(DALLAS, Texas) – February 3, 2009 – On the final day of last week’s NATPE convention, the only American program market serving the worldwide television community, television executives attended the “India – A Booming TV Market” panel. As the first entrant into the Indian TV market, the panel was organized and sponsored by Zee TV USA. During the panel discussion, several prominent members of the U.S. and Indian television entertainment markets discussed the power, promise and potential of Indian television.

According to each member of the panel, India’s television market is being overshadowed by the Bollywood movie industry. In exactly the opposite of the U.S. television market, Indian television content brings in three times the revenue that the Bollywood industry is seeing, according to Arnold Peter, a Partner at Raskin, Peter, Rubin & Simon LLP.

Emiliano Calemzuk, the panel moderator and President at Fox Television News, began the panel by detailing the current Indian television market:
• $11 billion entertainment industry
• Will reach 700 television channels in 2009

According to Subroto Bhattacharya, Territory Head, Americas for Zee TV USA, Indian television content is also very popular in foreign markets. Germany, France, UAE, U.S., Canada, Africa, U.K. and Russia, in particular, have become big consumers even as the Indian population in those territories is small. In fact, 3.5 million mainstream Russians are watching Zee TV, proving an ever-increasing acceptability of the foreign content. Andy Kaplan, President of International Networks at Sony Pictures Television, believes this will be the true home run – when something that is created in an Indian format can travel and be successful elsewhere.

Uday Shankar, CEO of Star TV, went on to note that Indian television offers a huge advantage to Bollywood in that it connects with the whole family, instead of just one or two family members. In fact, he added, there are currently 90 million cable and satellite homes in India, with the number set to grow to 130 million within the next five years.

Mr. Peter echoed that sentiment, saying the Indian entertainment industry was synonymous with Bollywood 10 years ago, but Bollywood is a cottage industry and the television space has become quite lucrative. Viewership includes 30 percent of the population, and the industry has 40 percent of the advertising revenue.

So where will the Indian television market in be in 2015 and what will it take to get there? According to Shravan Goli, General Manager at Yahoo! Video, the quality of content and comedy programming production needs to improve and it is his hope that by 2015, the Indian television industry will not only improve its content quality, but also better understand how to market that content.

Mr. Bhattacharya sees this opportunity coming to fruition. According to him, the reach of Indian television is very low right now, but content will become much more digitized and there will be a huge shift in content and the way it is produced in the very near future.

Zee – the name that has become synonymous with entertainment has been a dominant player in broadcasting content for more than 17 years in the national and international space. Since Zee is an Indian channel enriched with values and cultures that appeals not only to Indians but to all Indian language understanding South Asians across the globe it was an ideal fit to cater to the South Asian Diaspora abroad and reach out to them.

With many firsts already associated with its name, Zee also became the first to pioneer in the international space and refurbish its flagship channel to reach out to the South Asian Diaspora worldwide.

International operations began in July 1998 for USA. And since then there has been no looking back. The team built Zee into a strong household name amongst the South Asian Diaspora in the entire Americas territory. Reaching out to more than 2 million viewers it has been an undisputed leader in the market for 10 years.

Not only did the channel grow and create a strong foot hold in the market, it also became responsible for evolving the needs of the market from aspiration for just Hindi content to aspiration for content across genre and languages. Consequently the team launched channels that cater to a wide spectrum of needs both in terms of language and genres. Channels like Zee Cinema (bollywood movie channel), Zee Gujarati (Gujarati general entertainment channel), Alpha Punjabi (Punjabi general entertainment channel), and Zee Sports (sports channel) were launched in the US market.

After successfully launching these channels, Zee TV USA has ventured into producing content locally to reach deeper into the South Asian Diaspora and make them feel closer to their roots. Sa Re Ga Ma Pa came into being 12 years ago and Indian television history has no other program parallel to this. Last year (2008), for the first time ever SRGMP has been produced in an international market (USA) for the international market to reach out to the South Asian Diaspora and take another colossal step in moving closer to them. This continues with other initiatives like Zee Carnival and many more in the pipeline. All these initiative have truly made and continue to make Zee the undisputed leader in South Asian entertainment.