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Purvita Chatterjee

Mumbai, Sept. 9 Zee Entertainment Enterprises wants to lower programming costs between 15 and 20 per cent by renegotiating its rates with production houses. It has approached production houses such as Balaji Telefilms, Swastik and Endemol with a fresh round of negotiations for reducing rates which is expected to give a boost to the network’s profitability.

Speaking to Business Line, Mr Nitin Vaidya, Chief Operating Officer, Zee Entertainment Enterprises, said, “The cost of programming has been brought down between 15 and 20 per cent and we expect this move to have direct impact on our bottomline.” With no intentions of launching new channels immediately, the media company of late has been on a cost cutting drive with programming costs being the primary driver towards this initiative. “There has also been salary rationalisation and administrative costs have been brought down, added Mr Vaidya. Moving away from its dependence on advertising revenues, the network will now be relying on revenues from digitalisation from the DTH/CAS rollouts to give a boost to its bottomline.

“Digitisation will happen and the penetration of DTH has gone up. In this scenario we expect revenues from digital services to go up and we will not be dependent on ad revenues,” he said.

In fact, this year its ad revenues grew at 14 per cent while subscription revenue recorded a healthier 22 per cent, justifying this trend.

With Zee TV, the flagship channel of the network regaining its dominant position in the GEC space, the network is gearing up to face the challenges in the media industry.

“We have now moved from a challenged to challenger channel with Zee TV. Having revamped our prime time viewing, Zee TV is no longer taking the beaten path in its programming and in the last six months this change in strategy has delivered us the numbers that we were looking for,” said Mr Vaidya.

With successful shows such as Sa Re Ga Ma Pa, Betiyaan, Dance India Dance, and the recently launched Jhansi Ki Rani, Zee TV has been moving away from the regular shows and storylines.

“We are moving away from the family dramas and are addressing new issues with our programming. New issues such as autism or female infanticide with a good story is the focus of our programming, added Mr Vaidya.

More Stories on : Outlook | Books of Account | Zee Telefilms Ltd

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