MUMBAI: It’s that time of the year when kids say goodbye to schools, books and welcome the long summer vacation. It is not just an important part of the year for the kids, but also for the kids television genre.
One such is Hungama, which is courting its viewers with different customized offerings to have a bigger bite in the viewership pie, this summer.
It can be noted that the kids genre accounted for 7.3 per cent of the viewership share in 2014, making it the largest genre after Hindi general entertainment channels (GECs) and movie channels.
This summer, Hungama has a special strategy lined up to engage kids with a series of new shows and movies, spread across successful genres of action-adventure comedy. The channel will also add a new genre with chase comedies.
Disney India media networks content and communications VP Vijay Subramaniam says, “If I have to replace the entire set of fun adjectives in one word, I will call it Hungama.”
To stay ahead of the curve, the channel is set to add 90 hours of original programming to its kitty across the summer months. “That has been our constant endeavour on Hungama. While we give our audience innovative content we also increase the variety of offerings on our channel,” informs Subramaniam.
The channel will have three major highlights this summer. The first in line is Pokemon, to which the channel will give a new dimension. With the ever-growing popularity of the character and the action-adventure comedy genre, Hungama is launching a new series in the same genre along with presenting Pokemon in long format for the very first time on Indian television with the premiere of Pokemon movie, which will air on 18 April at 12 pm.
“Moreover, Pokemon has got maximum fan following. Week-on-week and month-on-month the numbers are only getting stronger,” reasons Subramaniam.
A perfect complement to Pokemon, the channel will launch action-adventure series Beyblade on 13 April at 1.30 pm. “This is another demonstration of the fact that the channel is innovating and pushing content, which is active in the space of game play both in the world of television and real world. Pokemon and Beyblade will make a good compliment on-air,” asserts Subramaniam.
On 3 May, Hungama will launch the third season of Vir: The Robot Boy, which is a series with a different identity in the space.
Hungama has also been developing local animated series. The channel is set to launch a fundamental block, the offering for local animation shows that will be launched at the afternoon band. The three shows that will be launched are Bunty aur Billy, Hum Chik Bum and Eena Meena Deeka (working title), which will go on air on 18 May.
As per reports, localization of content on kids channels continues with the average ratio for international to local content at 60:40 currently compared to 90:10 in 2008.
In 2014, Hungama reached out to 85.7 mn individuals (CS 4+) of which 19.0 mn were kids (CS 4-14 ABC) across all India during summers (AMJ’14).
