GECs
Stage set for Enter Media 2001 conference
The stage is set for the Enter Media 2001 conference to be held in Mumbai on 7 and 8 August.
The seminar for the media and entertainment sector organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) will be the culmination of an online interactive initiative that began at the end of June whose aim it was to identify the key issues which the industry needed to address.
According to the chairman of the task force set up to organise the conference, Biren Ghose, CEO of UTV Interactive, the conference’s principal aim is to identify two or three key issues that have a realistic chance of being addressed if proper thought and planning is put into the effort. It will be an issues workshop which amalgamates a public as well as industry perspective.
At the conclusion of the conference a report will be presented which will set a six to 12 month time frame to resolve the issues identified. Towards this end the state and central government will be petitioned to participate in the resolutions made at the seminar. inputs from other institutions as well as efforts from within the industry will all be utilised to work towards getting definitive results, Ghose says. He gives the example of how the music industry managed to set aside its internal differences in setting up the Indian Music Initiative (IMI) against piracy.
To delienate the key issues, message boards on a Enter Media 2001/CII website will be specially created. These message boards – to be gathered from industry executives and the public at large – will represent a “market snapshot” across each of the industry verticals. The idea is to define constraints and highlight possible solutions, according to the chairman of the task force set up to organise the conference, Biren Ghose, CEO of UTV Interactive.
Others on the taskforce include Shyam Benegal (Films), Pritish Nandy (CEO Pritish Nandy Communication), Abhik Mitra (Music), Sumantra Dutta (Star India Ltd, Radio), Vijay Mukhi (Technology), Pallavi Jha (CII Chairperson – Maharashtra), Rana Kapoor / Vijay Jain (Banking), Rajesh Jog (Venture Capital) and SK Chakraborty (Industrial Development Bank of India). The venue of the conference is the ITC Grand Maratha Sheraton in Mumbai’s western suburb of Andheri.
GECs
Zee scales syndication with global tie-ups, 350 plus channel MCN
Vertical, dubbed and audio formats boost digital reach
MUMBAI: Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. is giving its content library a fresh passport. The company has stepped up its syndication push, signing global partnerships, experimenting with new-age formats and building a multi-channel network that now spans more than 350 channels.
With the newly secured MCN licence, Zee can manage, distribute and monetise content across leading digital platforms at scale, strengthening its presence in the fast-growing creator and short-form ecosystem.
To keep pace with changing viewing habits, the company is also reshaping its content into formats built for the small screen in your hand. In a tie-up with micro-drama platform Story TV, select titles are being reworked into vertical, short-duration episodes tailored for mobile-first audiences.
Beyond India, the syndication team is widening its global footprint with foreign-language dubbing and regional partnerships across Europe, Africa and Latin America, opening up fresh markets for Indian stories.
Zee is also tapping into the audio boom. It has begun licensing audio remake rights for legacy properties such as Zee Horror Show, with several more titles lined up for audio-first adaptations.
On the digital front, the company has made progress in monetising non-exclusive rights for library films, while converting select shows and movies from horizontal to vertical formats to improve discoverability on short-form platforms.
Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. business head syndication Vinod Johri, said syndication has emerged as a strong growth lever for the company. He noted that the combination of a large MCN network, global partnerships and new formats such as vertical video and audio is helping build a future-ready engine that extracts more value from the content library.
Together, these moves signal a platform-agnostic approach to storytelling, as Zee repackages, localises and redistributes its IP across geographies, formats and screens, ensuring its catalogue keeps working long after the first broadcast.
