What does it take to be at the helm of India’s first World Movies channel? Sample this: Seventeen years of experience in the television industry, working with brands such as National geographic, Star and Zee Cinema, a passion for movies, deep understanding of viewers and a clarity of vision. Meet Dilshad Master, the Chief Operating Officer of World Movies, A lady with a refined cinematic sensibility, and you will understand what makes her niche offering give a tough time to popular Hollywood channels. Excerpts from her interview with Bikas Mishra

We’re there to entertain, not to educate: Dilshad Master

• We no longer say “no” to festivals

• World Movies to release films in theatres from Sept-Oct’08

• World Movies DVDs to hit the market by Oct-Nov’08

Dilshad Master, COO, UTV World Movies

A lady, who doesn’t mince words, Dilshad started off correcting me when I greeted her on launching India’s’ first “World Cinema” channel.

Dilshad: It’s not “world Cinema”, it’s “World Movies”

Why not “world cinema”? Is that a conscious branding strategy?

Dilshad: Very conscious, the first reason is that we wanted to own the genre, so irrespective of who comes after us we would always be associated with international movies. There were several different names that came, there was Red Carpet Movies, there were several others that I can’t even remember now but we just loved the fact that it was world movies.As opposed to world cinema because our research told us that somehow the word world cinema is considered very intellectual and very arty and not friendly in that sense so it was very clearly world movies and not world cinema.

So your idea is to present not those intellectual, arty cinema but to entertain people?

Dilshad: We did lot of research. Most of our focus group also considered an English movie channel to be an international movie channel. To them anything that was not Hindi or not regional was international. Then in the English language movie space. If you talked about a non English movie to bahut sochana padega, very arty, very intellectual, yaar ghar aate hain to we want to be entertained, sochana nahi chahiya. So every time we talked about world cinema it went into that realm. So our clear intention was- there are some fantastic movies made across the world, as enjoyable, as entertaining as any other Hollywood movie, the only problem is that it’s not in English. So let’s introduce viewers to that world of cinema that is successful, contemporary, box office hits and not necessarily arty. That was the intention and I think we have been hugely successful in that.Today’s numbers you see we are number three, after Star Movies and HBO. We’ve beaten everybody else. And I think our strategy is perfect. It’s just get successful and contemporary movies that people can associate with then slowly slip in a Truffaut, Renoir and let people appreciate the movies.

Who’s is your target audience?

Dilshad: We researched basically SEC A Male, the passionate English movie channel viewers since we knew that our audiences is going to come from there. We asked them a couple of very simple questions. We showed them flashcards of Hollywood stars five male and five female. You will be surprised, the focus group could recognize only two male and three females. They only could name Arnold Schwarzenegger, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruz and Julia Roberts and they could not name the other people.Only conclusion we came to was people are not coming to English movie channels because of stars, because they don’t recognize them.

Number two, we asked how many of you while watching DVDs at home switch on English subtitles. 9 out 10 people put up their hands. I know when I watch an English movie and if my husband is not sitting in the same room, I switch on English subtitles. I want to hear each and every dialogue, if I miss it, I want to read it. So 80% of our focus group said “yes” we put on English subtitles, that meant subtitles was not a barrier to entry.

Then we asked what makes you come to HBO on 9 O’clock on a Wednesday, how do you know what to watch? They said: from the highlights and listings, synopsis aati hai, kahani pata lag jati hai, if we find it interesting we come to watch it. So that was the third thing the story has to be interesting, the title they don’t recognize, the stars most of the time they don’t recognize and subtitling they don’t have a problem with, so three good reasons to be in the business we are.

Are you ready for the competition?

Dilshad: We have been hearing that for a long time now. But the stage of business we’re at now, I think competition is good. When you’re a small channel, you need more and more people to beam same kind of content because that expands the category. I can give you an analogy in television itself, there was first discovery, the only documentary channel, and then there was National Geographic, then Animal Planet then BBC, so that expanded the category. So first you had two million households, then three million, then four million and today you have 30 million households watching documentary. That expands the genre. So that’s what exactly going to be here, the more the merrier at this stage.

You’ve also been screening award winners from International festivals?

Dilshad: Yes, we picked up a lot and we continue to pick up. We picked Twilight Samurai, that was nominated for the best foreign language film of I think 2004. We picked up Counterfeiters, 2008 Oscar winner in the same category.

Any interesting acquisition at Cannes this year?

Dilshad: We picked up Amelie, which is about six years old but still evergreen. We picked up Inju, which is 2008 production. We picked up Secrets of the state, Waltz with Bashir, a fantastic animation movie. So yes, we have picked up lots of films at Cannes, not necessarily all of them are award winners, they’re still making the festival circuit. But we saw huge potential in them and picked up.

Is your channel biased towards Spanish cinema?

Dilshad: I think I’m personally biased to Spanish cinema but no not as a channel. I think the initial lot that we picked up had a lot of Spanish movies, that’s what you probably saw on the channel but now we’ve got an equal combination. We’ve got lots of French and Dutch movies. Some good English movies, we’ve Hebrew. We’ve picked up the entire Luc Besson lot, Léon (1994), Nikita (1990), Subway (1985), Le Dernier combat (1983), all of that have been picked.

In Delhi you’re screening films at Habitat and other places?

Dilshad: Habitat, Alliance Francoise and Epicentre and we’ll be moving to Bombay now very soon. By next month we’ll be in Bombay.

Which are cities where you’ve received good response?

Dilshad: You would be very surprised, I was shocked-Delhi. Our numbers prove it constantly. Very very fantastic response from the Delhi viewers and at the last IHC screening there were 110 people. Bangalore, we’ve a very good response, Chennai a good response. Bombay of course. Surprisingly not as good a response from Kolkata and we can’t figure out why? We had expected Kolkatans to pick up the genre first before anyone else. But Delhi yes, the best response we ever got.

Do you plan to release films theatrically?

Dilshad: Right now we’ve bought quite a few titles where we’ve theatrical rights, like for instance Counterfeiters, we’ve theatrical rights and we also plan to release it theatrically.

Iberia and Fados as well?

Dilshad: Infact, Fados is a constant festival request.

When do you plan to release these films in the theatres?

Dilshad: September, October, we’ll see the first lot coming in

You also have plans to release films on DVDs?

Dilshad: We have bought lots of movies that have DVD rights as well. So we’ll be releasing DVDs also.

When should we expect them to be available in the market?Dilshad: By next quarter, I would say by October, November, the DVDs will be out in the market.

When you look back at the journey of World Movies, do you think anything has changed in the last three months?

Dilshad: When we started we didn’t want to be associated with festivals at all. We just didn’t want to be there because to us it was “intellectual”. Our focus group told us that you should not be associated with anything arty and intellectual if you want to be successful as a movie channel. So we completely stayed away from the festivals. It is only in the last one and a half months that we felt hey, look at the end of the day the core viewer who’s going to watch the channel is this guy who goes to the festivals. So what’s wrong in being there because anyway your normal viewer isn’t going to arrive in the festival. It’s only going to be this passionate cinema viewer that’s going to arrive. So what’s wrong in going to be present there, we’ve changed our strategy little bit.And of course apart from the fact a lot of the festivals have called us for our films. Fados, Iberia are the most popular. People have called us for Counterfeiters, the licensor would call us back and say hey, we have got a call, would you like to feature your film in a festival. We’re like why not! So that’s one strategy, we’ll be present there. But constantly going all out to be a part of a festival: no. Where we get a chance to feature one of our movie, yes of course. We don’t say No anymore.

Do you also looking at launching shows to educate people about world movies, to convert them into your genre?

Dilshad: We’re planning to start a show in September, which will basically be a weekly show. Again we don’t want to teach people, we are not here to educate, we’re here to entertain. If we can teach you something while entertaining that’s the beauty of television. Entire half hour weekly show that will show you whatever movies are coming on world movies this week. It will give you little interesting tidbits about directors, what’s happening in the world cinema, what are the big movies under production. Interviews with Martin Scorsese, we’ve got fantastic library of interviews with Woody Allen, Alfred Hitchcock, about their version of cinema.We covered Cannes, we’re going to be covering the Toronto Film Festival in September.

Any plans about Indian cinema?

Dilshad: In august we’re playing Santosh Sivan’s The Terrorist. We’re also playing a couple of Hindi movies. We’re also chasing my old favorite, the old Kamal Hasan titles. We truly believe that if we can have French, Spanish, German, Dutch on the channel then we can have Hindi, Tamil, Telegu, Malayalam absolutely. So we’re completely language agnostic in that sense. We’ll play these movies for sure.Nayakan is my favourite movie and I see no reason why it shouldn’t play on world movies channel.

(7 votes, average: 4.43 out of 5)

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