Digital Studio - December 2017

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Sudhanshu Vats, group CEO, Viacom18 has a success mantra – ‘Stay curious, stay fearless’. After taking charge in 2012, he initiated the acquisition of ETV’s five regional channels, and came up with the concept of sharper segmentation. This resulted in the launch of Nick Jr, Nickelodeon’s kids channel for 4 to 12 year olds. A year later, Viacom18 turned profitable, recording PAT for the first time as a network.
Calling himself a storyteller, Vats emphasises it is imperative to listen to changing decibels in the M&E industry. That is the only way to create, and narrate, great stories. He believes as long as he can do this, he will be in business.
In this issue’s cover story, we explore how Viacom18 has managed to grow its business by 40 times over the past decade. And yes, this was possible because the company kept listening to its target audience and venturing into newer domains, at the right time. We also speak to another person who shares Vats penchant for curiosity – the Emmy-award winning re-recordist Jonathan Wales, who is also CEO of Sonic Magic Studios. Fascinated by technology, he quit a job to start his own company that employed a completely digital, end-to-end workflow. Having worked on close to 300 movies, he says that ultimately, everything boils down to telling stories interestingly, without being generic or boring, but also without being too obvious.
In another article, while describing how they created the audio landscape for the soon-to-be released Tiger Zinda Hai, Ganesh Gangadharan, Dileep Subramanian and Anuj Mathur of YRF Studios reveal how they innovated to add aural elements to the film. At certain places in the movie, the music was notched down discreetly to accentuate the sound effects or the other way around, depending on the story’s flow.
The central thread running through these three articles is this – content reigns supreme. And those who can continue to provide this are in for the long haul, like Vats predicted. Who’s game?