STAR India eyes online to earn revenue

STAR India, the TV broadcasting company, is looking at expanding its viewership through the Internet. It has tied up with Nautanki.tv to make its content available on the Nautanki website, an online platform which enables video content producers to upload and host their content in short duration formats, and distribute it through 10,000 video widgets owned by the portal.

For the uninitiated, widgets are dynamic boxes which an Internet user can embed into a blog, a website or even a profile on social networking sites. Widgets can be used to serve information on news, video, music, weather, time or a to-do list – information which gets updated automatically from its original source.

STAR India has already started to offer video clips from Channel V, STAR Plus and STAR One.

Interestingly, the videos uploaded by STAR India on Nautanki.tv include various clips, each of three minutes’ duration, from discontinued but popular shows such as Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki and Sanjeevani. Clips of Channel V's Get Gorgeous are also available on Nautanki.tv.

Apparently, the broadcasting company will use the online platform to monetise the content of both discontinued and current shows.

This is not the first time that STAR is using the online platform to expand its reach and increase viewership for its programmes. It already uploads short-duration video clips of various programmes that run on its national and regional channels on its own Internet properties such as Indya.com and Indyaondemand.com.

What parameters will be used to select the clips for the Internet? Vidyasagar says, “Either we will rely on the popularity of the show on TV or use the feedback data generated by the Nautanki.tv website and our own Internet properties, where we host our video clips, to judge what sort of content works best with the consumers. Sometimes, programmes that do not become very popular on TV generate a lot of demand on the Internet.”

The channel is all set to monetise its content on the Internet. It will insert pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll video ads in the video clips. The ad sales for the video clips will be handled by the STAR India ad sales team and it has already roped in advertisers such as Tata Tea, Idea Cellular, Max New York Life, LG, Hindustan Unilever Ltd, Malaysia Tourism and Singapore Tourism.

STAR India will share the revenue earned through the video advertising with Nautanki.tv, which will, in turn, share it with the people who use its widgets on their blogs or websites.