The Hindu Business Line : Raj TV to produce content for third parties

Fresh ideas
The Rs 7.15-crore facility would cater to in-house and third party production work.
Work on outsourced content would start by September.

Advertisement

Chennai Feb. 25 Raj Television Network (RTN) is planning to produce television content for third party media companies. As of now, the company produces all content beamed on its channel Raj TV.

The outsourced production work would be a new revenue stream for the company, Mr B. Sathya Prakash, Senior Vice-President of RTN, told Business Line . "We can get margins of up to 40 per cent and still be competitively priced as an outsourcing destination," he said.

The company's facilities can produce up to three episodes a day of any television content.

"Producers of game shows and television soaps in Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali and Hindi have approached us for using our studio and production facilities," Mr Sathya Prakash said.

RTN is setting up a new 27,000-sq-ft production facility at its premises that is expected to be operational by December this year.

This Rs 7.15-crore facility would cater to in-house and the proposed third party production work.

Work on outsourced content would start by September. "We are waiting to launch eight new Tamil shows, after which we will take up outsourced work," said Mr Sathya Prakash.

The company is also venturing into English and Hindi content through its yet to be launched youth channel. "It will be a multi-format, multi-content channel with a majority of content in English and Hindi besides other regional languages," he said.

The company is sourcing talent from North India (show producers, content writers and anchors) for creative inputs while infrastructure support like provision for shooting, editing and production would be provided by the company's facilities in Chennai.

The channel is likely to go on air from July and may be available as a free channel for one year.

The company's channels Raj TV and Raj Digital Plus would soon be available on all existing DTH platforms.

"We are finalising the last leg of operations with DTH players," he said.

The company is also planning to beam content to countries with a strong Tamil NRI population.

About 30 per cent of this content would be locally produced to suit the lifestyle of the viewers, said Mr Sathya Prakash.

The company also plans to introduce appropriate regional language sub-titles to the Tamil content beamed internationally.

More Stories on : Radio/TV | Outlook | Outsourcing

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page