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It's showtime, and how!

Ratna Bhushan

Star-struck Indians couldn't have had it better. Every other television channel worth its satellites is dishing out Bollywood fare -- movies, music, celeb chats -- as staple diet. So what are half a dozen English movie channels doing on Indian screens, w ith a daily dose of non-stop English movies? A lot, if indications are anything to go by.

Take numbers. Good old Star Movies, which can boast of a set of upwardly mobile viewers who turned up their noses at sing-and-dance Hindi potboilers, finds itself jostling with at least five mainline competitors. While Turner International's Turner Class ic Movies (TCM, the erstwhile TNT) has been around for some five years, the recent past has seen HBO, also from Turner, AXN from Sony Pictures, Zee Network's Z Movies and Hallmark from Hallmark Entertainment Network.

On the face of it, these are all English movie channels, but they've all managed to occupy different slots. AXN positions itself as `the first truly global channel defined by action', Hallmark is the `only Asian channel that premiers made-for-television movies to connect with people's hearts and minds', HBO is a showcase of Hollywood blockbusters, TCM has placed itself in the vintage classic genre, Z Movies offers a platter for the `dotcom generation' including Indian-English movies, and Star Movies is an amalgamation of them all.

Weekly box office hits, 13 premieres a month, up to 15 movies a day, it's all happening. And, why not? Check out the untapped potential: of 68 million TV-owning homes in India, just 30 million are cable and satellite (C&S) households. There's obviously s cope for greater penetration.

The channel marketers justify that the implications of airing non-stop English movies are far greater than what's perceived. Anshuman Misra, Managing Director, Turner International India, says the following of Hollywood flicks has gone up by leaps and bo unds. He should know -- TCM has been around a good five years already. Explains Achal Mehra, Director, South Asia, AXN, ``Outside of the US and UK, India has the largest English speaking population. That in itself is a determining factor.''

Observes Laxmi Hariharan, Associate Director (Marketing), Hallmark Entertainment Network, Asia Pacific, ``Of course there's demand for Hindi film-based entertainment, but that's because there's been a shortage of quality English language home entertainme nt.'' She points out that Hallmark was among the first few to recognise this need.

A Zee Network spokesperson puts it differently, ``English is the business language of the country; people who think in English need to be entertained.''

There's no denying, however, that compared to Hindi viewing audiences, English ones are a drop in the ocean. Calling it an unfair comparison, Gopinath Menon, Executive Media Director, TBWA Anthem, says English viewing audiences will always remain at 6-7 per cent of the total Hindi viewing market. ``There's no way an English movie channel will take away prime time viewers from, say, Amaanat, Heena or Saans. But then, English movies aren't really looking at mass audiences,'' Menon points out.

Also, while ratings of English movie channels are not consistently high, they do soar when `special' movies are screened. For example Star Movies' Titanic and The World is not Enough, HBO's line-up of contemporary Hollywood titles such as Assassins, The Fugitive, and Conspiracy Theory; The Prisoner of Zenda, Romeo & Juliet and Gaslight from TCM; AXN's Lawrence of Arabia and Anaconda; Alice in Wonderland, Arabian Nights and Cleopatra from Hallmark; and so on.

Ratings apart, almost all channels claim a C&S reach in excess of six million homes. While Star TV's Star Movies reaches 14 million households, HBO claims eight million, TCM reaches out to 10 million homes, Zee Movies says it has penetrated 11 million ho mes and AXN claims distribution to 12 million homes.

And, while ad revenues are coming only in spurts and channels are reticent to share figures, they are gathering ground all the same. According to a Star TV official, Star Movies' earnings have grown four times in the past six years. Confirms Menon, ``The re's a certain amount of `premiumness' English movies can command. So there's definitely a business model working in favour of ad revenues.''

While Star Movies has been mopping up a huge chunk of advertising, relative newcomers such as AXN too claim up to 60 advertisers. ``Almost 70 per cent of our inventory on prime time -- 9 pm to 12 midnight -- has been utilised in less than the two years t hat we've been around,'' points out Mehra.

Hariharan mentions Pepsi, Bacardi, Godrej, Electrolux and Fa as being among Hallmark's key advertisers. The channel, in fact, began accepting sponsorship only in March this year with the Pepsi-sponsored Arabian Nights.

Star Movies has exclusive tie-ups with MGM, Walt Disney and Touchstone and proposes to double promotion spends.

Turner intends to continue its strategy of `paying tributes' to Hollywood legends on TCM. In May, for example, the channel ran a George Cukor special by airing 16 of the director's greatest films. HBO, with more broader appeal, is being supported by aggr essive multimedia communications, says Misra, though he declines to mention budgets. While Misra claims that response from cable operators has been exceptional, Anthem's Menon says that HBO's bouquet of movies could well alter media buying strategies.

Earlier this month, HBO also announced a partnership with four US-based film production studios -- Sony Pictures Entertainment - SPE (Columbia Tristar), Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios and Warner Bros. The rights for telecasting the movies are excl usive to the channel. ``We now expect to dramatically expand viewership,'' says Misra.

While AXN intends to carry on with its core attributes -- adventurous, daring and effervescent -- the intent is now to consolidate the `action' positioning. Animation is expected to be added to the channel's repertoire soon. Also on the agenda are more a ction movie festivals and growth rates of 200 per cent over last year. ``We want to be the destination channel for Asia,'' says Mehra.

Hallmark is set to roll out a marketing programme to penetrate smaller cities. Later this month, the channel is planning a large-scale premier for Aftershock: Earthquake in New York, across 13 cities. Hariharan says Hallmark is working at making its movi e festivals an annual exercise. The channel is projecting a `realistic' seven million homes by the middle of next year, and proposes to take its communication package to `non-traditional' media.

Zee, too, has been hosting prime time festivals and is running anchor series on Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock and Sherlock Holmes. The channel recently entered into a joint venture with Hollywood studio MGM. The Zee Movies channel, along with MGM, wi ll be relaunched as the Zee-MGM channel next month. Among the channel's best-sellers will be Thelma & Louise, Rain Man and Dances with the Wolves. According to R. K. Singh, CEO, Zee Network, the MGM alliance symbolises Zee's philosophy of creating partne rships to leverage inherent strengths.

So there's everything for everybody now. And with all English movie channel marketers wanting to `leverage strengths', is it time for Karisma Kapoor and Govinda to give way to Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts? Wait and watch.