Production costs are rising for television channels in India as they invest to create better quality content and Bollywood stars increasingly migrate from the silver screen to the small screen.
“Content producers believe that content is under-invested [in] currently but with the expected digitisation-led improvement in economics, investment in content will grow,” according to a report by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and India (Ficci) and KPMG.
A number of Bollywood actors made their debut on television last year, including Anil Kapoor of Slumdog Millionaire fame, as well as Shilpa Shirodkar, Ruslaan Mumtaz and Rahul Dev.
“Anil Kapoor was the star of this transition by making his debut in a remake of the international series 24,” analysts wrote in the report. “With the popularity of the series, Anil Kapoor raised the bar for film actors trying to make their way into the small screen. Bollywood actors Anupam Kher, Shabana Azmi, Rahul Khanna and Richa Chadda also had cameo performances in the show. Veteran actor Poonam Dhillon made her comeback to the small screen in a daily soap, Ek Nayi Pehchaan. Salman Khan has continued to host the Bigg Boss series.”
The popular film star Amitabh Bachchan continued to host the quiz show Kaun Banega Crorepati, which is an Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? “The increase in programming costs is not just inflation linked but also linked to improvement in production quality and high competitive intensity,” said Jay Sampat, the group strategy head at Balaji Telefilms.
India’s television content production industry is estimated to be worth 20 billion rupees (Dh1.2bn) to 25bn rupees a year, the Ficci-KPMG report said.
“However, it is extremely fragmented with about 6,000 producers in the fray and most producers producing only one or two shows at a time,” it stated, adding that only a handful of production houses had managed to make it to the “one billion rupee club” of content producers.
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