"There's no reason why we shouldn't launch a new channel...": Raj Nayak

Back in 2008 when this JV between US media conglomerate Viacom and India's Network 18 Media and Investments was launched, it rose rapidly to the top and entrenched itself. Now in its ninth year, Viacom 18's Hindi GEC Colors began 2016 with a bang - spending three consecutive weeks at the top in January, although there were the ups (Naagin's stunning success) and downs (Comedy Nights with Kapil going off air). CEO Raj Nayak, who completes five years next month tells Shweta Mulki about what's in store. Excerpts:

Edited Excerpts

The pressure to stay up there increases. It is more challenging now, as in the last five years, the market has evolved and become even more competitive. So while we are focused on profitability and sustaining the brand, we are also looking at the white spaces that need to be filled.

I can't talk about that much, but one of the white spaces is the movie channel, which we recently announced. In our existing business, if we see space for growth there's no reason why we shouldn't launch another new channel. It could be a GEC or a music channel.

In this business there is no first-mover advantage, and you have to keep reinventing everyday. There is always a threat. You keep trying to reposition yourself, and sometimes reposition the competition. Some things you do differently and sometimes you do different things.

We've been consistent in our thinking process, and try to be cutting edge with differentiated content. Nobody offers the spectrum of variety that we do. People may remember only things that have succeeded but there have been flops too. But we aren't scared to take risks. Recently we launched Box Cricket (it did not work that well in the previous channel).

Our code is that we look at things with a different prism. When we take on something there is a certain style, a certain television grammar and a distinct non-fiction grammar that we bring to the table. We recreate, scale up and differentiate the property.

Content is something you can't put on a PowerPoint slide. I can't put it down to a formula, but yes we have aggregated some of the best creative people in the country. Take Bigg Boss. Every year, the challenge is make sure there's no fatigue, and that keeps us on our feet.

Others are doing it now but I don't believe that running shows seven days a week is good strategy. In the short run there may be gain, but in the long term this is not sustainable. There will be fatigue and it will be tough on the actors.

What viewers expect from us is variety on weekends so they get Box Cricket League, Mission Sapne, Comedy Nights Bachao and Naagin. Variety is our strength and we don't want to break that. In fact, we have a problem of plenty, where we've built cult properties over a period of time be it India's Got Talent or Jhalak Dikhla Jaa.

Fiction is on weekdays and non-fiction is weekends. For us, weekend fiction shows are like non-fiction because of their costs and the limited edition factor. We've extended Naagin, as we don't want the new fiction show to start during IPL.

We are happy with it. Can it do better? Yes. But we launched a programme in a matter of just 15 days. We got it okay and will keep tinkering and tweaking it. At that moment we had to go with what we had, but we may change or add people.

e still have the appetite. That's in our DNA. We have made a lot of tough programming decisions - shifting Bigg Boss to the 10.30 pm slot, launching Ashoka as a one-hour show at 9 pm, making Comedy Nights a weekly, creating Comedy Nights Bachao and launching a weekend fiction show Naagin as well as Anupam Kher's chat show, Kuch Bhi Ho Sakta Hai.

24 was one show that made the south Bombay, south Delhi English-speaking audiences tune into a Hindi GEC - something that they would have otherwise looked down upon. In SEC-A it had good viewership. It took time for the masses to understand the concept.

I believe the upcoming season 2 will do well. I could have abandoned 24 and tried another show, but the trick is to take a franchise and build it. Yes, Season 2 is more expensive because of escalation and other factors. But three years creates a strong franchise, and then I can go to the board and say let's do another one. We needed to take the industry to the next level. The competition followed with such shows. We also do that sometimes. The herd mentality is a reality here.

We look at all the shows on every other channel and feel that they look the same. So we say, 'Let's make ours look different.' We look for concepts that haven't been done before - like Udaan and its bonded labour theme - and test it out. We don't use research as a deciding factor but it is a strong tool aiding decision-making. Udaan was one show where research said it may not work. We went ahead, and it worked. We maintain a balance between research and gut-feel. When you are a leader you have the luxury of experimenting, and when you are not the leader you have no choice but to experiment.

In the Hindi space, my competing GECs have a larger bouquet, and they have sports too, so the advantages are big in terms of promotion. Having 2-3 movie channels, GECs, and sports channels gives others the ability to cross-promote, and probably manage costs better because, in areas like movie acquisitions, they can amortise costs across channels. We can't run Colors Hindi promos on regional or vice versa.

Our focus has never been rural. We want to be India's leading premium entertainment channel. Our focus is urban and LC1, the market with the maximum disposable income. That is what my advertisers want and we are leading there. If rural laps up what we offer, that's the icing on the cake. Rishtey's focus is rural.

Eighty per cent of India is digitised. Almost everybody in the hardcore GEC space is equally distributed. So then it's a question of stickiness.

Increasing programming hours and throwing money away is the easy thing to do. We look at audience availability at a point of time. Once existing time bands are consolidated you can look at expansion. We have done that with weekends and, to a certain extent, with weekdays, where we've extended by half an hour. Star is still ahead in terms of programming hours.

Digital has to be seen as another avenue for distributing content, nothing else. Will it have some original programing of its own? Yes. But we don't see that disrupting or eating into our TV viewership. When you go home you'll switch on the TV, not your mobile or tablet. Even if the content is free to the subscriber there is a cost for bandwidth.

Any new medium that comes in will grow - that will be incremental growth for us. As a broadcaster, we need to give the audience on-the-go a window to watch our content. Essentially, we are content curators. We distribute through cable and DTH, so digital is now another platform or delivery system.

It's growing but not at the pace we'd like it to. The global economy is not in the best shape right now. We've got a good team, and we've got IndiaCast (the distribution arm). We'll be launching the new movie channel outside India as well.

We focus on profitability. That can be achieved if we have the eyeballs, and a strong brand equity. Our content team works hard to achieve these objectives. In a competitive market there are many variables. To that extent, it's a daily fight.

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