Amongst the elusive male audience we are bigger than even Aaj Tak: UTV Action

In the midst of the cat fight for acquiring the rights to telecast the latest Bollywood movies by different movie channels and general entertainment channels, with the dawn of the year 2010, came a channel which explored a whole new genre in the segment. We are talking about UTV Action India's first action movie channel, one of the offering from the group UTV Global Broadcasting Ltd (UGBL).

It's been more than two months since the channel which targets the male audience launched. Adgully talked to Sameer Ganapathy, Business Head, UTV Action & UTV World Movies to find out how the channel has shaped up since the launch and how has the response been from the viewers.

According to him the idea behind the launch of the channel was to target Males and create a channel which would provide advertisers with an ideal platform to target the Male audience which is essentially found either on News Channels or only during sporting events.

Talking about the response from the viewers and the ratings achieved so far, Ganapathy said, "The launch of the channel has been extremely encouraging. With more than 40 GRPs amongst the elusive Male audience UTV Action is bigger than even Aaj Tak. The channel has been stable across the 9 weeks of its existence with a loyal audience base who are on an average spending 40 minutes per week on the channel. UTV Action today is the ultimate destination for Males in the HSM market and is bigger than News channels and others targeting the Male audience."

The channel content has a mix of Hindi dubbed Hollywood and Bollywood action movies. On asking him the reason behind need for dubbed Hollywood movies Ganapathy explains, "Bollywood content is essentially drama with a mix of Drama, Action, Emotions. With No Rona just Dhona being one of the philosophies of UTV Action, Hollywood content was the obvious choice as there are Hollywood movies which are just out and out Action movies like Ong Bak 2 and mainly Action movies like Spiderman 3, Blade, End of Days etc. The menu of Action content out of Hollywood is far more robust. However, we do have a library of very good hindi language action movies which are very well accepted within our audience set."

Giving some examples he show how the dubbed content is on rise and says, "We believe that Action has no language and the same is demonstrated by the continued success of Movies like Jurassic Park, The Mummy, Pirates of the Caribbean etc which are shown on multiple channels, dubbed in multiple languages and are yet very successful. Brands like the Madras Cut ' South Indian Action content and Hollywood Gold ' English Movies dubbed in Hindi across mainstream movie channels just show that the demand for good dubbed content is on the rise."

The launch of the channel was backed by big hype created through different ATL and BTL promotional activity. The channel is still doing BTL activity to further build the brand. On asking any further initiative that the channel has for the promotion Ganapathy briefs, "We just did Red Bull Street Style and will be following it up with India's first Paintball league April ' June 2010."