Zee TV to get half-a-million dollar face-lift

To retain its leadership position in the fiercely competitive private TV channel scenario, Zee TV has embarked on a half-a-million dollar face-lift. "The bottomline is to reposition Zee as an up-market channel," claimed a top Zee official. The changes incorporated by the Subhash Chandra-promoted network include new program logos, set designs and general aesthetics as also an organisational restructuring, a company source stated.

Zee employed US-based Novocomm for effecting these changes across all the 10 channels, including Zee News, and the regional language Alpha brand of channels. Zee Telefilms chief executive officer (CEO) R K Singh announced last week that the group will take a number of steps, including rescheduling of some prime-time programs, to win back the audience, that switched channels. As an industry observer pointed out, Zee TV has been the biggest loser since Star TV's ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati' hit Indian airwaves. Singh admitted that the ongoing revamp was designed to bring back four of its programmes, which have given way to ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati' in the weekly top 10 list, to their previous popularity status. However, the Zee Telefilms brass refused to talk about the investment set aside for refurbishing the Zee brand.

Zee TV has also appointed international consultant A T Kearney to recommend restructuring of the organization to increase its acceptability and visibility. In a statement announcing the appointment of A T Kearney, Zee Telefilms said, "In the fast moving media and information industries, continuous review and refinement of internal systems and processes is essential to the continued dynamism and vitality of our business."

In accordance with the A T Kearney plan, Zee's Bengali channel, Alpha Bengali, was relaunched in its new avatar earlier this month. The three remaining Alpha channels will follow suit within a month, indicated agencyfaqs! sources at Zee.

The Zee News channel is already on the turnaround path post an aesthetic rejuvenation followed up with a programming overhaul which began last year. The changes in Zee News were necessary as the channel was incurring heavy losses, almost to the tune of Rs 2 crore per month, with little advertisement support, observers said. Now, with all the major changes in place, the channel is hoping to break even by the end of the current fiscal. Besides, the erstwhile Music Asia channel was relaunched as Zee Music in August this year.

Talking about the current churning at Zee, a top Zee executive stated, "The objective of this restructuring was to optimise business performance, through effective decision-making, efficient operations, and for leveraging synergies between businesses as well as the development and recognition of employee talent."

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