GECs
Viacom18 uses Celebrity Cricket League to give leg up to Rishtey
MUMBAI: It’s already made its debut on Indian screens just 10 day befor X’mas this year through Prasar Bharati’s DTH platform FreeDish. Since then, the IndiaCast team – lead by its CEO Anuj Gandhi – has been signing carriage deals for Viacom18’s second GEC Rishtey with various cable and DTH platforms.
Now the Viacom18 group is giving Rishtey a gentle nudge by using the platform of the Celebrity Cricket League (CCL), which commences on 25 January 2013. The CCL – which has teams featuring and owned by film and other celebrities vying for the title – will have all its matches being telecast on the new GEC, with four of them being simulcast on the older channel from the network, Colors.
Colors and Rishtey sources say that the hope is that Indian viewers will get to snack content on the new channel, in the process increasing its awareness. Most of the networks – including Zee, Star and Sony – have second flanking GECs, which has allowed them to soak up advertising that could not be accommodated on the mother channel because of air time constraints. Viacom18 has plugged this lacunae in its portfolio by bringing Rishtey – which was earlier tested in international markets amongst south Asian viewers – into Indian homes.
TAM ratings for the first two weeks of 2014 saw the newbie garner an average viewership of 46.5 million.
Last week on Thursday, the front page of all leading national dailies ran full page ads, while promos are running across 40 channels announcing Rishtey’s first tent pole event. It is interesting to note that the logo of Rishtey is much bigger than Colors, therefore catching the eye first. Viacom18 has already been promoting Rishtey on CCL’s social media presence for the past fortnight.
The broadcast partners for the event also include: Asianet, Suvarna, Star Vijay, Zee Talkies, Big Magic and Zee Bangla Cinema.
As of now, the channel has already snared several DTH carriers such as Airtel DTH, Videocon d2h, Dish TV and Free Dish and cable TV platforms such as Den (pan India), GTPL (Gujarat, Maharashtra & Jharkhand), Fastway (Punjab), Digicable (pan India), WWIL & KCBPL (Kolkata), Manthan (Kolkata & Jharkhand), Darsha (Bihar), UCN, ICC and Next Gen (Maharashtra), Hathway (Maharashtra, MP, Punjab and Rajasthan), You Scod18 and Seven Star.
Will the CCL help Rishtey forge new relationships?
GECs
EPIC Company unifies all brands under single EPIC identity
IN10 Media rebrand aligns TV, digital and films into one ecosystem
MUMBAI: The EPIC Company, formerly known as IN10 Media Network, has announced a sweeping brand consolidation, bringing its television channels, digital platforms and content IPs under a single identity, EPIC.
The move is aimed at simplifying the company’s structure while creating a more connected content ecosystem spanning television, digital and films. By aligning multiple verticals under one umbrella, the company is looking to present a sharper, more cohesive face to both audiences and partners.
As part of the transition, several channels have been rebranded to align with the EPIC identity. EPIC will now operate as EPIC TV, while Nazara becomes EPIC Bharat, Filamchi is now EPIC Bhojpuri, Gubbare transitions to EPIC Kids, and ShowBox is reintroduced as EPIC Music. Ishara will continue under the identity EPIC Parivaar, maintaining its core positioning.
The company has also refreshed EPICON, its streaming platform, to reflect a more unified and modern brand experience. The overhaul is designed to improve content discovery and create a seamless experience across platforms.
This consolidation follows the recent launch of EPIC Studio, a unified production arm that brings together Juggernaut Productions and MovieVerse Studio, as the company expands its footprint across films, OTT and television.
The EPIC Company managing director Aditya Pittie said, “As our scale has grown, it has become important to simplify how we operate and how we present ourselves to the ecosystem. This consolidation gives us a clearer, more future-ready structure to partner, invest, and build at scale, while ensuring that for viewers, the experience is more seamless and intuitive.”
With the rebrand, The EPIC Company is positioning itself as a platform-agnostic content network, focused on scale, simplicity and integrated storytelling. By bringing everything under one banner, it is aiming to make its content universe easier to navigate and harder to ignore.
