"We are pumping over Rs.5 crore into our ad campaign for Colors Super": Ravish Kumar, Viacom18

Kumar, Viacom18's project head for regional channels, says that Colors Super, the soon-to-be-launched new Kannada channel from the media house, will compete with its own sister channel Colors Kannada.

Well-known singer of several best-selling albums Celine Dion had once said, "I'm not in competition with anybody but myself. My goal is to beat my last performance." Well, this seems to be media Group Viacom18's business proposition for the Kannada television market as well.

After staying on top of the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) India ratings in the Kannada market with its GEC Colors Kannada, Viacom18 is now all set to launch Colors Super, its second GEC in the Kannada market. The channel will launch on July 24, 2016.

"We are pumping over Rs.5 crore into our ad campaign for Colors Super": Ravish Kumar, Viacom18

So, will both channels compete with each other? "That's the reason behind coming up with another channel in the same space," says Ravish Kumar, project head, regional channels (Colors Kannada, Colors Super, and Colors Bangla), Viacom18.

"We were restricted by availability of slots. There are so many other ideas that we can innovate and offer to our viewers. In order to accommodate them and extend our portfolio to benefit our associations, we decided to launch another channel in the same space," Kumar further adds.

Viacom18 will promote Colors Super aggressively through all platforms. "We will have multiple agencies working with us. We are pumping over Rs five crore into our ad campaign, and we will make sure we announce the launch all across."

Colors Super and Colors Kannada will have different programming teams looking after the content offering, informs Kumar. "We will not monetise the two as a bundle either. There are separate sales teams for both channels and they will compete as they do with other competition. We have not yet reached out to any brand. We will first build the brand, and then decide ad rates," adds Kumar.

Colors Super will launch with four hours of original content per week and movie premieres on Sunday.

Sudhanshu Vats, Group CEO, Viacom18, appeared bullish on the growth of the regional entertainment market as he asserts, "In terms of market size in the Indian television scenario, regional entertainment as a category is next only to Hindi general entertainment. This translates into a sizeable ad market, growing at a CAGR of 15 per cent, similar to the overall TV ad market, over the next few years."

Elaborating further, he states, "Within the regional entertainment pie, the Kannada GEC ad market alone stood at an estimated Rs 500 crore, in FY16. As we cemented our dominance of this market, we realised we had a lot more to offer - both in terms of content, as well as brand solution opportunities. Colors Super will expand our offering to both the viewer, by bringing in missing genres into the market, and the advertiser, by increasing the available ad inventory, thereby plugging in existing gaps in the current market."

The channel plans to rollout an HD offering later, but will launch in SD feed.

Have news to share? Write to us atnewsteam@afaqs.com