Television in India may have launched in the late 1950s, but it took off in right earnest only in the early 1990s when private broadcasters Star TV and Zee entered the scene. One of the early global brands that entered thereafter was Discovery – 25 years ago. And it hasn’t looked back since. Headed by some of the brightest stars in the industry, while the going has been largely good for the network, Discovery has also experimented with its content offerings. Last year, it launched Jeet, an entertainment channel that was out-of-the-box but didn’t take off on the ratings roster. The bosses were quick to take remedial measures, put it on the backburner and look ahead. The launch of Little Singham on its kids channel ensured that the Jeet blues were blown over fast enough. Earlier this year, the Discovery network announced the appointment of Megha Tata, a veteran of the broadcast space and who was part of the early team of Star TV in India. A fortnight back, Tata and team hosted an ‘upfront’ where advertisers and agencies were invited to sample some of the fare. MxMIndia caught up with the Managing Director for South Asia of the network and spoke to her on a wide range of issues. We didn’t ask her the Jeet question because it was well before her time, but did quiz her on a wide range of issues. Read on.
So, settled in? How has it been at Discovery?
Yeah, it’s awesome. It’s been two-and-a-half months and I am super, super excited. I have always seen Discovery, from the outside, as a consumer, I have always been a big fan of Discovery as a brand and then to be inside now and seeing the product and actually understanding the wow of it, is something I am very excited about.
What did you think of the product, of the offerings from the outside?
So, of the entire bouquet, I used to be more of a Discovery and Animal Planet consumer because the rest of the propositions were not something in my daily list. I knew about all those brands but I never was consuming them too much. What I really liked personally about Discovery was the fact that there was content which was so differentiated and yet relatable.
And since you had worked on NGC at Star so you knew what it was all about.
Yeah, I was very familiar with the genre. Very may not be the right word but I was familiar with the genre. But I am very familiar with the special interest propositions because that is something which I have also done in my past jobs. But what really excited me was the fact that there is this amazing bouquet of propositions and what’s even more exciting now frankly is what can be done with it. And we are pivoting in to those spaces and which is, where the excitement is.
But do you think life has gotten a little difficult for niche content?
Yes, I do. I think we probably need to define niche a bit. If your product has a very convincing proposition, which is very distinctive, then your ability to grow is very high. But if you are one of the many and there is not too much of a distinction out there then the challenge will be even tougher. So, in our case, the propositions of Discovery, Animal Planet, Discovery Kids and our digital propositions which we are coming up with, are so distinct and so clear, that the consumer wants it and hence that gives us the ability to deliver in terms of growth and further investments.
But with OTT flooding content, there is actually so much to see. While Discovery content is compelling how do you get people to watch all of it?
True and hence you are now talking about the depth of content, which is what I want to highlight actually. When you look at what players offer including those on the OTT space, real-life entertainment content is probably in the range of 600-1200 hours or something to that effect. Globally, we have 300,000 hours of content which is factual entertainment. And we add 8000 hours every year, so the depth is huge. I am not saying that the entire content will work for a market like India, therefore, you start identifying what works in this market and play that out. Second, what works for a ‘consumer take’ point of view is watching content in the language of their choice and that again is something that Discovery has done beautifully.
At the Upfront for advertisers, Isaac Thomas mentioned that the content is not just going to be in the eight-odd top languages but also other languages, say, Assamese, Odia…
As we go along, we will see how that plays out because I think initially, even as we speak, we already have five, plus adding three will make it an eight-language proposition. The largest offering in this space in the market. So, Discovery will be in eight languages, Animal Planet is going to be in about three or five, Discovery Kids is going to be in about five to seven languages. This is all investment that’s happening in the language space which will translate to even when our OTT proposition comes through. How that sort of plays out, I think it’s early days to comment on that.
And how is the ROI on the languages?
It has added to the performance of the channel. Absolutely. It contributes… you can see it in the growth of the channels.
Are regional language-specific revenues coming in?
The regional language-specific proposition is actually D Tamil. It is an independent channel by itself for Tamil audiences which is programmed separately and marketed separately. So, that has a different revenue stream.
But not the others?
No, Not the others.
Coming to specifics about the various channels. Discovery first. While it’s been around for long, it has also been reinvented a few times. Going forward, are you looking at doing things differently or will it be more of the same?
There is bigger, better, bolder stuff coming, and that is not only from our global proposition. Globally actually, Discovery is going back to its original DNA … creating more content which is in adventure,l ike in travel adventure space which are things which we all go ‘Oh! My God’ or ‘Oh! Wow’ about. That’s the kind of content that is going to be further invested in at a global level. A lot of that is going to come in to India as well, new faces will be brought in and new explorers will be brought in. We are definitely going to be doing more of Indian content, Indian IPs but we rather do things which have never been done before.
How do you strike a compromise between Indian content which may be create a buzz and top quality international fare for which people turn to Discovery?
That’s why you don’t have so much of it [Indian content] because it’s very small and limited and in fact going forward we want to do fewer but bigger IPs. And when I say bigger, it’s not just in terms of the scale but also in terms of the idea and what is it that we can do. So, some of the stuff that’s going to happen very soon on our channel which we are going to talk about is show content that has never been seen before.
From a sales point of view, you have shows like the one with Mahindra and Byju’s. What, according to you, works better with advertisers – Indian or international ccontent?
The branded content piece that has worked so far is being specially created for the brands out of India.
Is it because the integration is easier?
In India it’s easier. Since it is content created for the [Indian] brand, it obviously becomes Indian. There are some like on TLC which is Indian content integrated with the brand. Those kind of shows will always be very India-driven and they play out really well on the channel. In fact, our genre will be the only one after probably news which can bring about the branded content kind of proposition on to the platform.
But some of the branded content stuff on TLC also plays out on English entertainment channels like Colors Infinity, Star World, etc. So are you competing with them in this space?
Not really, it’s again very uniquely positioned. TLC stands for Travel, Lifestyle and Cooking, and that’s what you bring to the mix and what is only going to get stronger in this proposition is the Scripps acquisition which happened last year. That content is hugely available for us. Like HGTV is for example, the number one channel for home entertainment!
We haven’t seen much of Scripps content in India.
That’s going to be pumped up on TLC.
TLC will hence be Scripps plus existing content?
We are not going to launch [new] channels but the content will play out on TLC because a lot of that fits very well on TLC…. content from the Travel Channel, content from the Food Network, content from HGTV.
Moving on, you have planned a revamp of Animal Planet.
We are doing a brand revamp, a new logo, completely refreshed, new broadcast design, new promotion… a lot of marketing push will be behind it. That’s happening on July 15. You will see a lot of that happening in the coming weeks.
I haven’t watched Animal Planet much in the recent past. I would do that when my daughter was three or four. Perhaps it’s a channel that people watch at a certain time point in life but not much beyond that. How do you make Animal Planet relevant across audiences?
I think that’s one of the key points of our focus in the coming months. On the back of the brand refresh, we are going to be positioning it as a more for family viewing kind of a channel. In fact, this is one channel which can actually unite families to sit together and watch content…
Co-viewing is quite high in India.
And content has become so individualistic and there are ways to do it now. So this is a nice way to bring the family together. Having said that you will see more of the marketing push which will be driven on that. We want to take Animal Planet beyond TV as well and I think there is an opportunity to take the brand out in to the market of creating those passion communities who love animals. There is hence a whole wide space out there for us to explore and that’s something we want to do.
So, are you looking at setting up nature clubs, tours and the like?
Yeah, we have lot of things on those lines… pet clubs and internationally we have some shows which are aligned to that thinking as well. I think there’s a great opportunity [waiting for us].
You mentioned TLC is going to be loaded with a lot of Scripps content. When will that start?
It’s already started in doses. It will get more apparent and pronounced as we go along.
And then Discovery Kids, a genre that you are so fond of.
Yeah, D-Kids. I am super-excited because that’s been a great success story.
Little Singham is very popular
Yes, he is a fabulous character and he ticks all the right boxes… he is the superhero and does the right things, beats the bad guys and sends a good message and is patriotic and so lot of positive things come out of this association from kids as well. I think parents also like kids to watch content which is giving some kind of a positive message.
Discovery Kids did get a big push on the the distribution front last year.
Yeah, one of the things which has really worked for us was the brand pull of Discovery and the packaging which we did. The distribution became strong even post NTO was because of this aspect. Packaging was right, and there was a brand pull. So, Discovery Kids definitely benefitted out of that and we have now doubled up on the investment when it comes to animation for the channel. We want to create more and invest more in Little Singham for sure and create more episodes.
The competition is stiff in this genre.
Yeah, but that’s good, competition is always good. It helps grow the genre.
Except they have been there for much longer.
But it takes time to build that… Rome was not built in a day, the Taj Mahal was not built in a day. We all know that, it takes time to build. Discovery Kids is relatively very new but the focus is newer, let’s put it this way. You will see now more focus here, you will see more growth here, and we want to drive that, not only just Little Singham but adding new IPs.
Hmmm. Other channels have more IPs
Yeah, but it didn’t happen overnight.
It didn’t happen overnight but it happened soon enough.
It takes time to create animation, it’s not live action and I know that as I’ve been there. We know what we want and it’s not an overnight game, We want to build this and create a position of strength in the next few years to be among the Top 3 players in the genre.
And which your head office is aware of and okay with?
Yes, and is willing to support and invest because we are showing great growth there. We have a growth story, we have a ratings growth story and revenue growth story… we are investing well and aren’t frivolous, everything we are investing is working. So, there are lots of positive on the Discovery Kids space and that I think has a great story for us to become a strong proposition in the coming years.
Just to get a perspective on your investments on content, the refresh and marketing push. What’s the pie looking like… what are you investing on?
On the content, you mean?
On content, refreshing and marketing.
I think it’s a combination of multiple things. For content it will be kids, because it’s all-Indian content, lot of the international content comes on other channels so hence the cost is then amortised across. Marketing would be a big push for us across all our brands and that’s going to be important to get the communication right. When I say marketing, it’s just not random marketing [efforts], it’s very focused, using and driving the community piece which is the passion community piece, which is the bedrock of our strategy and is powering people’s passions.
Moving to digital, there are quite a few digital players already, you will be one more of the platforms that exist. Given that most OTT platforms are game to collaborate, wouldn’t it have been easier for you to do that rather than spend monies and establishing an all-new platform?
Good question and am glad you asked me. So, here’s my take: One, when you say that there are a lot of players, you are absolutely right but I don’t think there is a single player in the real-life entertainment space. We are not in the game of streaming entertainment. We are very differently and uniquely positioned and hence that’s our USP. Second, to try and test the waters whether this content will work on a platform like this our partnership with Daily Hunt did extremely well. It reiterated our belief that there is an audience out there. It has really worked well in the last 3-4 months. We have reached 400 million views, 7 million monthly users, and it is only getting stronger and lot of that coming from the regional content play as well. Three, we are the only guys who have invested in language and that library of content when you look at it so that made it very plausible for us to think that we have the content to be able to propose to a consumer. Four, The real-life content we have as a library is in the range of probably 600-1200 hours collectively. In Phase 1, we will be dipping in to around 8-10 thousand hours of content. So, when you do that math and you create a proposition which is the short-form proposition which we know is how consumers are wanting to. Plus the content we have from Scripps, BBC, the 4K content which we are building plus all the original content being created for D2C platform… the the proposition is so strong.
There are two sides of the digital business: content and technology. Wouldn’t it have been better to tie up with a Jio or an Airtel because they have the technology anyway?
And so do we. We are investing in it. In fact, recently there has been a very senior hire in the name of Peter Faricy who has come from Amazon. He was the running Amazon Marketplace, and he and his team of engineers have come with a clear understanding and a vision of how the D2C proposition will be played out globally. There are millions of dollars being invested in not only content but technology – creating our own platform because they have been there, done that so they know what works for the consumer. That’s the kind of level of investment the organisation is looking at undertaking because we are moving from transition to transformation and you have to move in that direction. So, while partnerships are good, it’s not an either-or scenario. We are looking at an ‘and’, we can have partners and yet have our own proposition. I think both can co-exist because we have the ability unlike many other players we are not creating new content. We already have a library… it’s huge.
Has life settled after the new tariff regime
Actually it has not. It’s still evolving.There are still so many moving parts to the whole proposition.
For you too?
Yes, for us too. We are also as impacted like any of the big industry players but what I was really happy to note was that we could have had a further impact considering we were not a mass proposition but because our brand value pull was so strong that we have not only we are back in the same reach numbers but our timespend has grown to almost 20-25%. And I think two things really worked in our favour as a result of that. One was the fact that there was a consumer pull for our product because we had a great proposition as a package and the second was pricing. We are really economically priced for the value for money we are offering.
What kind of targets have you set for yourself. Obviously expectations are fairly high in terms of relationships you bring to the table and you have been-there-done-that.
I have key priorities in my head for the next 12-18 months. One is to really make the leadership position of our factual entertainment way ahead of the game, like an undisputed leader between Discovery and Animal Planet. Two, be the Top 3 player in the kids space and we are doing enough and more on that and hopefully get there and to be the #1 real-life entertainment OTT service when we launch. That’s tall ask to be honest but I think our team is really geared up. The whole leadership team is very bright and smart and we are really hoping that this will help us.
And when are you launching the OTT services?
We don’t have a closure, but I think early next year.