Casablanca

The Dark Knight

From Casablanca to The Dark Knight. From The Drew Carey Show to Whose Line Is It Anyway?. All this and more is now available on a single television channel. Warner Bros and Turner International have joined hands to launch WB, yet another 24-hour English movie channel, but with a difference. A t2 chat with Monica Tata, vice president and deputy general manager, Turner International…

With most television channels postponing their launch because of the recession, how have you managed to launch two channels in the same month?

When you have done your homework well, tied up with the best and created your own unique standing in the business, anytime is a good time, with or without the recession. Turner International has been in India for the last 13 years. We have had some great partnerships. When launching a television channel, we believe that it makes more sense to look at the long-term picture, rather than the immediate scenario. The economic cycle will have its ups and downs. But we had made a commitment to the Indian audience that we would provide them wholesome entertainment within a specified time frame. And we are glad that we have lived up to our commitment, first with Real that launched on March 2 and then with WB that beamed into Indian homes from March 15.

How did the Turner International-Warner Bros collaboration come about?

With channels like Cartoon Network and Pogo, we are the market leaders in the kids entertainment category. We are also the people behind HBO. Since we really didn’t have a general entertainment channel in our programming bouquet, we tied up with production house Miditech and launched Real. And when Warner Bros was open to launching a 24-hour film channel in India with a partner, we were the chosen ones on account of being sister channels.

How is WB different from the other 24-hour English movie channels on air, including your own HBO?

WB is in a content partnership with Warner Bros. The channel will showcase programming licensed from Warner Bros International Television Distribution (WBITD) which is a collection of no less than 6,000 movie titles over the last 86 years. Think of it, it’s like having a DVD library of your own. If HBO is the big daddy of film channels where you get to see the big blockbuster films first, we are positioning WB as a viewer’s personal movie collection, comprising the big and small, the popular and the not-so-popular, the seen and the unseen titles. Our tag line — Now That’s Hollywood! — encapsulates and highlights our edge, positioning and programming. Plus, this is the only channel that marries films with television content. That means that you not only watch the best films from the Warner Bros stable, we also bring to you some of the most popular television series from around the world.

The look and feel of the channel is getting good reviews…

We have strived to give a very contemporary — almost sexy — look and feel to WB. It’s all your favourite films and television programmes, in a sleek packaging. The audience as well as advertisers are taking notice and that is something that is extremely heartening for us. The other day, someone came up to me and said: “ I don’t know what the channel is all about, but it looks really really good!” (laughs)

Won’t gleaning content from just Warner Bros be a limiting factor for WB?

I don’t think it’s limiting at all. As I mentioned, we are looking at 6,000 plus movie titles as well as superhit television series like The Drew Carey Show, Joey, Whose Line Is It Anyway? and the Blade TV series. We will be leveraging from the largest and fastest growing film and television library in the world. So what we are basically looking at is limitless content. But in future, we are not averse to sourcing film and television content from elsewhere.

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