India stars in global entertainment
spotlight By Raja M
MUMBAI - The Asia-Pacific zone is racing
ahead as the global entertainment industry's
fastest-growing region (nearly 12% annually), and
India has been invited as a "country of honor" to
stage an "India day" on October 8, the first day
of an annual four-day entertainment conference at
the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, France,
sponsored by Mipcom (Marche International des
Programmes de Communication).
Mipcom is an
international marketing, sales and networking event
for
film and television industries, where large
corporations can do multimillion-dollar world
sales and small sales agents can do
territory-by-territory sales.
India is
expected to gobble up a major chunk of the US$120
billion global entertainment industry. China (in
2004) and Korea (2005) were other Asian nations to
be similarly featured by Mipcom with national
days.
"Entertainment and media industries
in Asia are expected to grow 10% per year until
2010 - the fastest growth rate in the world and
double the growth in the United States," Paul
Johnson, director of organizer Reed Midem TV, told
Asia Times Online. "Asia's entertainment and media
markets are predicted to be worth $425 billion in
2010, compared [with] $330 billion this year."
Johnson said revenue from pay television
and cable and satellite channels in India will be
the largest in Asia by 2015, and that India is
being spotlighted at Mipcom "for its extraordinary
creativity, making it the foremost in the world".
Mipcom's estimates were confirmed this
year by Hong Kong-based Media Partners Asia (MPA),
which predicts that India will become Asia's
leading cable market by 2010, the largest
satellite market by next year, and the most
profitable pay-television market by 2015. Vivek
Couto, MPA's executive director, told Reuters,
"India remains the most significant and accessible
cable and satellite opportunity in the
Asia-Pacific region." MPA expects Indian
cable-television advertising revenue to grow to
$1.8 billion in another three years, from $1.02
billion in 2005, he said.
More than 40
major Indian entertainment and media companies are
expected to participate in Mipcom this year, with
total business churned out in the four-day event
expected to be $10 billion. More than 4,000
companies are participating from more than 100
countries.
India's expanding entertainment
profile includes leading Bollywood stars getting
more work in Hollywood, with big movie brands
feeling the need for the "Asian element". Recent
trade talk has rumors of major Hollywood stars
working in Hindi movies in the near future and
Indian movie directors making Hollywood films.
India ranks as one of the world's leading
movie-addicted nations, and it has begun to export
its talents more aggressively. Industry estimates
say 125 countries currently view Indian films, and
Indian movies are dubbed into 35 different
languages. An India film festival is currently
running to packed houses in Israel. India's
regional-language films, too, are finding eager
overseas market, such as the recently released
Tamil movie Sivaji (see Move over, Bollywood: Here comes
The Boss, Asia Times Online,
July 14).
The national movie addiction
even dominates India's news media, particularly
Hindi TV news channels that daily dole out large
measures of movie news and bizarre freak shows
(man eating burning firewood) to boost ratings.
India has the third-largest pay-TV market
in the world at $4.2 billion, with TV revenues
estimated to reach $11 billion by 2011 and $16
billion by 2015. India is also good news for
foreign TV channels and investors when compared
with China, where foreign TV channels such as the
British Broadcasting Corp, Cinemax and HBO are
generally only legally available in tourist hotels
and expatriate residential areas.
With
about 120 million television homes in India last
year, pay-TV penetration is expect to grow to
nearly 90% in another eight years, with 185
million television-owning homes in 2015. India
will join Japan as Asia's top pay-TV market by
2015, with the direct-to-home satellite market
expected to grow to 38 million by 2015, up from
2.6 million subscribers in 2006.
Industry
reports say 150 new channels are awaiting
government approval, taking the number of TV
channels in India close to 400. But TV company
executives point out that there is room for more
growth given the number of Indian languages (23
official languages, including Hindi and English,
besides hundreds of other regional languages and
dialects) and specialized channels such as movies,
news, music, sports and general entertainment.
Mipcom said the Indian entertainment
industry responded enthusiastically to the Cannes
opportunity this year. "Two of the biggest media
players [Zee Network founder and chairman Subhash
Chandra and Ronnie Screwvala, founder and chief
executive officer of UTV Group] will be attending
Mipcom 2007," said Johnson.
Chandra, also
chairman of the Essel Group of Companies, will
deliver a keynote address titled "The Indian
Television Market Explosion: What does the future
hold?"
Zee TV reflects the future growth
of India's entertainment industry. In 1991,
Chandra founded Zee, India's first Hindi satellite
channel, amid snorts of derision in the
English-dominated media. Now the Zee Network is
the world's largest Hindi programming producer and
aggregator, with more than 50,000 hours of
original content serving 35 channels for 500
million viewers in more than 120 countries.
Led by India, Asia's
entertainment-business frontiers are expanding, as
Mipcom points out that Asia currently accounts for
50% of global third-generation mobile-telephone
subscribers and by 2010 Asia will have more than
50% of the broadband Internet market.
"Asian nations have also been particularly
quick to innovate and adopt new technology," said
Johnson. "As the Asian entertainment sector grows,
it also generates the necessity for international
investors and exporters to track and understand
the developments in this exciting region."
(Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
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