Sean Connery, Brad Pitt, Bruce Willis………….. Die Hard, Godfather, Golden Eye, Survivor, Temptation Island, ……….
The English language viewers in India have never had it so good with the channel wars getting hotter trying to capture audience imagination….oops numbers…. with the best from the west.

In an exclusive analysis we look at how the English Movie channel market is placed today as the three dominant players: Star Movies, HBO and AXN try to woo the audience and advertisers.
Though AXN programming is mixed as compared with Star or HBO, which are pure movie channels, the market addressed by all these channels is predominantly the same hence the choice of the 3 channels.

For the most part of the 90's, there was only one English movie channel that Indian viewers could tune into: Star Movies. In the last couple of years Star has seen competition coming in from HBO, AXN and a host of other English channels which are trying to woo the same set of audience. Star Movies though still controls around 70% of the advertising done on the English channels with HBO accounting for 25%. The rest is divided amongst the other channels.(Source: Asia Media Week)
In terms of penetration, Star claims to have a penetration equal to the Hindi channels, which means close to 16 million homes. HBO has a penetration of around 10 million homes and Zee MGM claims a penetration of around 13 million homes.

Number crunching
Now lets look at how these channels have performed across various markets in the past year. We look at the numbers delivered by the 3 dominant players: Star Movies, HBO and AXN.
(TG: Male / female, 15-44 Yrs, Sec A, B & C, C&S, Time band: 20:00 - 24:00)
(Markets Delhi/Mumbai/Calcutta/Chennai/Hyderabad/Bangalore)
When this year (2001) started all the three channels were placed on an equal footing in terms of Channel shares and TVRs. Star Movies started the year around 0.75 % channel share with HBO and AXN both running close. A look at the combined figures for 6 cities shows that as the year progressed Star Movies gradually managed to surge ahead over the next few weeks. Week 16 (Mid April) saw the channel shares as well as cum TVRs for Star Movies peaking across these markets. In fact Star saw a jump in Cum TVRs and Channels shares of over 100% within a 4 week period with channel share touching 1% in the 16th week. Though AXN too saw a temporary surge around the 9th week when channel share soared to 0.9% but Star steadily managed to increase its lead over both the other channels.

In terms of reach though all the three channels were building up gradually with the difference being very little.
HBO not to be left behind also pushed hard with a renewed vigor, which saw its channel share climbing from 0.5% to 1.0% through week 13 to week 19. AXN during this period had started to fall behind with the channel just about managing half a % of channel share.

The few weeks following this saw an across the board dip in ratings for all three channels but then Star again took the lead and around week 25 (Mid June) left both Axn and HBO behind on TVRs. AXN also managed to draw some audience during this period with a slight lead in the channels shares.

HBO once again came from behind as channel shares climbed to an all time high of 1.15 % around week 36. Star movies close on the heels was at 0.95%.

But the channels are back in business again with last few weeks again seeing ratings picking up. Star remains the leader gaining more than 200% in channel share and 150% in TVRs. AXN seems to have lost a little bit of edge as HBO has left it behind by a substantial margin to occupy the number 2 slot. End of week 46 saw Star's channel share pegged at 1.5% and Cum TVR at 0.35%.

A Look behind the numbers
Though Star Movies has been the leader, the ratings for all the channels have been on a roller coaster ride. Whether this is due to the quality of programming, brand awareness of the channels, marketing efforts, we need to look at the individual city wise components of the statistics.
The four metros put together account for close to 80% of the viewer ship for both Star Movies and HBO.

Of these four cities, Mumbai and Delhi are the 2 largest markets and this is where most of the action has happened. In both these cities Star has been a clear leader all through the year with HBO leading only around week 35. AXN has been lagging behind in these 2 cities but it has a performed better in Chennai when compared with its own performance in Delhi and Mumbai.

A closer look at the programming of the channels for this period reveals that Star's quality of movies has helped it attract more audience. Super hits like Air Force One, Final Impact, Sleeping with the Enemy helped it drive up viewer ship and HBO, though not bad in terms of programming, was not able to match the quality of movies earlier in the year. Over the next few weeks HBO did a programming overhaul. Hollywood blockbusters became the order of the day pushed by an aggressive cross media advertising campaign. The results were visible to some extent as the audience started shifting to HBO. Leading the way were blockbusters like Mission Impossible, Sudden Death, Meet Joe Black, Twister. HBO thus managed a channel share of 1.2% around week 35.

AXN too had its share of glory with movies like 'Anaconda' and 'Water world', serials like 'Sheena' and the 'Worlds Most Amazing Videos'.

Last few weeks have again seen Star surging ahead on the quality of programming again with movies like 'Tomorrow Never Dies', 'Rambo' et all as both channel shares and TVR have surged on the back of these blockbusters.

To take that point forward another important aspect in the programming of the movie channels is the fact that unlike other entertainment channels, the audience has already judged the quality of the product even before it is screened on the channel. For a new show screened on a main-stream entertainment channel, drawing audience initially is to a large extent dependent upon the marketing support provided to the show. Even an average programme can draw good audience initially given that it has been promoted heavily and advertised massively. But in the case of movie channels since most of the movies/shows aired have already been released thru other media even a big budget, advertising / marketing campaign can not draw in audience as the product has already been sampled by the consumer somewhere else and the quality has been judged. Hence channel loyalty is purely driven by programme quality on the movie channels.

Profile of viewers
Data for the viewer profile for the past 8 weeks reveals some interesting trends.
A look at the chart below reveals that Star Movies leads the pack in all the age categories except the 35-44 age group where AXN and HBO are slightly ahead. In all other age groups AXN remains in the 3rd position with HBO occupying the second slot. The gap is wider between Star and HBO in SecA as compared with gap in Sec A & B combined. So clearly the viewer preferences in the Sec A segment displayed here.

When the data is broken down separately for the sexes more interesting trends are revealed. In case of Males, Star Movies is ahead of HBO and AXN in most of the Sec's and age group. The lead is the most in the 15-34 Sec A group where Star leads HBO by over 20 %. In other groups too the lead varies depending upon the age group and the Sec but it seems that for Males in these cities Star Movies is the preferred choice.

The trend is a bit different in the case of females where AXN leads in some categories and Star leading in others. HBO too has its share of lead when the data is combined for Sec A &B.