FAST in India - Samsung TV Plus Deep Dive
Your Gateway to Limitless Entertainment: Dive into Samsung TV Plus!
Hey Streamers,
Welcome to the 7th edition of “Streaming in India”, your weekly news digest about streaming players, OTT trends and more in one of the fastest growing video markets. If you are not already a subscriber, please sign up and receive it directly in your inbox every Wednesday!
Breaking News: Prasar Bharati Wants A Pie Of India’s OTT Market. In a draft RFP, Prasar Bharati sought industry feedback for the selection of bidders for ‘design, development, implementation, operations and maintenance’ of its OTT platform!
Today’s program:
Samsung TV Plus
The 24x7 Channels
The Discover Section
User Experience
My View
And… Action!
Samsung TV Plus
Launched in 2021, this innovative FAST service and app offers consumers of Samsung Smart televisions and mobile devices, free TV content, with ad-supported select live channels and on-demand videos, with no additional device such as a set top box. To access the service, all that the consumers need is a Samsung Smart TV (2017 model onwards) and an internet connection.
With the introduction of Samsung TV Plus, consumers get instant access to exciting content across genres such as news, lifestyle, technology, gaming and science, sports and outdoors, music, movies and bingeable shows, without any subscription.
Samsung TV Plus will also be available on most Samsung smartphones and tablet devices. The TV Plus app can be downloaded from both, Samsung Galaxy Store and Google Play Store.
The 24x7 Channels - 9 Genres, 109 TOTAL
News (31): Aaj Tak, NDTV India (Hindi), Republic Bharat, ABP News, Zee News, News 18 India (Hindi), Times Now Navbharat (Hindi), News9 (Hindi), GNT, CNBC Aawaz (Hindi), Zee Business, India Today, Wion, NDTV 24x7, CNN News 18, News9, NDTV Profit, CNBC TV18, Bloomberg TV, CNN FAST, Bloomberg Originals, TV9 Gujarati, ABP Maaza (Marathi), Zee 24 Taas (Marathi), ABP Asmita (Gujarati), TV9 Bangla (Bengali), ABP Bangla (Bengali), Zee 24 Ghanta (Bengali), TV9 Telugu, TV9 Kannada, Zee24 Kalak
Lifestyle (17): TLC, TLC HD, Cook & Bake, Fashion TV, Gusto TV, Tastemade, Discovery Turbo, NDTV Goodtimes, Heritage, HD Travel, INFAST, People are Awesome, Real Life, History Hit, Wonder, GoUSA TV, Don't Tell The Bride
Infotainment (13): Discovery (Hindi), Discovery HD, Animal Planet (Hindi), Animal Planet HD, WildEarth, Xplore, Real Wild, Jack Hanna, Discovery Science, WeatherSpy, INWONDER, INWILD, Discovery Tamil
Sports and Outdoor (11): Fifa+, Eurosport, Eurosport HD, Boxing TV, PGA Tour, Fight TV, Tennis Channel, MAVTV Motorsports Network, InTrouble, Motorvision.tv, Billiard TV
Entertainment (11): Korean TV, Dangal TV, Investigation Discovery (Hindi), Investigation Discovery HD (Hindi), Real Crime, True Crime Now, Enterr10 Bangla, Failarmy, The Pet CoQllective, Nosey, Real Stories
Movies (10): The Movie Club, South Station (Hindi), Hollywood Desi, BEST ACTION TV, Pitaara (Punjabi), Bhojpuri Cinema, Dabangg (SABGROUP), Magellan TV Now, Filmstream, Hollywire
Music (8): Mastiii, 9X Music, 9X Jalwa, 9X Tashan, Maiboli, 9X Jhakaas, Balle Balle, Qwest TV
Kids (7): Cartoon Network (Hindi), Pogo (Hindi), Discovery Kids (Hindi), Hooray Rhymes, Toon Goggles, BEANI TV, BABY FIRST
Devotional (1): Divya
As you can see from the chart above, News & Lifestyle genres make up 44% of the genres of channels currently available on Samsung TV Plus.
32% of the news channels are regional language channels including ones in Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali and Kannada and the balance 68% are national ones either in English or Hindi.
As the service expands, clear upside of including other regional language news channels in Malayalam, Tamil and so on.
It is also interesting to note that the Lifestyle channels are currently all in English, thereby offering an opportunity for dubbed channels in the category to come in and diversify & grow the audience base.
Infotainment (11.9%) and Kids (6.4%) have a decent number of dubbed channels in Indian languages - 23% of Infotainment channels and 43% of Kids channels have Indian language dubbing! We do not have access to viewership data per channel, however it will be interesting to track the upside of having dubbed channels on FAST platforms in India.
Opportunities to expand the Sports & Outdoors & Devotional genres. Cricket and Kabaddi are the ones that can really boost viewership and stickiness, however clearly the associated streaming rights to make those sports available on a free ad supported platform needs to be evaluated. Maybe a case for the BCCI to start a archival channel for cricket highlights and/or fan engagement content for the IPL!
67% of the channels are in English which in India leaves major head room for growth of the regional language channels. As the service ramps up and more channel partners discover the power of FAST channels, expect this split to reverse soon. Based on conversations with reliable sources, Samsung TV Plus launched in India with existing global content partners and over the past several months are gradually ramping up their regional content partnerships.
The Discover Section
Under the “Discover” section on the app, we get the option of checking out the VOD part, which is bare (and clearly not the focus) and includes cooking videos from GustoTV, travel videos from GoUSA TV and a few Classic Hollywood movies!
However what is interesting to evaluate are the Top 10 lists!
India’s Top 10 English (as of 13th October 2023)
1. Republic TV 2. Discovery HD 3. Animal Planet HD 4. India Today 5. Investigation Discovery HD 6. TLC HD 7. NDTV 24x7 8. Discovery Turbo 9. Eurosport HD 10. NDTV Profit
India’s Top 10 Regional (as of 13th October 2023)
1. Discovery Tamil 2. Enterr10 Bangla 3. Dabangg 4. Maiboli 5. 9X Jhakaas 6. Balle Balle 7. 9X Tashan 8. Bhojpuri Cinema
India’s Top 10 Hindi (as of 13th October 2023)
1. The Movie Club 2. South Station 3. Korean TV 4. Aaj Tak 5. Discovery 6. Discovery Kids 7. Mastiii 8. 9X Music 9. Animal Planet 10.ABP News
User Experience
As expected, the Samsung TV Plus app experience is truly world class with an advanced video player and additional features and functionality which creates a superior UI / UX. A definite plus and key factor for success in addition to the growing content slate!
My View
The Samsung TV Plus FAST universe presents a fantastic opportunity for content owners, rights holders and audiences to co-create another consumption medium for engaging viewing windows which India actually has been used to for years - we just did not call it FAST then and times have evolved with technology innovation + advertising, offering another exciting option for streamers.
At first glance, we see that early adopters such as Sab Group (MaiBoli, Dabangg and Mastiii), Enterr10 TV (Bangla, Bhojpuri Cinema), 9X Media (9X M, 9X Tashan and 9X Jhakaas) are reaping the benefits with a showing on the Samsung TV Plus India Top 10 lists. This performance and audience behaviour makes a strong case for other regional content powerhouses and studios in India to participate on the FAST bandwagon for additional revenues and reach.
In addition, those with existing direct to consumer OTT platforms can also participate to cross promote their own apps, showcase their channel on their own app front porch and also distribute it to not only aggregators such as Samsung TV Plus, but also other players such as Jio Cinema, Xiaomi etc. In the coming newsletters, we will share further insights around marketing, business models, advertising etc on FAST.
That’s all for today folks. If you enjoyed this breakdown, please share it with your friends and colleagues!
Go ahead and check out Mumbai Diaries Season 2 on Prime Video, set during the Mumbai floods of 2005 - a gripping OTT series watch while you wait for the next newsletter coming up on the 25th of October!
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