BBC Director General Mark Thompson has planned his first visit to India to set up BBC’s first production studio in the country. It would be one of only three production units established across the world by BBC. During the visit, Thompson is likely to meet with several conglomerates, media barons and with government officials too.

Mark said:

We may have the brand, skills and tradition, but it is good to come to India with a lot of humility. There is so much talent here, and a huge hunger for originality.

According to the report, Thompson has a plan to establish professional relations with Indian producers on various shows and concepts. For him, adaptation is the key to succeeding in the Indian market. Earlier, BBC successfully started the Indian version of ‘Dancing With The Stars’ as ‘Jhalak Dikhla Ja’ and now BBC will be planning to launch more Indian version of its successful international program formats.

At the same time, Thompson may also take formats developed in India to other countries as well. According to him, India has huge export potential in both Bollywood and the Indian media. It should be tapped smartly. BBC has also planned to launch a Bollywood based web-fanzine (a magazine produced by and for fans devoted to a particular interest ) that would make the bollywood news available for people in other parts of the world.

Thompson said:

Our basic philosophy is to produce outstanding content and use all platforms possible to get it to the consumers, and that is exactly what we will do in India.

Consumers now want to be able to access news whenever they want it and through their media of choice. The trick to success lies in giving this to them. India is a complex, diverse market and will almost certainly have winners and losers.

As far as Indian market is concerned, BBC is already present in magazines through a joint venture with the Times of India group, and in radio through a joint venture with Mid-day. In the past, some of the biggest production houses from cross the world have established their units in India but failed. Thompson said on the failure of other global production houses in India that BBC would definitely succeed in running its unit in India.

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