Your SMS Would Pay For This Television Show
Bringing a new meaning to the term pay-per-view, the Indian subsidiary of Endemol Group, the creator of programmes such as Big Brother and Fear Factor, is introducing Call TV.
Under this, viewers will end up paying for the entire cost of production and airing through paying for participating in quizzes, game shows and prize shows, through phone calls or SMS text messages. Such calls and messages cost significantly more than normal messages and calls, thus generating significant revenues for the producer and broadcaster.
“We plan to launch the Call TV format in India soon,” Marco Bassetti, chief operating officer, Endemol Group told LiveMint.
“Such shows will be of immense interest to broadcasters because they don’t have to pay for the content, yet they generate revenue out of it. Call TV is going to be big area for us in the coming years.”
Endemol already has several Call TV shows outside India, including Participation TV in Holland, where viewers pay for interacting with the channel and funded nearly 15 hours of programming each day. Endemol claims Participation TV generates around 100,000 call minutes a day.
INX Media Pvt. Ltd claims to be getting more than 8,000 messages every day for various interactive polls and contests introduced on its music channel 9XM, but at the same time, industry estimates put the average production cost of one episode of 30 minutes of a fictional show between Rs 4 lakh and Rs 8 lakh.
While definitely very fascinating, and pretty much a surety that the level of progarmming would go up, it remains to be seen whether this is a viable business model.
Filed under: Business, India, Media, News