By A Correspondent
Pardon us stretching it a bit in the headline. We loved The Big Bang Theory when it aired on Zee Cafe and earlier Star World. But this big bang theory will be of the real kind.
For, trendsetting broadcast network Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (ZEEL) seems to be at its game-changing best yet again as it announced the rollout of an all-new channel. Called ZeeQ, the channel is being tagged as India’s first edutainment channel and will focus on school-going children and attempt to help parents and teachers in the collective effort to facilitate emotional, social, academic and behavioral development of children.
The channel will be beamed live from November 5 on leading DTH and digital cable platforms as a paid-for channel.
Said Punit Goenka, MD & CEO – Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited, at the launch announcement on Monday, October 15, “Zee as a group stands by its principle of improvement of human capital, and so is the initiative, ZeeQ. It is a step ahead in fostering the curiosity amongst children through fun and entertainment.” Mr Goenka added by stating that for two decades, Zee Entertainment Enterprises has been making a difference in the lives of millions, and now ZeeQ will sustain that philosophy further.”
According to officials, ZeeQ will have mix of home produced and acquired content. While 70 per cent of the content would be beamed in Hindi the remaining 30 per cent would be in English. Elaborating further, Subhadarshi Tripathi, Business Head of ZeeQ informed that as of now, ZeeQ would be having about three-and-a-half hours of original programming and further one-and-a-half hours of animated programming. While 50 per cent of the programming would be homegrown, the remaining would be sourced from outside and will be retained with ZeeQ for a period of 5 years.
Asserted Mr Tripathi, “The programming and scheduling approach of ZeeQ’s content is geared to help children with subliminal education while keeping them engaged in never-before edutainment fashion. To achieve this, ZeeQ has a mix of programmes that has been specially designed and produced by the programming team.
Some of the shows that have been conceptualized for the channel include:
- Teenovation — a show in association with The National Innovation Foundation about Children innovators who display brilliance and create utility items for problems they see around them
- Wordmatch — Â a National level Hindi game show for children, which enhances their knowledge of English spelling, word usage, sentence construction and vocabulary
- Brain Cafe — a super-cool Cafe with anything and everything to do with Science, Brain Cafe is the perfect hang out to learn all about science theories, concepts and their applications in a fun way.
To drive forward its focus on content around education, ZeeQ is relying heavily on the experiences of education division Zee Learn Ltd. On the backing being provided by Zee Learn, Mr Goenka informed, “During production and acquisition of content, we took into consideration the learnings from the 18 years that Zee Learn Limited has been interacting with as many as 300000 students, parents and teachers across India. And this has helped us make its edutainment content engaging and relevant to the needs of Indian children.”
Navneet Anhal, COO – Zee Learn Limited, said, “ZeeQ is based on our core operating principle of ‘What is Right for the Child’. We are confident that the channel will benefit school-going children and help their parents and teachers in the collective effort to facilitate emotional, social, academic and behavioral development of the children. ZeeQ, will further strengthen the endeavor of Zee Learn to prepare children for 21st century by inculcating much needed knowledge, life skills and values.”
MxMIndia spoke to a few media agency heads to gather their perspective on the road ahead for ZeeQ.
- Shashi Sinha
Shashi Sinha, CEO, Lodestar Universal
It’s a good idea as the genre is said to be expanding by the day. The move is good one by Zee as India is a young country and is getting younger by the day. Also the investor power is increasing so there is a growing market for Zee and they want to complete their bouquet of offerings. I think there is enough space for more such channels to exist. I do not know what the exact content line-up is but I presume that it will good enough to drive viewership to the channel.
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- Gautam Kiyawat
Gautam Kiyawat, CEO, Madison Media
With digitization there will always be higher potential for new entrants to be viable. It’s good for everyone.
- Mona Jain
Mona Jain, CEO, VivaKi Exchange
There aren’t many options from a learning point of view for kids today. The (kids) channels of today are more entertainment-centric and do not have much of educative content to offer. This is a good move by Zee where the key would be to have a far more qualitative viewing and bring in a lot of quality content in an interesting manner. Also, this venture is such that it can be promoted by the schools and the parents themselves. This is what happened with Discovery where it managed to get in the required traction as it began beaming as an infotainment channel, an option that was received well by the parents as well.
If you look at the viewership pattern that the kids have right now it emaps into the adult viewership to a large extent. That’s because in India you have large number of single TV households and the kids’ viewership is driven by probably what the mother or parent is watching. Having said that the kids do have content now that is tailored specifically for their viewing. So if one is able to provide such content that is compelling enough and gives information about what’s happening around their universe, I am sure they will be able to pull in their audiences. The USP is that it is niche and not a mass channel, so they shouldn’t have a problem attracting viewers to the channel.
Where Zee is concerned, this move will give them a better bandwidth and better genre-play. For a network to operate across various genres that caters to all possible requirements and needs of advertisers is a preferred option. There are many who prefer to be a one-stop shop for all genres and very few succeed in doing that. This move would surely strengthen Zee’s overall position.
- Anwesh Bose
Anwesh Bose, Senior VP, DDB MudraMax, Delhi
Nowadays kids have become very important as there has been a sudden spurt of channels that are out to target them. But the way the kids of today evolve, they have already made space for quite a few brands in their minds from a channel perspective. Today there is distinctly nothing for a 4-14 yr-old to whom you can offer everything in one channel. It’s just not possible. It therefore would have made sense if Zee would have changed their TG to 4-9 or 9-14 yr-olds.
I get a feeling that what they used to have as Zee Kids is being recreated again through ZeeQ. But the issue is different: with the coming of age of internet as a medium the kids of today do not want any gyaan; what they want is entertainment. They anyways get enough gyaan in school and if they want more they have Discovery Kids or Discovery Turbo or Discovery Science that has some amazing content to boast. So kids have gone beyond a phase where you can be professorial to them.
To put it aptly, I think the TG could have been more sharp for ZeeQ to have shortlisted. And secondly, if your TG is sharp then the content needs to be planned accordingly. According to me what ZeeQ needs to do is get more contemporary in their approach. It is very essential today for a channel to understand what brandworld a child is living in and act accordingly.
