Anupama Mandloi is currently the Managing Director of Fremantle India Television Productions Pvt Ltd, which has produced shows like Indian Idol, X Factor, and India’s Got Talent, among others. It is part of FreemantleMedia, one of the largest creators, producers and distributors of television brands in the world.

A key player in the television industry for two decades, Mandloi’s first stint with TV was in 1994 as a director and editorial coordinator for Plus Channel (promoted by Amit Khanna, Dilip Piramal and Mahesh Bhatt). Her career has spanned 15 years of programming in the broadcasting space with channels such as Sony Entertainment Television, Sab TV and Star Plus. She has been with Fremantle for five years now.

In this exclusive email interview to Sanjay Gupta for India Digital Review, Mandloi talks about Freemantle’s strategic direction in India, whether digital is impacting TV viewership, and Freemantle’s digital talent hunt, India’s Digital Superstars, among other things. Excerpts:


Please share a brief about the current strategy and direction that Freemantle is taking in India. What are some of the key things you will be driving personally?
FremantleMedia in India is consciously building fresh and alternative pathways for business development. While television content will always be the primary focus we do see opportunities opening up in the digital and live events space as well as building franchises from formats owned by us. The intent is to build IP and leverage our global distribution network. We have a head of licensing who drives these initiatives with his team. My focus is to ensure that the roll-out of these properties is consistently high quality in creative as well as execution.

How do you think is the digital media affecting TV viewership in India? What key changes have you observed in the past few years?
I don't believe the TV viewership is being impacted yet. The television dynamic in our country is not going to change substantially for another ten years at least as we still remain a fairly conservative market and have yet to grow adequately in terms of infrastructure to support the digital platforms.

The point of interest is really the creation of parallel platforms that allow for experimentation as well as asset building. It is clearly a space where new and younger viewers are gaining traction and advertisers are looking actively at focused viewership. The transparency of data is another very attractive quality in this space as well as being user friendly in terms of individual convenience.

With the growing popularity of digital, do you think the traditional TV viewing has suffered or do you think the overall market has expanded to include all media?
The overall market is expanding to include all media.

TV channels and production houses started experimenting with digital a few years back but the two media are still seen largely as separate and diverse. Do you think the time is ripe for the marriage of TV and digital? How do you think will the integration be achieved?
It’s happening already across some of the key television properties where digital is supporting and helping to build the interactive engagement with viewers. FremantleMedia has been doing this globally with all our properties where the second screen phenomenon is given a lot of attention. Usage of social media and apps to interact with the primary content on television has helped us build a very strong digital presence.

What differentiates India’s Digital Superstar (IDS) from numerous other talent hunts?
First of all, ease of audition is the main differentiator. The participants do not need to spend money travelling to a location to give auditions. They can shoot their video at their convenience within their homes/place of work and upload. They can shoot their act on the cell phones so there is no investment required.

Two, the auditions are open right through the competition until one week before the finale, giving anyone and everyone a chance to participate. Three, everyone can post more than one video right through the competition to increase their chance of making it into the top ten as the scoring is cumulative. And finally, [it allows] immediate gratification of knowing where you stand at any point in the competition.

How did you choose Zenga TV for the partnership over other players in the market? Also, given that the videos are hosted on YouTube, could you have partnered with it directly?
We wanted to partner with someone who had a deep understanding of this space and could help us build the backend for this show. The ease of navigation is dependent on the architecture that is created and that is critical to success. We are working with Zenga and One Digital as partners in creation and execution. YouTube has been very helpful with guiding us in using their platform to build viewership.

What benefits does Freemantle envisage will accrue to it from holding the talent show? Given that a lot of hugely popular and successful talent hunts currently happen through TV channels, why did you opt to go digital with IDS?
It is already a space we are familiar with and know how to build. We are leveraging our expertise in the talent space to enter the digital space. It will help us build talent to feed our existing TV shows as well as own talent that we can build other properties with…We will eventually create other genres as well for this platform.

Publishers and TV media owners have been trying to leverage user-generated content for some time but only a few (such as Facebook and YouTube) have succeeded to an appreciable extent. Do you agree and if so, what are the challenges they face?
Social media has effectively leveraged user generated content to create very clear 'celebrities' in this space. It is a world in itself and once you enter it you see a rich tapestry of creative minds, edgy and fresh content creators and 'stars' that have a following of millions. In the time to come, this space will explode. Several media owners as well as traditional media people predicted this almost ten years ago and today it would be fair to say that the space is growing rapidly and everyone wants to hitch a ride in this galaxy.

Typically, as TV programming for general entertainment goes currently in India, a channel places big bets on a serial or show, spending huge amounts of money in its promotion. How accurate are such bets in your opinion? Do you think digital is changing this approach by proving to be a test-bed before actual launch?
Any content creation is a bet. It can be instinctive or scientific but it remains a bet. The odds will always be in favour of those willing to experiment and push against the tide.

Sanjay Gupta is an editorial consultant and freelance writer based in Delhi. He can be reached at thinksanjay@gmail.com