24-hour Hindi feed for Big CBS Prime begins today

The English GEC offering of the joint venture between Reliance Broadcast Network and CBS Studios has started its 24-hour Hindi feed on DTH platforms across the seven metro cities from today.

To tap the potential of Hindi and regional language markets in India, several channels over the years have launched Hindi and regional language feeds, including Discovery, UTV Action, UTV Movies, National Geographic and others.

In a similar move, Big CBS Prime, the English general entertainment channel offering of Big CBS Networks, the joint venture between Reliance Broadcast Network (RBNL) and CBS Studios, has started its Hindi feed from today. The Hindi feed will be available on all DTH Platforms such as Reliance, Tata Sky, Airtel, Videocon and others. As a part of the move, the entire content of the channel will be available in Hindi and the viewer can easily switch between the Hindi and English feeds on the DTH platforms throughout the day. It will be the first international English GEC to have multi-lingual feeds in India.

The channel clarifies that no new content is being added and it will show its existing shows with their Hindi feeds. Currently, the channel offers international shows such as NCIS, CSI: Crime Scene Investigations, Blue Bloods, Elementary, 48 Hours, Galileo Extreme, America's Got Talent, Bellator and others.

Speaking about the initiative to afaqs!, Anand Chakravarthy, business head, Big CBS, says, "With the digitization drive going across the country, it presents before us a great opportunity to reach out to a larger audience. Also, dubbed content has made a huge impact for the channels in the Indian market. It has allowed them to access larger markets and along with them, a wider and a deeper base of advertisers. And we want to take the first movers advantage in the GEC segment."

He adds that male audiences in India are underserved through limited genres such as news, sports and action movies. Big CBS Prime has most of it content for the male audiences and will fill this gap in the entertainment genre. Most GECs today produce female-oriented content for their primetime shows, keeping them as their main target audience.

The channel, which is currently telecast in seven metros including Pune city, targets 10+, SEC AB males. It currently reaches nearly 2.2-2.5 million people.

The move is expected to have a positive impact on the advertising revenues of the channel.

Chakravarthy says, "We will cater to a huge Hindi speaking market from now on and therefore all the male oriented brands that want to reach out to their target audiences will be a part of our advertisers."

He adds that as distribution increases, the ad rates could also increase.

Chakravarthy says, "In coming times, the channel plans to extend its coverage to nearly 38 cities and reach out to more than 10 million homes."

The channel plans to launch a marketing campaign spread over print, radio, television and digital to promote this move. It will tap audiences through the radio stations of the Reliance network, and launch promos on the network channels such as Big CBS Spark and Big CBS Love.

CBS Studios International is available in more than 200 markets in more than 30 languages across multiple media platforms. It participates in international channel ventures, currently comprised of 22 channels in 20 languages across 87 territories, reaching more than 100 million international households. The company entered India through a joint venture with Reliance Broadcast Network Limited and launched three entertainment channels, Big CBS Prime, Big CBS Love and Big CBS Spark.