Tata Sky launches comedy service

Priced at Rs 59 per month, Tata Sky Comedy to be a single destination service for both classic comedy shows and original content, created by Comedy Walas

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Mumbai | March 9, 2016

(L-R) Pallavi Puri, Chief Commercial Officer, Tata Sky & Hiren Gada, Director, Shemaroo at the launch of Tata Sky 'Comedy'

Tata Sky has recently added a new service 'Tata Sky Comedy' to provide a single destination for all formats of Hindi comedy. Tata Sky's tally of interactive services now goes up to ten. Tata Sky Comedy will be available at Rs 59 per month after a free ten-day trial.

Tata Sky Comedy offers original content, created especially for this service along with the best of classic comedy television shows like 'Nukkad', 'Ye Jo Hai Zindagi', 'Office Office' and 'Zabaan Sambhalke'. All formats of comedy will be made available through this service – from filmy spoofs to fun movie reviews, from gags and pranks to faking news shows.

Segmented in three parts, Tata Sky Comedy will air three hours of content in the form of 'All Time Classics', 'Comedy Fatafat' (original content) and 'Bollywood Tadka'. While 'All Time Classics' will have classic comedy shows like 'Nukkad', 'Ye Jo Hai Zindagi', 'Office Office' and 'Zabaan Sambhalke', 'Comedy Fatafat' will have stand-up comedians Sugandha Mishra and Sahil Khattar, enthralling viewers. 'Bollywood Tadka' will show filmy spoofs, fun movie reviews, gags, pranks and fake some news programmes.

The content will be powered by 'Comedy Walas', a dedicated comedy sub-division of Shemaroo Entertainment. The interactive section of the service will feature jokes, fun quizzes like “Dialogue baazi” (based on dialogues from Bollywood movies) and a popular comic strip, 'Suppandi' - all of which will be refreshed daily.

At the launch event, Pallavi Puri, Chief Commercial Officer, Tata Sky, said, “All Tata Sky customers will have some form of entertainment. It is primarily focused on family and not much focused on the kids segment and is currently available only on television and not on the app.”

“Shemaroo has created the content,” Puri went on to say, adding, “We are not looking at entering into content creation at the moment. As far as Tata Sky Comedy is concerned, Shemaroo is the only partner.”

Tata Sky is not looking at above the line marketing, either. The DTH service provider will play ads on its own platform on channel 100. It will also send messages, promoting the service, to its fourteen million subscribers.

Sharing insights on the partnership, Hiren Gada, Director, Shemaroo Entertainment, said, “Apart from Miniplex, this is the second service for which we have partnered with Tata Sky. While Miniplex is a film premiere service which showcases 52 premieres in the year, Tata Sky Comedy is targeted at comedy.”

Gada wouldn't reveal figures, but a substantial amount of investment has, no doubt, gone into procuring licenses, creating original content and scripting for the Bollywood spoofs. “There are three parts to content we are providing to Tata Sky. One is content which is licensed, the other is content which is produced and then there is content which is reproduced,” said Gada, adding, “So, the idea is to keep it consumer focused. All the three categories we have in content will be one hour each. So there's three hours of fresh content. This is the weekday programming. Weekends will have repeat content.”

Info@BestMediaInfo.com

Info@BestMediaInfo.com