Teledramas earning Rs 1 b revenue

High scope for local artistes, industry:

Indunil HEWAGE

The Sri Lankan teledrama industry shows signs of being one of the potential industries earning Rs 1 billion revenue annually. There is potential for the industry to grow further in the future.

Sunil Ratnayake

Teleview Worldwide Managing Director and CEO Sunil Ratnayake said Teleview's contribution to the total earnings of the teledrama industry accounts for 10 percent.

"Teleview is in the process of co-producing a teleseries with the participation of top-level Japanese and Sri Lankan artistes. They have had discussions pertaining to this with authorities in Japan. Currently, Teleview is in the process of making the storyline and script for this. This will be helpful for our industry to explore possibilities in the international industry," Ratnayake said.

"The teledrama industry must capture the international market with creativity, sound management capabilities and high definition technology to make the industry a profitable one. For the betterment of the industry it is vital to get assistance of top class global professionals for the Sri Lankan TV and other related production activities while infusing more capital to revive the industry.

"We can easily access Japan when it comes to TV production and related industry activities as Japan pays the highest amount of money for productions in the world," Ratnayake said.

He said Sri Lankan TV production industry has many opportunities in the world market.

There are over 400 channels in the USA. We can see the same scenario in Canada and other countries. They need more programs to run their business. In Canada there is a unit called third world country acquisition department, that means we have a huge opportunity to create more programs for these countries. But the main barrier in the industry is we don't have a supply method to grab these opportunities, Ratnayake said.

He said next generation of the BPO industry is animation and the current market size of the industry is US $ 35 billion. The Teleview Academy is also planning to employ students to tap this market in the near future.