Zee News Ltd (ZNL) plans to invest Rs 5 billion in a slew of channels over two years, expanding its presence in regional markets and new segments.
Immediately on the agenda is the launch of a Tamil general entertainment and a Telugu news channel. Plans are also afoot to launch an English business and a global news channel.
The company is also bringing to its bouquet mix a clutch of regional movie channels. It will soon apply for a Bengali movie channel while Zee Talkies is being transferred from sister company Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd.
In an interview with Sibabrata Das, Zee News Ltd managing director Laxmi Narain Goel chalks out the company's growth roadmap.
Excerpts:
When Zee News Ltd was spun into a separate entity a few years back, it was making a loss due to the Telugu channel. How did things turn around? |
||
Is the company still taking a cautious approach and waiting for some recent channels to break even before launching new ones? |
||
ZNL is also planning to launch an English business and a global news channel. Do you see this the right stage for the company to leap into such high-cost investments? The company is on a high growth curve and expects to clock Rs 3.55 billion in advertising revenues for FY'09, a 25 per cent jump over the prior year. Subscription revenues are expected to grow even faster, soaring to Rs 1.19 billion (from Rs 667.5 million in FY'08). The Telugu and Kannada channels have started generating pay revenues from the last quarter of FY'08 and would only add to this growth. |
||
Will you be inducting a foreign equity partner for the English channels? |
||
ZNL so far has been a mix of news channels and regional language GECs. Will we also see regional movie channels forming the bouquet? |
||
|
||
Zee News has also started a franchising model to enter into new markets. Will you restrict this to smaller markets where it doesn't make commercial sense for you to enter directly? |
||
What made Zee change the positioning of its flagship Hindi news channel? |
||
When you dramatised the 'Gudiya' story, was this to do more with ratings than anything else? |
||
Isn't it time for the Hindi business news channel to get a makeover? |
||
Do you see the surge in personnel and distribution costs upsetting the profitability of the TV news business? As far as distribution expense is concerned, the industry will take 3-4 years to settle down. But with DTH (direct-to-home), HITS (Headend-In-The-Sky) and new platforms emerging, we could see carriage costs peaking once the digital systems take off in a big way. |
||
Zee is continuing to bleed in the Gujarat market. Are there plans to address this by launching a Gujarati news channel to support the GEC? |
||
Why is the ZNL scrip lowly priced in the market? |