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With an eye to increase non-Hindi speaking subscribers, Zee5, part of India’s homegrown Zee Entertainment, has decided to not only commission local programming in the US, but also dub shows in English and Spanish, Variety has reported.
It envisages local commissions, English and Spanish-language dubbing and subtitling and reaching deep into the South Asian diaspora through grassroots promotions, the report stated.
“We want to be the one that is at the forefront of creating the crossover for South Asian content — the one that makes South Asian content go mainstream,” Archana Anand, chief business officer, Zee5 Global, told Variety, “We want for the global audiences sitting in the U.S. to now start watching ZEE5 Global, including the Spanish audiences. So when we dub or when we subtitle we want to start subtitling in English and Spanish, and have those stories crossover.”
According to the report, Zee5 Global has provided briefs to creators to come up with the “next big South Asian story that is about the American dream, but from an Indian perspective” with an aim to “accelerate the crossover” to mainstream American audiences.
Meanwhile, while declaring its March-ending Q4 earnings result, parent Zee Entertainment had declared significant growth in MAU (monthly active users) for Zee5 on the back of robust content release in the fourth quarter.
Zee had said Zee5 revenue was up 11 percent sequentially with 104.8 million global MAUs in Mar’22 (YoY up 32.2 mn), 10.5 million global daily active users or DAUs (YoY up 4.4 mn).
The company had further stated 64 shows and movies (including13 originals) were released during the fourth quarter with 214 minutes average watch time per viewer per month.
Zee5 Q4 revenues stood at Rs.1,614 million, up 11 percent sequentially, while the FY22 revenues stood at Rs.5,496 million, up 31 percent.
India’s two stock exchanges, BSE and NSE, a few days back gave a go-ahead to the announced merger of Zee Entertainment and Sony Pictures Network India, now rechristened Culver Max.
As and when the merged entity comes into existence, what would be the fate of Zee5 and Sony’s streaming platform SonyLIV is not clear. Critics are still pondering over whether the two streaming brands would be retained independently or merged.
