Hindi general entertainment is the dominant genre on Indian television. This is the reason why Viacom 18 entered the market of Indian television with Colors. Colors is probably one of the best things to happen to Indian television in the recent years. The channel is known for its high quality family oriented programmes, progressive and creatively charged soap operas and out of the box reality shows. Although there are quite a few Hindi general entertainment channels already popular in the market, Colors did not take much time to grab people’s interest. Today, it is the channel with the largest number of programmes which enjoy top TRP ratings. The popularity of Colors in Hindi prompted Viacom 18 to launch a number of regional television channels under the brand name of Colors.
TV channels launched by other media companies in languages such as Bengali, Marathi, Telugu and Tamil had already earned enough loyalty from the audience. So, Viacom 18 had to deal with strong competition in those markets. However, it managed to tackle the competition with the help of quality programmes and today, channels such as Colors Marathi have become the market leader in the Marathi general entertainment genre.
According to market analysts, the reason behind the popularity of Colors Marathi is due to the introduction of general entertainment reality shows in line with the Hindi general entertainment channels. It helped in making people interact with the TV channel, thereby strengthening their positioning. The quality of the reality shows aired on Colors Marathi is so high that even if you don’t speak Marathi, you would still enjoy its shows.
Another aspect in which Viacom 18 came out as the winner is the launch of general entertainment channels in a few regional languages such as Kannada, Gujarati and Odia which did not have integrated audience base. Within a very short span of time, channels such as Colors Kannada, Colors Gujarati and Colors Odia managed to develop a strong audience base in their respective states. It is true that the brand name of Colors did help in making these channels popular, but it is the sheer quality of the programmes aired on those channels which have contributed in binding the audience to the screen.
Today, the market of regional television entertainment has started competing with Hindi general entertainment with a large number of popular regional channels in almost all major languages of the country. In fact, in a few states such as Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Bengal, the regional channels of Viacom 18 are more popular than the general Hindi channels. This is definitely a very good trend as it has opened up competition in the regional entertainment area, which has eventually triggered content improvement.
