Don‘t look, its changing.

Discovery Channel is turning from a staid edutainment channel to a zippy clued in channel come 1 April. Not content with a slew of new programming initiatives directed at specific audiences and distinct advertisers, the channel aims to go south with a vengeance within the next four months. The success of the Hindi audio feed has inspired the channel to launch either a Tamil or a Telugu audio feed soon, says Discovery Communications India managing director Deepak Shourie.

The new look Discovery, touted as an Alternate Channel for viewers tired of soap and film, will have nine special time bands for women, kids, youth, family and even a special late night band for adults. The bands, classified as Sunrise, Woman‘s Hour, Amazing Animals, Discovery Kids, Action Zone, Family Time, Friday Showcase, Perfect Ten, Late Night Discovery and Discovery Weekends are not a new concept though. The channel had proposed to launch the bands in October 2001. Shourie says the channel delayed the relaunch to test initial responses; the events of 11 September provided the other lag. The new programmes will focus on adventure, arts, aviation, crime, romance, sexual behaviour, sports, travel and wars.

This initiative puts Discovery‘s earlier plan of launching two new channels, Discovery Health and Discovery Travel & Adventure on the back burner, as Shourie says all the elements have been incorporated in the new look Discovery itself. The channel meanwhile has already withdrawn content being aired on Vijay TV, and that on Doordarshan channels, Metro and Bharati will be stopped by the end of this month. The new look Discovery is already being promoted in a big way with hoardings splashed across the metros, ads put out in print and on the tube, all created by an in house team. DCI‘s other baby, Animal Planet, which has been trudging along at a negligible pace, is also due for a shot in the arm in the next two months, says Shourie.

Sorry, your browser doesn‘t support Java(tm). Discovery currently has 70,000 hours of software in its library and is adding 3000 hours every year. Explaining the logic behind not stressing on Indian content, Shourie says it costs the channel $ 1.5 million per hour to produce content, an investment that should be worthy of being beamed worldwide. "I too would look forward to programmes filmed in India that could be telecast everywhere," he says.

The channel maintains that Discovery is today the sixth most widely distributed channel in the country and reaches over 21 million households. After programmes were realigned to audience viewing habits in 2001, prime time viewership went up by 21 per cent, kids‘ band viewership by 20 per cent and women‘s band viewership by 43 per cent, claims the channel.

Shop 24 Seven, the media commerce venture of the Hinduja Group‘s convergence arm HTMT and US-based Planet E-Shop, is about to bring in more interactivity into the channel.
It will be introducing a live phone facility for prospective buyers before the week is out, says Eric Mausolf, CEO, Shop 24 Seven. Mausolf said the channel would be screening callers before putting them through to prevent crank calls. The system was still being fine tuned but at the basic level, a caller who has made a purchase before would immediately be cleared, Mausolf said.

Live content on the channel is currently at six hours a day, five days a week, in a tapeless format, Mausolf said. Elaborating on the reasons for the live element in the show, he said that the effort was to bring the product as close to the customer as possible. "We‘re here to show real people showing real products," he said.

Mausolf said once the channel has established itself, the live content would be gradually increased from the present six hours to eight, 10 and finally capped at 12 hours.

Asked to comment on how far the channel had progressed since its launch in the beginning of November 2001, Mausolf said the channel was still in what he termed the pre-operative stage. "Our focus has primarily been Mumbai, which is our test ground," Mausolf said, adding that he expected the channel to be ready for a countrywide push by May or June.

Commenting on growth in terms of actual sales, Mausolf while offering no actual numbers, said it had settled to about a nine per cent growth month-on-month. He however pointed out that, comparing December sales figures with November, a five fold-jump was seen. January saw a two-fold jump over December and since then it has levelled off at the present level, he said.

Queried as to what would be offered to other MSOs as an incentive for carrying the channel, Mausolf said it was essentially a revenue sharing model that was being proposed. The MSO would be offered 10 per cent of sales revenues. The main goal on that front was to increase carriage and get the channel on a good band, Mausolf said.

Another aspect of the Shop 24 Seven rollout plan is the franchise point-of‘-presence outlets which will be used to push the products. Mauser said that five such outlets were already up and running in Mumbai (Marine Lines, Lamington Road, Borivali) and adjoining Thane district (Thane, Badlapur). Another 10 locations are in the process of getting finalised in Maharashtra. He clarified that these were not exclusive Shop 24 Seven outlets. What has been done is that floor space has been taken up in the five outlets and it is the retailers themselves that decide the inventory on display.

As for viewer profile, Mausolf said the target was primarily housewives. As far as buying patterns are concerned, 45 per cent of sales are being recorded in the 1 pm to 4 pm and 7 pm to 10 pm bands, he said. Mumbai accounts for over 80 per cent of these sales, he added.