Companies
Picture imperfect: Why Gaurav Banerjee has an arduous job at Sony
Summary
- Sony Pictures Networks India isn’t as aggressive as some of its rivals, be it Disney Star, Viacom18, Amazon Prime Video or Netflix. Under the new CEO, Gaurav Banerjee, Sony may need to shed the conservatism that has pegged back its growth.
New Delhi: Like many other children growing up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I was obsessed with some television shows. Before the saas-bahu template took over Indian TV, I was hooked on Aahat, a horror show on Sony Entertainment Television (SET), the TV channel owned by Sony Pictures Networks India.
I watched the show, based on ghosts, spirits and paranormal activity, with my grandmother every weekend when it aired post 10 pm. My parents, both early sleepers, are still amused by the visual of a six-year-old and a 60-year-old staying up until midnight to watch dead people returning to haunt their murderers, disguising themselves as clowns, hiding in toys, and whatnot.
The two of us soon moved to Jassi Jaissi Koi Nahin, also on Sony. It was the Indian adaptation of Colombian drama Yo soy Betty, la fea, the story of a brilliant but simple-looking woman who lands a job at a fashion house.
Both the shows were interesting and unusual stories for their time, ones that have stayed with me for years after I have given up TV viewing itself.
Such fictional shows may have enthralled TV audiences back then, but aren’t bringing enough returns for Sony now—the company has taken a conservative turn in India. TV watchers will struggle to recollect any memorable mass-market fiction programming on its entertainment channels today.
Overall, Sony runs 26 TV channels in India, a streaming platform (SonyLIV), a movie business (distribution of Hollywood films and local production), a music label and a talent management vertical.
Sony’s general entertainment channel (GEC) ratings have been less than impressive lately. For the week of 22 June to 28 June 2024, the top three channels across India were Star Maa (a Telugu channel operated by Disney Star), Star Sports 1 Hindi and Sun TV (a Tamil channel operated by the Sun TV Network), data from Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC), a television monitoring agency, shows.
Sony SAB, a Hindi language channel owned by Sony, came sixth while SET, the company’s flagship channel, did not even figure in the top 10 list.
But this is just one of the many problems the Indian arm of the Japanese conglomerate faces.
Once, the company placed big bets on sports. It acquired the rights for the Indian Premier League (IPL) in 2008, an untested format at the time. And in 2016, Sony bought TEN Sports from Zee Entertainment Enterprises. However, its presence in sports today is hardly significant. Its movie vertical isn’t news-worthy and SonyLIV just has too much competition from other streaming giants—Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and Disney+ Hotstar. Much of the company’s older content is also available for free on YouTube.
The question is whether Sony can grow aggressively from here on. The company’s revenue inched up only 2% to ₹6,909.2 crore in 2022-23. The entertainment company has hired a new steward—Gaurav Banerjee—to make things click.
Sony Pictures Networks India appointed Banerjee as its new managing director and chief executive officer (CEO) last month, after N.P. Singh, who was with Sony for 25 years, stepped down from the position in May.
Banerjee, who was previously the head of content for several languages, particularly Hindi, at rival media conglomerate Disney Star, now has to deal with significant cultural issues in his new role.
Good News?
Banerjee holds a master’s degree in filmmaking and TV production from Jamia Millia Islamia university and has an undergraduate degree in history from St Stephens College, New Delhi.
A former journalist, he began his career in media as an assistant producer and anchor at Aaj Tak. He moved on to Star News, where he produced and anchored prime-time news shows.
Appointed head of content strategy for Star Plus in 2009, Banerjee played a role in revitalizing the channel with shows such as Diya Aur Baati Hum, Sasural Genda Phool and later, Anupama. He was promoted to general manager of Star Plus in 2013 and took over as head of the content studio in 2015.
When his appointment at Sony was announced, many in the industry were surprised. Insiders pointed out to me that it is uncommon for a ‘content person’, with no experience in finance and business operations, to be appointed as chief executive officer (CEO) in the Indian entertainment industry.
At this point, it is also not clear whether Sony wants Banerjee to bring the Disney Star template to his new role. After all, the Japanese corporation has traditionally been known for sound profit and loss management and conservative investments in the country.
Unlike Disney Star, Sony has never been aggressive on mass-market fiction shows on TV. Its video streaming platform, SonyLIV, never had a robust slate of originals across local languages, something that Hotstar, Netflix and Prime Video pressed the accelerator on.
But many see Banerjee’s entry as good news for Sony.
“His presence could provide new energy to the company that has been struggling for years to bring life to its fiction programming, one that Gaurav is a master at, and which is pretty much his core competency," Partho Dasgupta, managing partner, Thoth Advisors, and ex-CEO, BARC India, told me. “Sony hasn’t seen an external infusion of talent at a senior level for a while and this could help energy levels change," he added. Thoth Advisors consults on consumer technology and media.
Back to Fiction?
Under Kunal Dasgupta, the former CEO of Sony Pictures Networks India (between 1995 and 2009), the company experimented with fiction programmes targeted at urban audiences.
The success of Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC), a TV game show, first aired by Star in 2000, opened the doors to several other non-fiction programmes. Many international adaptations followed—Indian Idol (on Sony), Bigg Boss (debuted on Sony and then moved to Viacom18-owned Colors), and Fear Factor: Khatron Ke Khiladi (first on Sony and then Colors).
Over the years, Sony placed far too many bets on non-fiction. This alienated fiction lovers, who make for the most loyal TV audiences, media and entertainment industry experts told me.
One of its successes was The Kapil Sharma Show, a chat show where the comedian Kapil Sharma interacts with celebrity guests. The popular offering aired on SET between 2016 and 2023 but moved to Netflix earlier this year, draining out much of the weekend viewership that would spill over to other titles.
Sony started airing KBC in 2010. But both KBC and Indian Idol, in the words of a rival broadcaster, appear “old and tired". Indian Idol, a singing competition, first premiered on Indian TV in 2004.
According to an older Mint report, when shows like KBC and Bigg Boss returned for their first post-covid run in 2020, television rating points (TRPs) had plunged by at least 50%. Both shows had TRPs of less than 1.5 as compared to 2.5-3 the previous year. The decline from pre-covid viewership continued into 2021, sinking by 25-40%, before improving marginally in 2022.
The audience for non-fiction content in India has always remained miniscule. To a large extent, this content has targeted male audiences, who until the surge of over-the-top (OTT) content very recently, did not have much to watch beyond sports and news. However, given its unusual skew towards male viewers, non-fiction has never been the bread and butter of television broadcasters. That explains why rival broadcaster Disney Star, under Banerjee, has largely refrained from reality shows for the past few years, while Sony clearly has too much of it.
“They’ve bundled up far too many hours of non-fiction, which is also expensive. Plus, they haven’t been able to invest much because of their bottom line focus," a broadcaster who didn’t want to be identified told me.
How expensive is non-fiction programming?
If there are celebrity hosts or judges, the production budgets shoot up. Despite their typically short stint of two to three months in a season, such shows can cost a television network ₹2-3 crore per episode and ₹100-150 crore per season, media experts said. As a result, most titles only manage to recover 80% of their investments.
In fact, media experts said that non-fiction ratings are likely to remain on the lower side, irrespective of how much channels invest in the category, given the emergence of the digital medium. Fiction, on the other hand, has a loyal fan base and audiences usually develop connections with individual characters whose journeys they want to follow.
To set things right at Sony, Banerjee, then, would need to change the bias for non-fiction.
The broadcaster quoted above said that this is the first time Sony has onboarded a creative face in India, a market where its GEC content is seen as catering to a primarily male audience. Moreover, the company’s up-market, urban viewers are increasingly moving online and have a plethora of options to choose from on OTT.
“The prime-time game has changed and Gaurav (Banerjee) must have studied that for sure as a competitor," the person added.
SonyLIV’s Relevance
Another formidable challenge for the new CEO would be to keep SonyLIV, the video streaming platform, relevant.
To be fair, the platform has had a bunch of original successes. They include Scam 1992-The Harshad Mehta Story, Rocket Boys, Gullak and Maharani.
However, it is not known as a service that would launch a big-ticket original every month. Given the deep pockets of foreign rivals such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, besides the bigger threat posed by the combined Reliance-Disney streaming entity, the platform’s conservative approach may need a rethink, media watchers pointed out to me.
In February this year, Reliance Industries Ltd, Viacom18 Media Pvt. Ltd and The Walt Disney Company announced the signing of an agreement to form a joint venture that will combine the businesses of Viacom18 and Star India. The joint venture will bring together media assets across entertainment (TV channels like Colors, Star Plus, Star GOLD) and sports (Star Sports and Sports18) besides content streaming on OTT platforms JioCinema and Hotstar, reaching out to over 750 million viewers across India.
“SonyLIV is a bit of also-ran and seems to be working only with a few people. Since the sports segment has been captured by Reliance and Disney together, it may make sense to stay out of that rat race but they will have to ramp up investments on originals if they want to stay in the SVoD (subscription video-on-demand) game," a senior executive at a streaming platform told me, declining to be named.
The person added that a lot of Sony’s digital AVoD (advertising video-on-demand) viewership is getting split between SonyLIV and YouTube, with the latter hosting full episodes of older offerings like The Kapil Sharma Show for free.
Rivals like Netflix, Prime Video and Reliance-Disney have access to massive international libraries. Sony is yet to work on an exhaustive international slate for up-market, English-speaking audiences either.
Cautious Production
Yet another disappointing piece in Sony’s scheme of things in India is its local film production.
Sony Pictures International Productions India, the local language production arm of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Motion Picture Group, known for films like Major, 102 Not Out and Pad Man, is yet to make news in the country’s movie production circuit. Having burnt its fingers as early as 2007 with Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Saawariya, the studio’s most recent films—Tera Kya Hoga Lovely and Operation Valentine—sank without a trace at the box office. The former even remains unsold to any OTT platform.
Unsurprisingly, the studio’s bigger focus has been on distributing Hollywood franchises like Spider-Man in theatres, a call that trade experts attribute to the uncertain nature of the Indian box office—it doesn’t inspire much confidence in a conservative company like Sony.
As far as new film projects go, it has green-lit a movie trilogy on Shaktimaan, the Indian superhero series that aired on Doordarshan in the 1990s; an adaptation of Chetan Bhagat’s One Indian Girl; and a biopic on yesteryear star Madhubala.
“Movie production has not been a key area of focus in India, so far. They have made their presence felt via Hollywood releases where the cost of dubbing and marketing is minuscule, while still allowing them a foot in the door," Girish Johar, a film producer, trade and exhibition expert, told me.
Banerjee’s work, therefore, is cut out—be it in TV, digital or films. Industry analysts and audiences would eagerly await a more aggressive and bold Sony in India. And I would like the conservative company to rekindle the spirit of Aahat.
Sony Pictures Networks India and Banerjee declined to respond to clarifications sought by Mint.
