6 October 2014: Amitabh Bachchan as a troubled businessman didn’t go down well with Indian audiences. Yudh (War), the Indian superstar’s first foray into TV fiction on Sony Entertainment Television in July this year, tanked. Yudh’s creative team and cast was liberally sprinkled with the who’s who of Indian filmdom. The analysis on what went wrong is now intense.So too is the scrutiny of season two of 24’s Indian version, due this year on Viacom18’s Hindi general entertainment channel Colors. 24 stars film actor Anil Kapoor (Slumdog Millionaire, Mission Impossible 4), who also produces the show. Kapoor’s brush with Hollywood landed him the rights to 24 in India. Though season one did not set TV screens on fire, the show won some acclaim.Yudh and 24 are not your usual Indian dramas. These are star-powered, high-budget productions that take Indian television programming to another level. Each of the episodes costs upwards of US$200,000 against the usual US$13,000 for 30 minutes of fiction.“We want to move up the food chain to high-concept fiction like the House of Cards. With bigger budgets, casting, writing, all of Indian TV should head there,” says Sameer Nair, Balaji Telefilms’ recently appointed group chief executive. The US$22-million firm is India’s largest television content producer.“We are learning how to do fiction and getting better at it,” adds Sanjiv Sharma, co-founder of Optimystix, which makes Crime Patrol and Comedy Circus, among others.“The perception of TV has changed. Earlier, big stars would come onto television only for reality shows, now they are coming into fiction too, like Manoj Bajpai in Encounter and Amitabh Bachchan in Yudh,” says Hats Off Productions’ founder, Jamnadas Majethia.Hats Off’s unusual comedy, Badi Door Se Aaye Hain (We Have Come From Very Far), is about aliens on earth. The series opened on Sab TV and is clocking 14 minutes per viewer against the industry average of 9-10 minutes. Five years ago, a comedy about aliens would have been unthinkable.Sunjoy Waddhwa, chairman and managing director of Sphere-origins Multivision, agrees. “The baggage of saas-ba-hu (mother-in-law/ daughter-in-law) has gone. There is experimentation with different genres and the rise of non-fiction. Over the next two to three years the proportion of experimental programming will keep going up,” he says."We want to move up the food chain to high-concept fiction like the House of Cards. With bigger budgets, casting, writing, all of Indian TV should head there.” Sameer Nair, Group CEO, Balaji TelefilmsThis groping for the right shows and themes is the biggest change the Indian TV content production industry is facing after years of being stuck in a creative rut.The second challenge is the rising scale of TV production firms, which are bigger and better than ever. Though margins remain stuck at about 10%, volumes have gone up for the top 15-20 firms. Each of these top 20 average between US$4 million-US$5 million in revenues against the sub-million dollars that the bulk of production firms in India make.As they grow in creative and commercial terms, production firms are also demanding more from broadcasters. There are murmurs about owning intellectual property or doing more royalty-based deals. In a hyper-fragmented market where more than 80% of all programming is commissioned by broadcasters, who then own all rights, this sounds blasphemous.Hello DigitisationIt shouldn’t. There couldn’t be better news for the world’s second largest television market. The 160-million-home, US$7.7 billion Indian television industry is going through a painful digitisation. As it moves from being a one-size-fits all, advertising-driven market to a compel-the-consumer-to reach-for-his-wallet pay market, the industry will need all the experimentation possible. Because India is so many markets. There is a market for advertising-driven repeat programming in rural and semi-urban India, which is getting its first taste of private television on free-to-air channels. There is the viewer of English-language shows such as Breaking Bad or Orphan Black in Metro India. There are the housewives – who dominate television viewership – wanting something new. There are kids, a huge segment, gobbling up local programming.These are just some of the clusters in a market with 800 million TV viewers. Now cross these with languages, regions and genres. There are scores of markets in India – each the size of a small European country. And digitisation is just beginning to help broadcasters slice these efficiently."The baggage of saas-bahu (mother-in-law/daughter-in-law) has gone. There is experimentation with different genres and the rise of non-fiction. Over the next two to three years the proportion of experimental programming will keep going up.” Sunjoy Waddhwa, Chairman/Managing Director, Sphereorigins MultivisionSatyamev Jayate (Truth Alone Triumphs), Yudh, 24, Big Boss or Comedy Nights with Kapil, among others, are attempts to serve those clusters in the hope of getting a better share of wallet.“What were big niches before have become general entertainment channels (GECs). The rise of Sab TV (from Sony Pictures) and Life OK (from Star India) shows that more and more channels are going specific. For example, Star has Star World and Fox Crime (for two different parts of the English-speaking market). The same thing will happen in Hindi and other languages,” says Nair.“Because of digitisation there are now larger bouquets of niche channels,” says Abhimanyu Singh, Contiloe Pictures’ chief executive and founder.The Flaws In The StoryFrom 160 television channels about a decade back, India now has more than 800. About half of them carry original or repackaged programming – news, entertainment, sports, films and so on. Given the size of the market – about 400 of those 800 channels each needing three to eight hours of original programming a day – it is surprising that Balaji at US$22 million is the largest firm. The next biggest firm is about US$5 million and then there are lots in the sub-US$2-million range.“Very few people are able to scale up. It is still very much a promoter-entrepreneur driven business,” says Darius Pandole, partner, New Silk Route Advisors. The sector has not attracted a single deal in years because investors don’t see the value in small content plays. The flaws in this sitcom?Globally, intellectual property rights are a trigger for scale. In the U.K. for instance, a 2004 change in trade regulations ensures that rights are retained by the company that makes the shows, not the broadcaster. As a result, production companies have become aggressive about creating exportable formats and scaling up. In India, there is very little sharing of the risks and rewards in big or different shows that involve risks.Will moving away from the commissioned model to one where IP is shared with producers or revenues help in building scale and getting better creative?"Because of digitisation there are now larger bouquets of niche channels.” Abhimanyu Singh, Chief Executive/Founder, Contiloe EntertainmentMost broadcasters are opposed to the idea of giving away rights. Funnily enough, production houses, too, are ambivalent. “Not all IP is monetisable, soaps are not but thrillers and historicals can be,” says Contiloe’s Singh. “We don’t have the infrastructure to monetise IP,” adds Hats Off’s Majethia. He has a point.Viacom18 syndicates its content in dubbed or subtitled form to local channels in 125 countries in Dari, Pashto, Japanese and Hebrew, among other languages. For instance Sphereorigins’ Balika Vadhu (Child Bride) was a huge success in India on Viacom18’s Colors. It is now available in 15 languages globally. This could get anywhere from US$500-US$2,000 per episode depending on country, time of telecast, show etc. Viacom18’s ability to invest in people in India and leverage its global network helps get this money in. A small production firm cannot replicate that network. Also, to get even partial rights, a producer has to take a cut in fees, which most are simply not able to. Monetising IP then is a game for the big boys.The second challenge? “The infrastructure is there, the money is there, but getting good writers, directors is the challenge. We (as an industry) are churning out 300 episodes a year of god knows how many shows, that is a lot of content. There are some good writers but they are all doing too much work. We have the money to have seven shows on air, but getting seven production teams is a problem,” says Waddhwa.For a market with an estimated 6,000 production houses, one of the most resilient film industries in the world and tonnes of content, that is a strange problem to have. Why are the good writers not on TV? “In India the first love for any writer is films, though TV pays better and more consistently,” says Waddhwa. On the other hand, “TV writing in the U.S. is better than film writing,” says Optimystix’s Sharma. That is because Hollywood’s love for safe sequels backed by huge marketing spend has pushed most good writers to TV. In India, the film industry is going through a huge creative renaissance, so writers get to do the most envelope-pushing work on films.Tough LoveAnd if they did, costs, which are already up by 25% over the last three years, would go up further. Besides royalties or a share of profits, how then can broadcasters and production houses co-opt?"The infrastructure is there, the money is there, but getting good writers, directors is the challenge. [The industry is] churning out 300 episodes a year of god knows how many shows, that is a lot of content. There are some good writers but they are all doing too much work. We have the money to have seven shows on air, but getting seven production teams is a problem.” Sunjoy Waddhwa, Chairman/Managing Director, Sphereorigins MultivisionVivek Couto, executive director, Media Partners Asia (MPA), points to the production market in the U.S. and U.K., where big firms are being acquired by broadcasters. FremantleMedia was a result of mergers between various content firms over the years. It is now owned by RTL, a Bertelsmann subsidiary. In 2011 Discovery snapped up Betty, an independent U.K. firm (Dirty Sexy Things, Freaky Eaters). “Everywhere distribution is consolidating, pay TV will get so much more revenue. Therefore you have got to create new content and new audiences,” Couto says.In India, while distribution is still not fully consolidated, that is the way the industry will go. Star dallied briefly with a small stake in Balaji before giving it up. Last year, the US$754-million Zee Entertainment created production house, Essel Vision Productions. The firm produced 500 hours in 2013-14, only for Zee’s channels in Hindi, Marathi and other languages, says chief executive Nittin Keni. The other model could be co-productions. Turner co-produced Chhota Bheem with GreenGold Animation in 2008. Chhota Bheem has gone on to become the biggest show on kids television in India today.Could online change the game? India is already one of the large online video consumers – 100 million people and counting. As they move to more video-on-demand, does the balance of power swing to the creators instead of broadcasters? “On digital you can get ‘likes’ but no money,” says B.A.G Network’s managing director, Anurradha Prasad. She has hit the nail on the head. Many production houses such as Vikatan Televistaas, are not particularly happy with what they get from Google’s YouTube. Early in 2013 Balaji launched on YouTube and quickly attracted a single sponsor – Hindustan Unilever. Just like in the creative sphere, experimentation with business models continues. – Vanita Kohli-Khandekar, twitter.com/vanitakohlikContentAsia Issue Four