When news broke out about ZEE5 getting the rights to Friends: The Reunion , the much-hyped special of Friends , television’s most-popular sitcom that ran 10 years between 1994 and 2004, an excited Divya Menon, a Mumbai-based software engineer, instantly bought the subscription to the OTT platform. The special episode premiers on May 27.

On the other hand, Ooty-based Anamika is wary. “The trailer has made me wonder if I really want to watch it and erase all the feel-good nostalgia associated with the show,” she says.

Celebrity appearance

It’s the first time since the 2004 finale that the six stars in the sitcom – Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matthew Perry, David Schwimmer and Matt LeBlanc – will share screen time together. In addition, it has celebrities such as David Beckham and Justin Bieber, making an appearance.

Indian fans of Friends had been wondering where to watch it as HBO Max, where it is globally premiering, is not available here. On Sunday, the suspense ended as ZEE5 made the announcement.

Will it boost ZEE5’s OTT rankings and drive more subscriptions? ZEE5 has recently got another hyped offering – Salman Khan starrer Radhe: Your most wanted Bhai – on its platform, and clearly hopes so. An elated Manish Kalra, Chief Business Officer, ZEE5 India, said: “We have grown a staggering 200 per cent in the past year-and-a-half, and we continue to drive the momentum in 2021 by bringing two impact content tentpoles, Radhe: Your Most Wanted Bhai and Friends: The Reunion, exclusively for the Indian market.”

Karan Taurani, Vice-President, Elara Capital, said: “Tentpole media properties definitely help OTT players to add more subscribers as well as strengthen consumer retention. Friends is, of course, a franchise with a very strong brand recall and has been enjoying multiple views.”

Regional content

According to Taurani, the OTT platform has been primarily focussing on Hindi and regional content and, hence, this move will enable it to tap into the English-content viewing consumer base. There are naysayers though. Gopinath Menon, veteran media strategist, says : “For any show to succeed and pull subscriptions, content has to have high receptivity that will build loyalty. This seems unlikely in the Reunion show. It also depends on how hard they promote it,” he says.

“Radhe and Friends are completely opposite ends of the spectrum. So, not too sure what is the ZEE5 strategy here,” says brand consultant Sanjay Sarma. “In my opinion, they would do well to stick to massy rather than classy content. That’s their core competence and that’s what their audience expects. They may see a bit of a spike in subscriptions, but they have to really work hard to sustain it. It’s a long-haul game. “

Kalra of ZEE5 says that it has aggressive plans. “Going forward, we plan to release 50+ theatricals and 40+ web series that will add to our extensive library of content offering a wider array of catalog to entertainment seekers, getting them hooked on to ZEE5.”

The Friends Reunion episode comes at a time when nostalgic entertainment offerings have done very well across cable TV and OTT. It has been among the top-10 most-watched series on Netflix for some time now and on Viacom’s Comedy Central continues to do well.

Significantly, Comedy Central has upped the push socially on Friends – could the Reunion episode drive more traffic back to the old shows?

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