launched internationally pretty late in the game in 2002-2003. Analogue was pretty full by then. We had to find other platforms that had available capacity. We are so pleased to see DTH, IPTV taking off in India. We believe that the audience that has the money to invest in these platforms has a strong interest in Hollywood. We would like to launch E! and Style by the end of this year. |
|
The English entertainment and lifestyle segment in India is getting more competitive. What is E!'s USP that you feel will help it stand out from the other players? We cover Hollywood better than anybody else and this is what sets us apart. To find out everything on Hollywood and see it done in a high quality rich looking channel is what viewers expect from us. From Style's point of view there are many lifestyle channels out there from the likes of Discovery and Scripps. Most of those channels appeal to 25-49 year old females. The Style channel has been successful in the US as it appeals to a younger female crowd. You are talking about a 12-34 year old female. Women at that age are just setting their buying trends. They are choosing brands that they will use for the rest of their lives. Style targets a young, technologically savvy woman. E!'s target is 18-49. The similarity between the two networks is that we are appealing to what we call the ABC1 demographic. This refers to a high income, highly educated, metropolitan audience. |
|
Over the last three years how has E! gone about creating awareness in Asia? A good way to do that is to do marketing campaigns with the operators themselves. We do outdoor campaigns and it helps that E! has famous faces appear on the channel. We can do ads in print magazines with pictures of Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Aniston. The A-list names grab people's attention a lot more than say an ad for a documentary would. |
|
In India you have licensing deals with broadcasters like Zee and Star. When you launch, will this side of the business get affected? However, to go back to the marketing issue, it helps to put a little of your content on the bigger networks with a broader reach. It helps familiarise the audience with the E! brand. I am sure that there will be a reduction in the content we sell once we launch. Right now, we do volume deals with Indian broadcasters where we sell 200-250 hours of programming. This will change. The number of hours sold will come down. |
|
Apart from India, China is a key market for most channels but has proven difficult to crack. What is your gameplan there? What has prevented some studios and production firms from being able to have a business in China is that they are inflexible in terms of what they are willing to do with their rights. We can sell 700 hours each year to multiple channels. On CCTV for instance there is an hour of content. CCTV can also use this content as they expand their broadband and mobile businesses. The disappointment in China is not our ability to sell there. It is to have our brand be available. However the good thing about China is that the rules for online are not as restrictive. So we can sell our content on television and maintain a brand presence online. |
|
What is the split between advertising and subscription revenues? What targets have been set? Our biggest goal is to launch Style later this year globally and to increase the subscription revenue of E!
Are you looking at working with retail firms as well with Style as it is about fashion and accessories? |
|
To what extent has E! Networks' programming budget gone up over the last couple of years? There was point when you had elimination reality shows and home based reality shows (like Big Brother) where you lock people in a house. Now you see reality shows that are based on game shows that are on mockumentary formats. This would be a hybrid scripted reality show. You will see more shows like MTV's Laguna Beach, which is partially scripted and partial reality. |
|
|
|
What are the new shows that E! is developing? Another show Sunset Tan looks at Beverly Hills, Malibu beach life. The wealthiest mansions and homes in the Summer become vacant. They rent for $30,000 a week from June till the end of August. Rich families from across the world come in. Their kids hang out in nightclubs, drive sexy cars. We are doing a show on the New York socialite scene. Our aim is to expand beyond Hollywood. We will look at other wealthy people who are becoming a part of what we call pop culture. |
|
I believe that you are creating original content for Asia. Could you shed light on this? We will do specials on film festivals held in Asia. We will look at how Asian content is influencing television content in the US and in Europe. Ideally with India there should be 70:30 mix of The problem is that since we are launching on digital tiers it cannot support a great deal of local production. |
|
You recently hired American Idol host Ryan Seacrest. How has he helped boost the channel's profile? The median age for our news has dropped to 32 from 38 which is very low. It is also rare. National broadcast news tends to have a viewer age above 50. Ryan is bringing the younger American Idol audience with him. |
|
What are the challenges in doing celebrity news vi-a-vis regular news? We have to ride the line to feed the audience what they want. A lot of people cover celebrities in a mean spirited way. We need to avoid that and provide the audience with what they are looking for. When cover celebrity news you have to remember that the publicists are very powerful. Unlike other kinds of news where you are just reporting the facts here you have publicists and PR agents who are constantly trying to skew the way we cover things. |
|
Don't you get accused of pandering to the stars to get access? We are doing one on Kirsten Dunst who am I sure is not going to be happy about everything that is on the show. We did not get information by talking to her but through sources. It is covered in a very realistic, unflattering way. On the other hand Celebrity Profile celebrates stars. So we do both types of programming. We don't apologise for it. |
|
What are the other channels in E!'s portfolio? That is because you buy sports regionally. So it is difficult to have a pan regional network for it. I am more interested in launching G4 in Asia and India. Internationally G4 will launch late next year.
In India the government has banned FTV for two months. A similar fate had fallen on AXN at the start of the year. I would appreciate your views on government regulation. This feed is more on the conservative side. As India grows I would eventually look at having a feed just for India. At the moment though the digital platforms in India do not make it economically viable to have a feed just for this country. Any international broadcaster who is planning to enter India and have a separate feed just for it has no plans to breakeven. When subscribers grow for our channel in India then we would look to have a separate feed and we would be looking for more leeway compared to Malaysia and Singapore.
One challenge for media firms in the digital age is re-purposing of content for mobile and the Internet where consumption is increasingly taking place anytime, anywhere. How is E! going about this task? They launched a year and a half back and already everyday we put 90 minutes of streamed content up for mobile. It is a cut down version of the shows we make and the news that we provide. Operators can also take 20-25 minutes of clips either on a VoD basis or on a SVoD basis. Some operators only take the streamed content while others only take the VoD content. Some take both. Online we have a broadband channel called The Vine. It is available at E! Online. The site has 80 editorial people. The Vine is streaming video. One popular section is called Planet Gossip. It has video stream segments from gossip columnists all over the world. |
|
What role are merchandising and DVDs playing in helping E! diversify its revenue streams? |
|
How has E! Online boosted its content offerings? We were profitable through the dotbomb era and it is still profitable. Our site has been profitable for the last seven years. E! Online 2.0 will launch this Summer. This will have social networking. So people can chat about their favourite stars. They can go into our library, find photos of their favourite stars and swap them with each other. One can upload one's photo of a star if one has a digital camera. Taking photos of stars is happening more frequently in Los Angeles. |