Truly Mass Media

TV, as we know it today, has undergone so many waves of change, it is completely unrecognizable from what it was back in the eighties. Today, the concept of conventional TV is all but dying out as many consumers, especially in the bigger cities, are switching to OTT. Entertainment on demand is the name of the game – the choice to select what you want to watch, when you want to watch… even how you want to watch.

But back in the late eighties, things were very different. Doordarshan ruled – and did so only because there was an utter lack of competition; simply because it wasn’t allowed to exist. But liberalization and the winds of change were soon to blow, and the time was ripe for anyone who knew how to exploit the evolving situation.

Finger on the Pulse

The Essel Group had its finger on the pulse of Indians. It somehow sensed that entertainment was going to be a big thing in the future. They started with a foray into the then novel concept of entertainment in India – an amusement park. Esselworld came up in then Bombay, and Essel waited with bated breath to see if their gamble into the unknown had pulled off.

It didn’t! At least not quite the way they envisioned it. Footfalls were a good 40% lower than expected – and there were several telling reasons for that. The cost of real estate in Bombay meant the park had to be built on the fringes of the city. Access involved a long, roundabout car ride, or depending on low-quality public transport, including ferry. It was too much of an effort just to get there.

Essel weren’t exactly put off; they did their best to keep Esselworld in the public consideration and, more than three decades on, have more or less succeeded in what they originally set out to do.

Engaging the Masses

Meanwhile, realization dawned that there must be a better way to reach out and engage with the absolute masses. India being a highly populated country, the potential lay in a product or idea that exploited economies of scale. As they put their heads together, ideas began to be bounced off. Some hopeful, others logistically unviable. These included mobile vans that would dish out entertainment programmes at specific times and places. But these had a very limited reach, and involved an excruciating process of obtaining a host of licences. Setting up smaller entertainment parks within the city was another consideration; but hardly implementable and extremely costly.

Then they hit the jackpot. Why not a TV channel – or, in fact, a suite of channels! Doordashan had extremely limited appeal. Its very raison d’etre was education, social reform and basic information. Real entertainment wasn’t in its scope – or at best limited to a Sunday evening movie and a small spattering of soaps that didn’t really come up to speed. Most of all, Doordarshan wasn’t even 24x7 – films, chat shows, games shows, snazzy news with embedded political debates, live sports… were all alien to the Indian viewer.

Eye in the Sky

The Essel Group sensed it was the perfect moment to launch satellite TV – if only because the more affluent were desperately seeking entertainment elsewhere – renting out video cassettes of foreign serials, leading up to the home video boom of the eighties. But these essentially catered to the miniscule English-speaking audience; the real numbers lay in tapping the massive Hindi-speaking market. Essel decided the time was very ripe to launch a TV entertainment channel.

But there were still logistical issues to overcome. Private channels weren’t permitted to beam from India. To India however, wasn’t an issue. The trick lay in finding a mode to do so. Initial brainwaves of beaming from a ship permanently docked just outside Indian waters was a bit bizarre and unfeasible.

Meanwhile, STAR TV started operations. Based in Hong Kong, they were leveraging AsiaSat to carve out a happy footprint right across Asia. Essel realized it could make its own software and lease the satellite and beam straight into Indian homes. Not just those inside India; a footprint that extended from Nepal to the Middle East, where a large market potential lay for Indian programming, would now be accessible in a single stroke.

STAR wasn’t even its competitor. Simply because it was based on the then new concept of media globalization – that irrespective of geography, all viewers desired to watch the same TV programs. It was a flawed assumption, and Essel knew this, as it launched local-specific programs, beginning with its flagship Hindi channel, Zee TV.

Perfect Moment

Zee was the right idea at the right time and place. It did for the masses what STAR was doing for a limited elite audience. In reality, Zee wasn’t even the first private Hindi channel to go on air. That credit belonged to ATN. But where ATN erred (and Zee gained) was their choice of satellite. Almost every cable TV operator had their satellite dishes pointing towards AsiaSet. Investing in another dish to optimize ATN’s beaming was deemed a needless expense.

Zee Telefilms was launched in December 1991. Its flagship channel Zee TV began broadcasting in October 1992. From there it grew by leaps and bounds. Within a few months it went 24x7. Gradually, the company spread its canvas to cater (through an expanding slew of channels) to all kind of audiences – local language, news, sport, children, music… while retaining a preeminence in movies and serials.

Global Brand

Along the way, Zee grew even larger through acquisitions, demergers and rebranding, even as it expanded its beaming footprint to Europe and North America. By 2022, Zee Entertainment Enterprises, as the Group was now called, was a billion dollar entity. That it has more recently struggled with debt and flirting with sell-off is another story altogether. Nevertheless, evolving with the times, the conglomerate has since forayed into the OTT space as well, with its ZEE5 platform.

Today Zee’s suite contains nearly 50 domestic and 40 international channels. Boasting cumulative viewership of some 1.3 billion across 173 countries. It maintains a solid library of television content and, in every sense of the term, is a global brand.

Fortune, it is said, favours the brave. Back around the turn of the eighties, when what it was doing was perhaps considered foolhardy and unthinkable, the Essel Group bravely went where no one else had ventured before. Pioneers of TV as we came to know it.

Thank you for your attention. You can change your channel now.