Day 1 : Session 4
The panelists were UTV Toons Jyotirmoy Saha, Jadooworks COO Ashish Kulkarni and Sundeep Nagpal from Strategm Media.
Raising his hat to Cartoon Network, UTVToons Moy said that thanks to Cartoon Network’s near decade old presence in India, within 6 years one whole generation amongst the Indian audience would have had animation content on tap. “These people will always be open to merchandised content” he remarked.
Extremely well informed and full of research, Moy pointed out that in the United States 70% of all animated features on DVD are bought by parents out of their own choice and 40% of all merchandise is bought by parents out of their own choice. This also hints at the fact that the kids in India who are avid watchers of animation today, will tomorrow as parents encourage their kids to watch animation and will themselves spend more on merchandised products and gradually an animation culture will emerge.
“Besides,” commented Moy, “Serious socio economic growth is happening in India. With the growth of this particular segment there is going to be higher demand for better content. It also means a lot more pester power or buying power”
Coming back to the present, Moy pointed out that, “Most kids still watch Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi more often than they watch animation. Pure kids content attracts just 1% of total advertising money on TV”
Piracy is a big issue in India, though in some cases piracy of products does help popularise them. Moy realated an incident when UTV was looking to merchandise its Shaka Laka Boom Boom pencils. When the pencil manafacturer who was considering the license, researched the market for feasibility of the product, it found out much to its surprise that pirated versions of Shaka Laka Boom Boom pencils were already available even in villages and small towns, all this even while considering viability of launching the product!
Next to comment on the Growing apetite was Jadooworks COO Ashish Kulkarni. Talking about the changing tastes he said that, “The most modern form of story telling is animation. Today grand parents are replaced by Cartoon Network and Hungama”
Kulkarni also gave an example of his daughter who was hooked to watching the animated Ramayana.
Sundeep Nagpal from Strategm Media threw in some interesting statistics.
8% of all the programming on Indian Television in 2003 was for kids. 10% of all programming in 2004 was kids. These additional 2 % means an increase in 35,000 hours of kids programming.
Throwing light on the growing apetite, Sundeep pointed out that while in 2003 Cartoon Network had a turnover of Rs 50 Crore, in 2004 the turnover grew to Rs 85 crore, clearly indicating that the consumption of animation and the seriousness in which it wa staken by media planners had gone up sharply.
While the apetite for animation sure is going to grow, there have to be more serious and well researched efforts at promoting the genre.