Sell the first window to a global platform and keep the tenth year

Indian regional producers are now regularly offered a deal that looks too sensible to refuse. A global streaming service will co-commission a slate of series in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada or Marathi, pay most or all of the production cost and take exclusive worldwide rights for as long as copyright lasts. The producer is spared the risk, the series reach audiences in many countries and the platform gains local programming it could not easily make itself.

I have negotiated one of these agreements for Ilavenil and declined the standard form of it. My argument is that regional producers should sell global platforms a first window, exclusive and well paid, but should keep the rights that return afterwards. In regional languages the value of a series is spread over many years and many uses, and a perpetual licence sells most of that value at the price of the first two.

What the perpetual licence actually buys

The offer made to us in 2023 was ₹210 crore over three years for eighteen series, six a year, with worldwide rights in perpetuity. The production cost of those series was about ₹72 crore a year, so the offer covered almost all of it. On a first reading it was free money: the series would be made, our producers would be busy and we would carry no risk.

The question I asked my team was what we would own at the end. Under the perpetual licence the answer was nothing but the experience of having made the series. Every later use would belong to the platform: telecasts on our channels, streams on our own app, dubbed versions in other Indian languages, music, remakes, and licensing to free advertising-supported streaming channels, which barely existed in India when the series were commissioned and may matter a great deal in ten years.

Global platforms value these later rights less than we do, because their business is the subscription on which a series first appears. After a year or two, most of a series' viewing on a global service has happened. For a regional broadcaster, that is when another life begins. A Tamil family drama that streamed to subscribers in its first two years can fill afternoon slots on our channels for a decade, and its audience there is often older and less likely to subscribe to any streaming service at all.

The tenth year is where regional value sits

Our own records show the pattern. Across the fiction series we have owned since 2015, roughly 35 per cent of the viewing hours a series earned over ten years came in its first two years. The rest came from repeats, from library streaming and, for the most successful series, from versions dubbed into our other languages. Films show a similar shape, which is why we now price them on ten years of hours rather than on their premiere.

If that pattern holds for series made with a global platform, a perpetual licence transfers about two-thirds of their lifetime viewing for a fee set on the first third. The platform is not acting unfairly in asking for it. It is a reasonable position for a buyer with a large balance sheet and a standard contract. But a regional seller who accepts it is treating the first window as the whole asset.

We proposed a different structure: a two-year exclusive worldwide streaming window for the platform, the return of all rights to us after it, and the right to show the series on our own channels in India after twelve months. The platform accepted, at ₹168 crore over three years rather than ₹210 crore. We gave up ₹42 crore. The first of the series have now begun to return to us. Their television premieres in afternoon slots drew audiences about 30 per cent larger than the films usually placed there, and on present evidence they will repay the ₹42 crore within the next three years.

Terms I would not trade

A structure is only as good as its detail, and we did not get all of it right. These are the terms I now treat as essential in any agreement of this kind.

First, the reversion date must be fixed in the contract, not linked to a condition the platform controls, such as the end of a promotional period.

Second, music rights must be negotiated separately. We gave the platform the soundtracks for its window, and the music income from two successful series went with them. In regional languages a soundtrack can earn for years on its own.

Third, the producer should receive viewing data for the platform's window, at least by country and by episode. When our first series came home, our partner knew more about their audiences than we did, and we scheduled them partly blind.

Fourth, dubbing rights into other Indian languages should stay with the producer from the start, or at least return after the window, because those versions are often where a regional hit finds its second audience.

Fifth, the agreement should say what happens if the platform withdraws a series early. A series removed from a global catalogue after a year should come home after a year.

There are fair objections to this approach. A platform offered shorter rights will pay less, as ours did, and some will not negotiate at all. Smaller producers with no channel or app of their own may have no second life to protect, and for them a perpetual licence at a good price can be the right decision. I accept both points. My argument is addressed to regional companies that own distribution, and for them the perpetual licence is rarely as generous as it looks.

Partnerships with global platforms are good for Indian regional storytelling. They pay for ambitious work, introduce it to audiences outside India and raise the craft of everyone involved. The best of them will be the ones in which each side is paid for what it values most. The platform values the first two years. A regional broadcaster should value the tenth.