The origin story of Colors Kannada

Posted by Lisa Williams on March 28th, 2019

When the genre of general entertainment channels was defined in India, it became synonymous with Hindi general channels. Needless to say, Hindi is the most widely spoken language in India. Moreover, it is understood by the people of other linguistic groups all over North, West and East India. However, there are certain regions in India, such as the Southern States where the Hindi general entertainment channels do not resonate well with the local audience. This gap was identified by the media corporations and hence they started commissioning general entertainment channels in regional languages. Today, you will find general entertainment channels in almost all the majorly spoken languages of India. The market for regional entertainment has become quite big and in a few States, the regional entertainment channels are more popular than the Hindi general entertainment channels. This is definitely a very good trend as it has opened up competition in the regional entertainment genre which has eventually helped in the improvement of content.

Among all the regional entertainment channels, one channel which has gained popularity much faster than others is Colors Kannada. This is a channel owned and aired by Viacom 18 and all its soap operas are designed in line with the popular soap operas of the flagship channel Colors. However, the one genre which makes Colors Kannada so special and is driving its popularity is the genre of reality shows. The reality shows of Colors Kannada have been successful in developing a wide audience base not only in Karnataka but also in the adjoining states.

Kannada already had a few general entertainment channels before Colors Kannada was introduced. However, those channels were not very popular amongst the audience, especially the youth. This was due to the abundance of lack lustre content. Actually, most of these regional channels are operated from within the state and have limited budgets of production, which makes it difficult for them to compete with the nationally popular Hindi channels in terms of quality of content. Colors Kannada broke this convention as Viacom 18 did not hesitate to invest in the channel and it thus produced programmes that were at par with the programmes of Colors.

The success of Colors Kannada in Karnataka has prompted Viacom 18 to launch other regional channels such as Colors Odia in Odisha and Colors Gujarati in Gujarat. In all of these channels, Viacom 18 is employing the same strategies of marketing and hence all these channels are on the way to becoming the leader in their respective language markets. The strategy and approach of Viacom 18 towards regional entertainment market has also inspired other media corporations to follow suit. Today, there is ample competition in each regional general entertainment market, which will definitely provide the required impetus to each channel to grow.