Zee Cinema was launched in April in the year 1995. Zee Cinema was the first Hindi movie channel of India. Since then the channel has come a long way and moved strength-to-strength, reaching Hindi movies fans all over Asia, the UK and the US. Zee Cinema is broadcast 24-hours a day satellite television channel and broadcasts six movies a day and other film-based programming. Formerly a tie-up with Star, Zee networks now own it. It reaches more than 75% of the Cable & Satellite households across India. Zee Cinema garners strong viewer ship in the morning, afternoon and evening time bands as well as the night slot, making it a complete movie channel for all sections of the audience.
With a reach of more than 120 countries and more than 350 million viewers globally, Zee Network has created strong brand equity and is the largest media franchise serving the South Asian Diaspora. The company seeks to address the entertainment and information needs of South Asians spread across the globe. Zee boasts its presence in all major markets in the world, including Asia Pacific, the Middle East, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Africa, the Caribbean Islands and Canada.
The core proposition of Zee Cinema has always been to offer the best Hindi films to the viewer, from its extensive library of more than 3,000 titles. Many of
Zee Cinema`s high appeal genre movies, such as action adventure, thrillers and comedies are presented in festivals and special features specifically designed to appeal to movie lovers. Zee Cinema is available on Dish network in the USA.
In the year 2004 Zee Cinema was rejuvenated with a new and contemporary look. To add a little fizz to its old look, zee cinema also produced a two-minute film - a spoof on films like Sholay and Shekhar Kapoor`s Bandit Queen - called Paap Ka Anth and Zee cinema published it like a normal Hindi feature film and released the two-minuter in 75 theatres across 45 cities in the country. This spoof was done only to cater the change in customer`s taste and viewer`s feedback and it was a huge hit. Zee has also launched three niche channels -- Premiere Cinema, Action Cinema and Classic Cinema.
Choosing film themes suited for family viewing, Zee Cinema`s strategy lies in segregating theatregoers and homebound watchers of movies. Zee Cinema has seen increasing competition in recent times especially with Star Gold. Catering to family audiences, Zee Cinema has been clubbing its films under specific themes like the recently held Shaniwar Ki Raat Amitabh Ke saath, the popular Amitabh Bachchan movie festival on Saturday nights. Besides, the channel has also been banking upon ground level promotions to attract audiences. For instance, two days prior to the telecast of Amitabh Bachchan`s Coolie, all the coolies in Mumbai, Kolkata, New Delhi, Ahmedabad and Lucknow were invited to participate in games such as dart throwing, target shooting, the target being the villain of the film.
Zee channel intends to reach across French speaking countries in rest of Africa. Zee also plans to use French sub-titles for its channels- Zee TV and Zee Cinema. The channel has introduced its sub-titled or dubbed services in Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia, and the Middle East.
Zee Action, Zee Classic and Zee Premier
Zee action is a 24-hour movie channel, which is dedicated to showing Bollywood action films, both new as well as old films.Zee classic, as the name suggests currently shows all black and white classic old films from Bollywood. This channel has plans to show movies post the era when sound came to India. Zee had already a channel, Zee Cinema that aired all types of movies. This was the first channel in India, which aired only classic and sometimes award winning, touching movies from the Bollywood domain. Industry sources estimate that Zee could have doled out anything between Rs 1 crore and Rs 3 crore for an average movie as it had tough competition from Star Gold.
Zee Premier Channel is a 24-hour movie channel featuring the latest movies from the world of Bollywood. This channel was launched in the year 2005 as channel 7. Three of these channels are niche channels aiming at separate target audiences. While Zee action aims at the action movie buffs, zee classic aims at our vintage audiences and Zee Premier Aims at the younger generation of our nation.
