English Entertainment
ZEEL gets aggressive with &flix launch
MUMBAI: And now following in the footsteps of &Prive HD, Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited (ZEEL) has announced that it is rolling out &flix come 1 pm on 3 June 2018 on major DTH and digital cable TV platforms. The target audience for the new offering: the striver, which the channel defines as those who are always pursuing new experiences, are ready to upgrade and take that quantum leap.
Thus &flix will feature 52 premiers of hit movies – amongst a total roster of 400 – that have stories that show not just what is, but what could be. Among the top notch titles – that it has acquired from 10-11 independent Hollywood players and studios such as Sony, Paramount and Disney – that will debut on &flix feature: Spider-Man: Homecoming, Baby Driver, Life, The Emoji Movie, The Atomic Blonde, Jumanji and Blade Runner 2049.
&flix is initially seeking a market in the six metros and will be available on Dish TV, Tata Sky, Airtel Digital TV, Sun TV, Hathway and TCCL to name a few to start with.
According to ZEEL premium channels- business cluster head Aparna Bhosle, 60 per cent of the total English content viewership comes from mega cities and has been growing at a CAGR of an impressive 35 per cent over the past three years.
“Out of the 183 million TV households, 51 million households consume English movies in India,” she elaborated.
Keeping in mind, that it is targeting millennials, its agency Publicis and the in-house team has laid out an expansive digital and print campaign in combination with cross promotions on sister HD channels and the great outdoors.
The idea is to get 350 million impressions over six weeks with messaging going out on platforms such as Youtube, Facebook, BuzzFeed, HuffPost and many more. The Twitter integrated outdoor innovation to unveil the channel’s first communication saw movie fans tweeting 10,000 tweets along with the channel’s hashtag, generating more than 52 million impressions in just 24 hours in the process.
“The brand proposition, Leap Forth, was created with the thought that you can have an extraordinary life with unlimited possibilities if you dare to take the leap,” shared ZEEL CMO Prathyusha Agarwal with indiantelevision.com. “Our marketing campaign has been chalked out keeping in light the awe-inspiring larger than life experience we wish to offer. Our innovations, across mediums, reflect the magnitude of our offering, surely making it one of the biggest launches in our sector this year.”
Sources reveal that a marketing and promotional budget in excess of Rs 5 crore has been kept aside for the launch activity.
“For our ever-evolving audiences who are spoilt for choice, &flix will fuel the drive to take a quantum leap and break out of their orbits,” added Agarwal. “Our research led us to understand that over 60 per cent of all English movie viewers fall under the category of un-satiated strivers. With &flix, we aim to enthral the audience which is persistent in its pursuit of new experiences and is not easily satiated.”
&flix’s packaging was assigned to Canadian design agency Zink which is behind &Prive HD’s look as well.
At stake is a piece of the Rs 550-crore-600-odd crore spend that brands and media fork out on the English movie genre. Five brands have come on board as launch sponsor partners. Among these feature Fiama (ITC), Lloyd (Havells), 100 Pipers (Pernod Ricard), Amazon Fire TV stick and Domino’s Pizza, revealed ZEEL EVP Sales Mona Jain. She adds: “The strong brand proposition has helped us connect with some of the key like-minded brands across sectors. The response has been extremely positive from our clients and such partnerships further validate our belief in our offering. We are hoping to drive synergies with more brands as we embark on this new journey.”
According to insiders, the spot rates that it is asking for from agencies are even higher than &Prive HD as &flix is available in both HD and SD feeds.
Bhosle is sanguine that the heightened activity in the English movie genre is likely to work positively in its favour and she sees it growing faster and at a higher rate than in the past two years.
Shall we say Amen to that?
English Entertainment
Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders approve Paramount deal
Investors wave through a $111 billion megamerger but deliver a stinging, if toothless, rebuke over half-a-billion-dollar goodbye packages
NEW YORK: The shareholders said yes to the deal. They said no to the cheque. At a virtual special meeting on Thursday that lasted barely ten minutes, Warner Bros. Discovery investors voted overwhelmingly to approve Paramount Skydance’s $111 billion acquisition of the company — and then turned around and voted against the lavish exit pay packages lined up for chief executive David Zaslav and his fellow outgoing executives.
Not that it will make much difference. The compensation vote is purely advisory and non-binding. The Warner Bros. Discovery board can, and almost certainly will, pay out as planned.
But the symbolism stings. It is the second consecutive year that WBD shareholders have voted against the executive compensation packages, and this time they had good reason. Zaslav’s exit deal is, by any measure, extraordinary. Under the terms filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, he is set to receive $34.2 million in cash severance, $517.2 million in equity in the combined company, and $44,195 in continued health coverage — a total of at least $550 million. On top of that, Warner Bros. Discovery has agreed to reimburse Zaslav up to $335 million for taxes assessed by the Internal Revenue Service on his accelerated stock vesting, though the company says that figure will decline depending on when the deal closes. As of March 11, Zaslav also held $115.85 million in vested WBD stock awards — and last month sold a further $114 million worth of WBD shares.
Shareholder advisory firm ISS recommended voting against the compensation measure, citing “problematic” tax reimbursements to Zaslav and the full vesting of his stock awards.
Zaslav will be bound by a two-year non-competition covenant and a two-year non-solicitation of customers and employees after the deal closes.
His lieutenants are not walking away empty-handed either. J.B. Perrette, chief executive and president of global streaming and games, is in line for $142 million, comprising $18.2 million in cash severance and $123.9 million in equity. Bruce Campbell, chief revenue and strategy officer, will receive an estimated $121.5 million, including $18.8 million in severance and $102.7 million in equity. Chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels is set for $120 million, made up of $6.6 million in cash severance and $113.1 million in equity. Gerhard Zeiler, president of international, will get $82.6 million, including $11.9 million in severance and $70.7 million in equity.
The deal itself, clinched in February after Netflix declined to raise its bid for Warner Bros., still needs regulatory clearance from the Justice Department and European authorities. Several state attorneys general are also weighing legal action to block it.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, was unsparing. “The Paramount-Warner Bros. merger isn’t a done deal,” she said after the shareholder vote. “State attorneys general across the country are stepping up to stop this antitrust disaster. We need to keep up this fight.”
If it does go through, the combined entity would be a formidable beast, bringing together Paramount Skydance’s stable — CBS, CBS News, Paramount Pictures, Paramount+, BET, MTV and Nickelodeon — with WBD’s portfolio of HBO, Max, Warner Bros. film and TV studios, DC, CNN, TBS, TNT, HGTV and Discovery+. Paramount has said it expects $6 billion in cost savings from the merger, which is Wall Street shorthand for mass layoffs on a significant scale.
The ten-minute meeting was presided over by chairman Samuel Di Piazza Jr., with Zaslav, Campbell, Wiedenfels and chief communications officer Robert Gibbs in virtual attendance. Di Piazza was bullish. “We appreciate the support and confidence our stockholders have placed in us to unlock the full value of our world-class entertainment portfolio,” he said. “With Paramount, we look forward to creating an exceptional combined company that will expand consumer choice and benefit the global creative talent community.”
Zaslav echoed the sentiment. “Over the past four years, our teams have transformed Warner Bros. Discovery and returned the company to industry leadership,” he said. “Today’s stockholder approval is another key milestone toward completing this historic transaction that will deliver exceptional value to our stockholders.”
Paramount Skydance struck a similar note. “Shareholder approval marks another important milestone towards completing our acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery,” it said in a statement, adding that it looked forward to “closing the transaction in the coming months.”
The shareholders have spoken on the merger. On the pay, they were ignored before the vote was even counted.
