MUMBAI: Of late, Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited (ZEEL) has been making headlines for its expansion plans the world over. It isn’t just taking the existing channels from India to the international market but is also coming up with new channels to cater to the local people of the countries they want to reach out to. In the present case, they have done just that.
In order to expand in the south East Asia market, it has launched a movie channel in Indonesia, aptly titled Zee Bioskop (Bioskop means cinema in Bahasa, the local language of the country). The last time Zee introduced a channel in this region was five years ago - Zee Variasi in Malaysia, again a local Bollywood movie channel.
Zee Bioskop, which has been launched today, is currently available only on Aora TV as a pay channel and is beaming off satellite Measat 3a. With the tagline - ‘Bollywood Banget’, which means ‘bollywood excessively’, the channel will showcase the best of Bollywood movies dubbed in Bahasa Indonesian.
An official announcement about the launch will be made in January in Jakarta, the capital, where the office of Zee Bioskop is located. As of now, the officials are working on increasing the distribution of the channel.
Since Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous country with not too many movie theatres showing Bollywood movies, the company is trying to cash in on the situation. “Our focused study group showed that Indonesians wanted to watch Bollywood movies and with Bioskop we are targeting the local audience and not the Indians in Indonesia,” says a highly placed source from Zee.
Bioskop will air comedy, action, thriller, drama and romantic movies. Activities on Facebook and Twitter have already started to promote the channel. “This initiative is going to make not just Zee but also Bollywood movies popular in the Indonesian market,” says the source.
Movies like Delhi 6, Shaitan, Aa Dekhen Zara, Oh My God, Vivaah, Love Story 2050 etc are in the current line-up. The channel will come under the APac area and will be headed by Asia-Pacific business head Sushruta Samanta. There are other Zee channels already present in the region since many years.
