Kochi: A movie is born out of collective effort. If actors make it appealing under directors’ guidance, producers form the backbone that supports the creation of the movie. All the stakeholders involved in a movie’s creation hope to make commercial sense of their ventures while satisfying their creative urges. To safeguard producers’ commercial interests the Kerala Film Producer’s Association has decided to launch a round the clock movie channel.
Kerala is flooded with entertainment channels and there have been disputes between channels and movie producers over allotment of satellite rights of new releases. Certain criteria for satellite rights are followed internationally and nationally but not in Mollywood.
More than quality, it is star value and table profit that matters here. The movie business became a goose that laid the golden egg for many, especially mediators. Hence this move. While producers think that it will boost their business, existing channels label it as an emotional response.
Representatives of the Producers’ Association say that it is the non-transparent transactions, especially the demand for perpetual right of movies from channels that made them create a new channel. Suresh Kumar, president of Producers’ Association says, “Earlier, channels used to buy rights for a stipulated time period. After that time period, we used to reissue rights. Now, they demand perpetual rights. A film has more than fifty rights. But, if we give perpetual right, we get no profit. We plan to co-opt our counterparts in the rest of South India. This channel will be designed in a way that producers will get maximum profit from their creations. We have appointed a committee for a feasibility study.”
Director Vinayan and Siyad Koker will be heading the committee. “It will be a channel for movies and movie related programmes. If we air movies, movie clippings and our artistes cooperate, I think channel will generate a fair viewership. Hence, we will attract advertising revenue and grow. We have been receiving good responses for investment since the announcement.
We have 120 movies in hand and will also take movies whose satellite rights have expired. The channel will be airing news and clippings of new movies exclusively. If others want to take clippings, they can take it from us. We already have investors. Along with the Producers’ Association, Distributors’ Association and Exhibitors’ Association will also take part in this venture,” says Vinayan.
According to him, it will be good for the producers. “It is each producer’s channel. Just like book royalty, we will be giving an amount to producers or their family when their movie is broadcast, even after several years. 80% of TV channels survive with movie content. At least eight hours a day, they transmit movie clippings. But, the channels’ lack of honesty and transparency has created the crisis. Let the channel heads identify those who have been taking crores of rupees as bribes.”
Shyamaprasad, creative head of Amrita Channel has a different take on the issue. “It is a natural turnaround of a business situation when a deal is no more a win-win deal. A TV channel bearing the entire cost of the film is a bad business model to begin with. It was only lately that channels realised that they were mostly the losers in such a deal.
An angry reaction to challenges posed by channels is just not sufficient fuel to begin any new venture. We have to wait and see what exactly the content mix of the proposed channel is and what their business model is. Malayalam TV channels were already inundated with movie related content, in my opinion. The new situation will force the programme producers of every channel to look out for other areas of audience interest and new engaging entertainment formats other than movies.”
However, AMMA said they haven’t got any official note on the channel launch. Whatever the argument, time will reveal how things will turn out at the end.
