Adgully Exclusive | After NGC Telegu, await for two more language feeds in 2011: NGC's Debarpita Banerjee

India's regional television audience is increasing at a fast pace; National Geographic Channel, is one of the few channels, to realize this aspect and is tactfully capturing various regional markets. With two other launches in less than a year, in Bengali and Tamil, along with Hindi, NGC is now open to Telegu speaking audiences.

Almost 95% of their content being international, the content and the programming strategy remain the same for NGC Telegu. But what differentiates them from other competitors is that their focus is on transcreation and not translation. It goes to say that they capture the essence of the program, rewrite it in the language that suits the audience's palate, thus, justifying what the program is like, originally.

Speaking to Adgully, Debarpita Banerjee, Vice President- Marketing at National Geographic and Fox International Channels, said that their major concentration lies in getting the language right, while keeping the fundamental nature of the programs intact. "We also look forward at celebrity voice-over for some special programs, but only in the future" she said. When asked about possibilities of further regional feeds being explored, Banerjee said, "with three launches this year, we have now reached five feeds. We might see two more coming this year, but at the moment, our focal point is consolidating the current channel feeds and running them well."

Talking about the advertising and marketing front, Banerjee, with a positive thought said that traders have responded very well. "The major reason being," she sights, "it gives an opportunity to the marketers to customize their brands and to run their language ads on to our language feeds. So it is really reaching out to the audiences in their own language". NGC has got automobiles, telecom, and sectors like education coming in to advertise on their language feeds; while they are looking forward for more of FMCG participation also, in the near future.

Debarpita Banerjee highlights that, "having Shriya Saran endorse our language does work as a local push in the clearly defined niche markets. Shriya, herself is an avid viewer of National Geographic, and secondly a popular face in Tamil Nadu, she fits the bill to be the face of National Geographic Channel Tamil feed. Being in a competitive market like India, NGC analyses that, since Tamil Nadu has a big viewership market, expecting anything between 7-15 % on the viewership front is optimum.

With a track record of successful regional reach, NCG is bound to give its viewers more in the coming future. | By Ankita Tanna [ankita(at)adgully.com]