Election watch party in a theatre?

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June 4, 9:00 am: I made my way to a single screen theatre in a busy district in Andheri East, Mumbai, where white collar workers scurried to reach their offices. This time was different: for once, I wasn’t sure what to expect after walking into the auditorium.

That’s because MovieMax Andheri was showing the 2024 election results. 

Inside the Elections Theatre Experience

MovieMax began selling tickets to ‘Election Results 2024’ for limited locations last week, but soon expanded to include a larger number of screens in its network, all for Rs 99. What would it be like to watch election results on the big screen in a dark theatre? Unlike movies or even cricket matches, watching the news as votes are counted is hardly an immersive experience. Rather, it’s a frantic one where people often surf through news channels searching for updates and analyses, often supplementing what’s on TV with scrolling through social media feeds.

I was the only person in MovieMax Andheri when I walked in yesterday morning, though one other patron joined shortly after. The cinema chain was showing Times Group’s Hindi news channel Times Now NavBharat, hosted by consulting editor and anchor Sushant Sinha. But with no means to change channels or discuss what was unfolding with other people, all that was on offer was a shouty news ‘debate’ on a big screen with very loud speakers. 

But in MovieMax Goregaon, another single screen in a Mumbai suburb, I found three elderly gentlemen sitting side-by-side, peacefully watching the Times Now NavBharat broadcast. One of them, an 86-year-old who goes by Parmar, said he was happy to be in the neighbourhood theatre watching the news. 

“It is very peaceful here, there is no one to disturb you,” he said. “I have a nice TV at home but the screen here is brighter and the sound is clear. We will leave by noon though.” 

A MovieMax usher told me the election results broadcast was scheduled from 9:00 a.m. until noon. However, counting for hundreds of seats went on until late into the night, with some nail-biting finishes in crucial constituencies coming in during the late evening. 

For MovieMax, this was an attempt to experiment with programming and test audience reactions rather than a money-making exercise in an ongoing content drought. “The election season was on and there was anyway a lot of excitement around it this time,” Ashish Pandey, head of programming and strategic initiatives at Cineline (MovieMax’s parent firm), told The Impression. “We wanted to play alternate content in cinemas and give patrons a different experience as well. We had already experimented with showing a livestream of the Ayodhya Ram Mandir inauguration.” 

Pandey explained that while MovieMax’s single screen theatres ran the election broadcast from 9:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m., the company’s multiplexes dedicated a screen to the programme until 2:00 p.m. “The timeline was an issue. Movies run for 3-3.5 hours max. But obviously election results start from early morning and can go on until the evening. But by 3:00 p.m., most election trends are clear, so we thought of carving out a six-hour slot for this show,” Pandey said. 

Besides, MovieMax kept entry to the election showing open well after the morning start time. Usually, theatres close ticket bookings for a show around 45 minutes after it begins. 

Need to experiment

Was this election experiment a successful one for MovieMax? Anecdotally, I saw less than ten seats booked for the show in most MovieMax locations across Mumbai. Although Cineline’s Pandey declined to share detailed figures, he said the experiment did its job of providing insights into audience preferences. “Our expectations were not that high,” he said. “We just wanted to see how different programming works out. We kept ticket rates at a bare minimum to see how many people would come.”

Cineline, owned by the real estate firm Kanakia group, re-entered the cinema business two years ago with most of its screens primarily in Maharashtra. The MovieMax theatre I visited is a single screen previously operated by the market leader PVR; some of the interior design, concession stand signs, and other elements of visual design are still visible. 

The drought of content has hurt all cinema chains across the country. While PVR-Inox posted an 11% increase in revenue for the March 2024 quarter, the multiplex leader slipped into losses (pdf). Similarly, Cineline posted a 27% growth in revenue for the quarter but also posted a loss before tax (pdf). 

Given the uneven performance of ‘big’ films on the box office, cinema halls are likely to keep experimenting with their programming line-up. Already, the ongoing ICC Men's T20 World Cup is scheduled to be screened in major theatres. “We are playing the T20 World Cup from June 5, and we have already sold over 1,000 tickets for the India-Pakistan match for this Sunday,” Cineline’s Pandey told The Impression. 

Last month, bigger rival PVR-Inox hosted a two-day horror festival called GenreCon, with films and gaming-like experiences at its swanky Lower Parel location in downtown Mumbai. After the IPL, World Cup matches will be screened in theatres across the country. If big films continue to underperform at the box office, we may see more such non-movie events in theatres in the coming months.

Last Scroll Down📲

Scan the big media headlines from the week gone by

More money: The board of Zee Entertainment will meet on June 6 to consider raising funds via private placements, qualified institutional placements, or other available methods (pdf). 

Meanwhile, Sony Pictures’ CEO told investors the company was exploring other acquisitions in India. Sony India’s longtime retiring CEO NP Singh will be succeeded by former Star executive Gaurav Banerjee. 

Bagged: Amazon Prime Video may finally buy Times Internet’s streaming service MX Player for $50 million. Talks over a deal fell through last year. MX Player is expected to fit in with Amazon’s ad-run entertainment platform, miniTV. 

Music to my ears: Streaming service Spotify hiked its prices in the US last week for the second time in 2024, sending shares up more than 5%. 

Done deal: Iconic Hollywood studio Paramount has agreed to a merger with Skydance and may announce a deal formally this week. Paramount management skirted merger questions at a shareholders’ meet, but warned there will be layoffs. 

Trumpet 🎺

Dissecting this week’s viral ‘thing’

You might think it can’t get any worse, but this was a terrible week for the credibility of mainstream TV news channels in India. 

Studios were festive over the weekend and this Monday as they blared exit polls predicting a landslide victory for Narendra Modi’s BJP in the Lok Sabha elections. These polls pushed markets to hit all-time highs on Monday as psephologists and polling company owners explained to voters why the Modi wave was back. 

None of that was true. The BJP failed to secure a majority in the Lok Sabha on its own and at 240 seats, it won far, far fewer seats than exit polls predicted. Exit polls (ideally) have one job: to predict the outcome of an election. They failed. In one sad moment, Axis My India’s Pradeep Gupta burst into tears in the India Today TV studio before anchors consoled him. Gupta had once danced in the same studio four years ago as his predictions came true on counting day for 2020 Assembly elections. 

Mainstream TV news has been suffering a crisis of credibility and viewership. Will it recover from the body blow it received this week? Exit polls will be a crucial part of their programming later this year too as major Indian states such as Maharashtra and Haryana go to polls for the Assembly elections. Will these polls draw interest, ridicule, or any attention at all from the ordinary viewer? 

Consider this: a coalition of independent newsrooms received nearly 600,000 views on its YouTube livestream of the election results, which ran entirely ad-free and was funded by subscribers. deKoder, run by former NDTV owner Prannoy Roy, received 1.9 million views on its election livestream. Two channels run separately by former NDTV journalists Sohit Mishra and Sanket Upadhyay garnered over 200,000 views each on their livestreams, and a post-results satirical piece by Ravish Kumar grabbed nearly a million views. 

A YouTube channel is still far from the power and reach of a TV channel. But this year’s disastrous exit polls are yet another step in the slow but steady tilting of the balance of power from traditional mainstream news to experimental newsrooms mushrooming online.

That’s all this week. If you enjoyed reading The Impression, please share it with your friends, family, and colleagues. And please write to me anytime at [email protected] with thoughts, feedback, criticism or anything you’d like to see discussed in this space. I'd love to hear from you. 

Thanks for reading, and see you again next Wednesday!