The Hindu Business Line : Animal Planet's time-band strategy to expand reach

IF you wish to see the rich variety of India's animal kingdom, tune in to Animal Planet every Friday for a one-hour weekly feature called Indian Safari, says the channel.

The decision to slot the Indian Safari at 9 p.m. every Friday was taken following increasing feedback about the coverage of Indian animal world in the channel, Mr Rajiv Bakshi, Manager, Corporate Communications, Discovery Networks India, told newspersons here on Friday.

The channel has adopted a time-band strategy to reach more viewers at convenient timings. It involved segmenting the programmes under four defined bands such as Funzone, Safari, Masters of the Jungle and Unexplained, Unexplored. The hourly programmes beamed from Monday to Friday have been slotted between 8 p.m. to 12 midnight, he said.

Explaining the growth of viewership, he said Animal Planet currently attracts more viewers than the existing English channels like CNBC, Star World, Zee Café etc. Launched in 1998, the channel is distributed to 24 million subscribers in the country, he said.

Mr Bakshi said the viewership profile proved that the content attracted people of all age groups and not mostly youngsters as some perceived.