Zee Entertainment is confident of beating the expected industry growth rate of 11-12 percent “on the back of market share gains and a bigger content line-up,” CMD Punit Goenka told Reema Tendulkar and Sumaira Abidi in an interview.
“We are seeing good traction in recent launches such as & TV and Zindagi,” the Zee chief said, adding that he expects subscription revenue to pick up further once phase three digitization was rolled out across the country by December this year.
Below is the transcript of the interview on CNBC-TV18.
Reema: We have seen growth in your ad revenues for FY15. What are the underlying factors that you think will push the ad revenues going forward and do you see FY16 substantially better than FY15?
A: I think FY16 will be stable while the gurus and the pundits of the media industry are pegging it at 11-12 percent. I still think that we would be able to better that kind of growth on the back of market share gains and on the back of new content lineup that we are brining whether it be on &TV or Zindagi or even on our network with regional channels as well where we have seen significant growth for ourselves.
Sumaira: What about subscription growth because that has not been as high as the segments. What is the outlook there for FY16?
A: I think subscription revenue will see significant traction only once phase three digitisation kicks in. I am hopeful that that will follow in December of this year. Apart from that once we all have implemented our reference interconnect offer (RIO) strategies as we been talking about for the last couple of quarters, will start seeing traction coming in this segment specially in financial year ’17 is where I start seeing the traction coming back to the levels that we saw about a year back where we were growing at upwards of 25 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for last three years.
Reema: We have seen &TV launch with big investments going into the channel, there is also of-late a lot of buzz with respect to the new show the Voice of India, which will be launching. What kind of traction are you looking at or targeting to generate in terms of revenues for this channel in FY16?
A: This channel has opened well in terms of numbers in March. I do expect that the numbers will continue to grow on the back of the new lineup that we are bringing in June. In terms of revenue, it is still early days for me to comment but with the success factor definitely we would be growing revenues significantly on this channel going forward. Voice of India is just one-off the show that is launching next month. We are also expecting whole new fiction content lineup that will be starting in Q2.
Sumaira: Other than &TV the new channel Zindagi has also seen good response, any plans over here in terms of further investments into this channel?
A: We have to invest in these channels; it’s still very early days. Zindagi - the basic concept of finite fiction shows has got a lot of traction in metro markets for us. However, &TV is the newest baby, its about two months old and &TV will see investments on the level of any other general entertainment channel whereas Zindagi will not be at that high levels but will still see significant investments.
Reema: Other than Voice of India what are the other big shows that you have in your pipeline for the next two quarters?
A: On &TV we are looking at other formats which we want to bring in. it’s too early for me to talk about the format names but definitely you will see big ticket shows coming back just as we saw with Shahrukh Khan at the launch phase. Therefore, we do expect to bring in some more formats from the global markets to India which has not been tried yet.
Below is the transcript of the interview on CNBC-TV18.
Reema: We have seen growth in your ad revenues for FY15. What are the underlying factors that you think will push the ad revenues going forward and do you see FY16 substantially better than FY15?
A: I think FY16 will be stable while the gurus and the pundits of the media industry are pegging it at 11-12 percent. I still think that we would be able to better that kind of growth on the back of market share gains and on the back of new content lineup that we are brining whether it be on &TV or Zindagi or even on our network with regional channels as well where we have seen significant growth for ourselves.
Sumaira: What about subscription growth because that has not been as high as the segments. What is the outlook there for FY16?
A: I think subscription revenue will see significant traction only once phase three digitisation kicks in. I am hopeful that that will follow in December of this year. Apart from that once we all have implemented our reference interconnect offer (RIO) strategies as we been talking about for the last couple of quarters, will start seeing traction coming in this segment specially in financial year ’17 is where I start seeing the traction coming back to the levels that we saw about a year back where we were growing at upwards of 25 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for last three years.
Reema: We have seen &TV launch with big investments going into the channel, there is also of-late a lot of buzz with respect to the new show the Voice of India, which will be launching. What kind of traction are you looking at or targeting to generate in terms of revenues for this channel in FY16?
A: This channel has opened well in terms of numbers in March. I do expect that the numbers will continue to grow on the back of the new lineup that we are bringing in June. In terms of revenue, it is still early days for me to comment but with the success factor definitely we would be growing revenues significantly on this channel going forward. Voice of India is just one-off the show that is launching next month. We are also expecting whole new fiction content lineup that will be starting in Q2.
Sumaira: Other than &TV the new channel Zindagi has also seen good response, any plans over here in terms of further investments into this channel?
A: We have to invest in these channels; it’s still very early days. Zindagi - the basic concept of finite fiction shows has got a lot of traction in metro markets for us. However, &TV is the newest baby, its about two months old and &TV will see investments on the level of any other general entertainment channel whereas Zindagi will not be at that high levels but will still see significant investments.
Reema: Other than Voice of India what are the other big shows that you have in your pipeline for the next two quarters?
A: On &TV we are looking at other formats which we want to bring in. it’s too early for me to talk about the format names but definitely you will see big ticket shows coming back just as we saw with Shahrukh Khan at the launch phase. Therefore, we do expect to bring in some more formats from the global markets to India which has not been tried yet.
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