Mumbai: Media and entertainment research firm Ormax Media has launched First-Day Box Office (FBO), a scientific box office forecasting model.

The model forecasts the opening day net collections at domestic box office for unreleased films up to seven weeks before release.

FBO is being targeted at film studios and producers, as well as media agencies and advertisers who associate with films through co-branded promotions and in-film placement. Existing subscribers of Cinematix will be upgraded to an FBO-enabled version of the product at an incremental cost.

It takes into account a series of input parameters. These include inputs from Ormax Media?s film campaign tracking product Cinematix, which tracks the Buzz, Reach and Appeal of unreleased Bollywood films for almost three years now.Cinematix covers 19 cities across India, accounting for more than 95 per cent of domestic box office coverage.

Other FBO model inputs include release scale, holiday and festival factors, audience profile and other such variables on which normative data has been built by Ormax Media over the last four years.

FBO forecast will be available to subscribers everyday from seven weeks before the release of a film till the day of the release. The model has been tested to accurately forecast the first-day box office collections of at least 85 per cent films with less than 10 per cent error margin, the company said.

Ormax Media CEO Shailesh Kapoor said, "The model is extremely valuable as the box office estimate will be available seven weeks in advance. That will give the stakeholders enough time to take corrective action. Also, it is not a back-of-the-envelope prediction of the box office. It is a statistically tested forecast model that has self-learning built into it, guaranteeing progressively better results with time."

MUMBAI: In the cash-guzzling Hindi general entertainment channel (GEC) space, the first six-months of the year remained fiercely competitive. Imagine TV closed down operations, the second position in the GEC hierarchy was hotly contested, realistic fiction shows gained attention and Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan made his debut on television with a socially meaningful show.

On 12 April Turner International finally gave up its Hindi GEC business in India, shuttering Imagine TV after running massive losses. With Imagine TV, Turner?s ambition of having a presence in the GEC genre also ceased. Earlier it had made a futile attempt with Real, a channel launched with the Alva brothers as joint venture partners.

?We have already seen channels like Zee Next, 9X, Real and now Imagine TV exiting the space. GEC is a high investment genre. The players will have to constantly deliver innovative programming in fiction as well as non-fiction to be successful,? says a media observer.

Star India also closed its second GEC, Star One, and started afresh under the brand Life OK. Launched in December last year, Life OK climbed fast and crossed the 100 GRP mark. Sony also progressed strongly as its fiction properties started delivering.

?Life OK established very fast. Achieving and maintaining over 100 GRPs in less than six months shows a good plan there. Moreover, what it essentially means is that now from a five-player game, we have moved to a six-channel market,? observes Ormax Media co-founder and CEO Shailesh Kapoor.

In the programming segment, there was a new focus towards fiction properties with a realistic perspective. Though the trend started sometime last year with shows like Bade Acche Lagte Hain (Sony Entertainment Television) and Diya Aur Baati Hum (Star Plus), shows like Na Bole Tum Na Maine Kuch Kaha (Colors), Parvarish (Set) and Sapne Suhane Ladakpan Ke (Zee TV) have capitalised on this need gap.

?There has been a definite movement towards light-hearted treatment of content. Stories may still be based around families and social change, but the treatment is less heavy and emotional than what it was before,? avers Kapoor.

Weekend entertainment programming had a mixed menu. While there were singing and dancing based reality shows (Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa and DID L?il Master), a few channels also showcased Fear Files, CID and Crime Patrol (extended to 3 days a week).

?There is a significantly big universe opening up for crime / thrill based content, especially with the youth and the lower SECs,? a senior media executive observes.

Reality shows entered a tricky phase, with no fresh ideas coming up.?There is clearly a fatigue as far as reality shows are concerned. What we are seeing are seasonal properties while there are no good new formats. Even Survivor India on Star Plus couldn?t captivate audiences. We seem to have saturated the formats available to us,? the executive adds.

Hindi general entertainment channels also started exploring some of the unexploited time bands. Star Plus, for instance, launched the Aamir Khan show, Satyamev Jayate, on Sunday afternoons. Zee TV is also readying to air Ramayana on the same time slot.

Hindi GECs continued with the practice, started late last year, of reducing the movie airings. ?GECs have comparatively reduced the movie premieres for achieving spikes. But being a GEC, the need to showcase good movies definitely remain,? a media observer points out.

In recent times, both Star India and Zee have shifted their big ticket premieres on to their movie offerings (Star Gold, Movies OK and Zee Cinema).

Has the ad slowdown affected the Hindi GECs? ?FMCG will continue to spend big on GECs. So even if television as a whole may see 8-10 per cent ad growth, GECs will do better. Also, the automobile industry has a lot of launches lined up and they will increase their spends,? avers Zee Entertainment Enterprises chief sales officer Ashish Sehgal.

Agrees Star India president-ad sales Kevin Vaz, ?There will be categories and genres which will be impacted but Hindi GEC and movie genres will not be affected. The reason being that the core category ? FMCG ? is growing aggressively. All the players ? ITC, P&G, HUL, Marico, Dabur - are spending money. Moreover, automobile is also shifting focus from print to TV. In April-June quarter, all four telecom players have also upped their spends.?

Mumbai: MTunes HD, the first Bollywood music channel in HD, is launching a countdown show ?MTunes Trending20? on 4 August.

Presented by Bharti Airtel, the weekly show will air every Saturday at 9pm and Sunday at 11 am and will play the top 20 songs of the week.

MTunes Trending20 aims to bring to its viewers a comprehensive analysis of audience preferences across five platforms. The final chart will be compiled by the media research organisation - Ormax Media.

The five platforms will be Radio popularity compiled by Radio City, Digital downloads provided by Hungama, YouTube views and Heartbeats (weekly music research) by Ormax Media and audience preferences as recorded by MTunes HD. A normalised measurement formula based on TV ratings data, Radio Aircheck, SMS requests, downloads/usage tracking across mobile service providers and views count on popular internet video sites will be collated to generate the weekly chart.

MTunes HD CEO Saravanan P said, "MTunes Trending20 is a reaffirmation of our promise to deliver ?Music Like Never Seen Before? and strengthens a long line-up of path-breaking formats like Kal Ka Superhits, Handmade and MBox already on the channel. We have pioneered the industry by launching the World?s first HD Bollywood Music Channel and are committed to consistently drive growth for our stakeholders. This show will deliver the gold standard of Bollywood music rankings to the industry and is among several initiatives in the pipeline that will make the MTunes HD viewer ?Feel the Music?!"

Ormax Media CEO Shailesh Kapoor added, "Today, music is consumed across media - television, radio, internet, mobile phones and other digital devices. MTunes Trending20 is a unique property that captures the combined effect of all these media."