Film Production
Balaji readies weekend serials
On the back of what has been a tremendously successful year for the Jeetendra Kapoor family-promoted Balaji Telefilms, the production house is expanding into new genres and time bands.
Among the more high-profile offerings that the Balaji stable is readying is a 39-part weekend series that is going on air within the next two months on “one of the top satellite channels,” CEO and managing director Shobha Kapoor said today, at an analysts’ meeting in south Mumbai outlining the company’s plans.
Slated to run as a one-hour show on Friday’s, Saturday’s and Sunday’s, Kapoor said it would be a high-cost production that would run for a total of 13 weeks. Another show that was launching in the weekend slot was a kid’s serial that would air on Sundays loosely modelled on a Superman like character, Kapoor said.
Rajesh Pavithran, vice-president – marketing, who gave a run down of the company’s plans said the company was increasingly focussed on increasing the number of commissioned programmes that it produced and was now restricting its programmes in the sponsored category to work it did for the southern language Sun Network.
Pavithran said that after making its presence felt in all the main southern language channels (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada), Balaji was next looking to enter Malayalam language programming on the Sun Network’s Surya channel.
The coming year would also see Balaji entering Punjabi and Bengali language programming, Pavithran said.
A point that was made during the briefing was that Balaji’s top three shows on Star Plus contributed 30 per cent of the company’s revenues. Pavithran also stressed that there was a big enough spread in the company’s programming base that no show contributed more than 15 per cent of revenues. One can assume that Hindi entertainment television’s top soap Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (KSBKBT) would be contributing the 15 per cent. Jeetendra Kapoor said that KSBKBT’s current sale price to Star was Rs 1,000,000 per episode. The numbers are revealing when one considers that when KSBKBT launched it was sold to Star at Rs 125,000 per episode. Average production cost per episode however, has only gone up 10 per cent, Jeetendra Kapoor said. Now that’s called tight cost control.
Film Production
Priyanka Kaur Dhillon joins SVF Entertainment as lead for music distribution
A seasoned content dealmaker with 16 years in digital and satellite media joins the Bengali entertainment powerhouse as it pushes into the pan-India music market
Mumbai: Priyanka Kaur Dhillon has made her move. The content acquisitions and commercials veteran, most recently commercial manager at Sony Pictures Networks India, has joined SVF Entertainment as lead for music distribution, stepping into one of the more interesting briefs in regional entertainment right now.
SVF is no ordinary regional label. Over 30 years it has built a formidable legacy in Bengali cinema and music, driven by culturally resonant storytelling and a catalogue that consistently punches above its weight. Its recent success with Chiraiya underlines the point. But the Kolkata-based powerhouse now has its sights firmly set beyond Bengal, most visibly through Legacy, a rap reality series produced in collaboration with hip-hop label Kalamkaar that signals a deliberate push into the pan-India music ecosystem.
Dhillon brings precisely the kind of muscle SVF needs for that expansion. At Sony Pictures Networks India, she led film acquisition and commercials and handled music licensing across the entire satellite network. Before that, she spent nearly 15 years at Hungama, rising to assistant general manager and leading strategic content licensing for the platform’s digital entertainment business, with a particular focus on international markets. Her label relationships span the full roster: Sony Music, Universal Music, Warner Music, Believe International, Tunecore, The Orchard and a clutch of smaller aggregators. She has negotiated and closed deals with Hollywood studios, Bollywood production houses and regional content players alike, building pricing models and deal structures off data analysis rather than instinct.
Announcing the appointment, Dhillon said she was “thrilled to begin this journey with an iconic Bengali music label and content powerhouse,” adding that SVF’s “constant drive to push boundaries” was what drew her to the role.
SVF has spent three decades proving that regional does not mean limited. With a sharp commercial operator now steering its music distribution, its bid to go national just got a good deal more serious.
