Ushering in the New Year, Disney India has decided to finally embrace the international logo change of the 90 year old brand, but with some added flavour. While the logo change was timed with Disney India’s 10thanniversary on 17 December, very soon there will be a shift in programming on the premiere kids’ brand in the country.
Starting end January 2015, Disney India is introducing five original live action shows for its flagship Disney Channel that will be family inclusive, in line with its international philosophy. However, the five shows will target everyone from the age of 4 years and will fill a weekend time band. While the weekday will continue to have content skewed to kids, the weekend will look at engaging and entertaining the family as a whole.
Three hours of live action will have the shows Maan Na Maan Main Tera Mehman (produced by Optimystix) in which a family has come into possession of a photo frame that can bring any photo alive, Kabhi Aise Geet Gaya Karo (Cinevistas) is the story of a tightly knit Chaudhary family, Goldie Ahuja Metric Pass (The Troublemakers) in which a 40 year old man is studying in school with his son to complete his schooling to inherit his uncle’s property.
“With these shows that we are building, we believe weekends won’t be the same again for progressive Indian families from 2015. Our ultimate purpose is to entertain the Indian family,” says Disney India Medianetworks VP and head content and communications Vijay Subramaniam. Beginning with three hours of content, he highlights that they already have content for nearly two years in the bank. Shows will be finite (26-30 episodes) with some returning as seasons. Episodes are of varied timing ranging from 22 minutes to even 44 minutes as Vijay says that they wish to give creative freedom to the makers.
“The idea is to build a branded entertainment destination with local content that is relatable, simple and covers everyday joy of life. But we won’t be giving up on kids,” he adds. While the first call was to engage kids, it is now time to involve the family as well. Repeats of the shows will be at 7:00 pm in the weekdays.
The weekend block will also have Disney’s animated as well as non-animated movies also being premiered. “We are creating stories by which people will not just remember them but also have a recall value of the Disney brand. The marketing for the shows will mainly be audio-visual in nature and direct to home (DTH) driven. Promos are currently running on the Disney network channels and won’t run on any other network.
Though animation is Disney’s forte; by taking this move, the brand is consciously moving into a larger space. “Adults in India haven’t grown up with animation and so they don’t connect to it. We believe live action is a better entry point,” highlights Vijay adding that Disney is now at an evolving stage.
Feeds in Tamil and Telugu current exist for the channel but unfortunately the shows won’t be dubbed or reproduced in them as of now. “We are catering primarily to the Hindi speaking market (HSM) through the shows and our priority is to address three fourth of the market and then slowly move into the regional languages,” expounds Vijay.
When the new shows come on board, Disney Channel will have animation to live action in the 70:30 ratio. While there aren’t any plans to create movies centered on its shows or characters, plans are in development to create something which is ‘not a movie but also not a show’.
The budget for a live action show is also much less as compared to an animated show with industry sources pegging it at anywhere between Rs 5 lakh to Rs 20 lakh an episode, depending on the set up. However, the life span of both varies. “Animated shows can be shown even after years, but live action shows will work for a maximum of two years. On the other hand, live action also allows a lot of syndication opportunities which we are definitely exploring,” says Disney India Medianetworks VP and revenue head Nikhil Gandhi.
Advertisers such as water purifiers, printers, washing machines and cooking oil are currently targeting this co-viewing audience and efforts are on to tap into more such brands. According to data provided by the channel, 31.3 million adults (CS 25+) tune into Disney Channel as compared to 6.6 million in 2005.
Starting off as a kids’ channel, Disney is now making inroads into more adult inclusive content. The current offerings are purely original stories while the age old company will also look at adapting international stories into the Indian scenario. Currently betting big on fictional content, it may come as no surprise if the channel dabbles in non-fiction as well, with eye-popping ratings (sic!).