News Headline | Indian Television Dot Com

[V] makes a play for the top with 'Popstars'

Submitted by ITV Production on Dec 10, 2001

Awesome. That about sums up the scale of the plans the Star Group has charted out to take Channel [V] to the top of the music heap. Star India, in partnership with the Times Group, today announced the launch of the glam-reality show [V] Popstars involving the search for and finally, presentation and promotion of, the first all-girls band in the Indipop market.

An indication of the importance that Star is giving to this initiative can be gauged by the fact that Star chairman James Murdoch was present in Mumbai for the launch announcement. Murdoch does appear to have a special interest in [V]‘s fortunes so the channel‘s future moves should be worth watching.

The "talent search of epic proportions spanning the country", as Star India CEO Peter Mukerjea puts it, will select five girls from thousands of hopefuls from six cities, train and groom them for two months in Mumbai, before launching them with an album and a live stage performance. The series will go behind the scenes through various stages of the transition, the naming of the band, the glamour makeover to the creation of the album and the launch concert.

Sushma Reddy

Mukerjea, who has secured the tie-up with indiatimes.com for promotions and marketing, says [V] Popstars will be a fly on the wall docudrama that follows the lives of the five girls as they train and prepare for the big launch. A 14-episode series on Channel [V] will track each move. The Star network will simulcast the launch of [V] Popstars in mid-January 2002 on five of its channels (Star Plus, Star World, Star Movies, Star Gold and Channel [V]), has acquired the rights of this popular reality show from the UK based Sportsworld Media Group.

On the heels of the success of the Indian version of Who wants to be a millionaire? - Kaun Banega Crorepati? - Star is hoping to recreate the triumph of the reality series that hit a chord with viewers in UK, Australia and Canada where it has already been held. The channel, which has been unable to match the success of flagship channel Star Plus over its rivals, is now pulling all the stops to make [V] Popstars a big ‘un.

Sandeep Chowta

Roped in is an impressive jury comprising singer Shubha Mudgal, designer Manish Malhotra and composer Sandeep Chowta. Also on the jury is Channel [V] presenter Sushma Reddy. Celebrities like the musical troika of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, lyricist Javed Akhtar and composer duo Jatin Lalit will be on hand to back the jury up. Channel [V] has even convinced celebrity author-columnist Shobhaa De who will be in on the final selection.

Javed Akhtar

Announcing the catchphrase of the show Kiska Band Bajega?, Murdoch said the six- month long drama would be stretched over the entire Star network and Bennett & Coleman concerns like Times Music, Planet M and indiatimes.com. "It‘s a first for Indian music television, and I doubt any other alliance could have pulled it off," he remarked.

Bennett Coleman president Arun Arora, also present on the occasion, said that the launch of the show marks a moment of positive growth for Indian television, when the strength of individual talent will be given a voice with the backing of two vibrant media houses.

Manish Malhotra

Responding to media queries, Star‘s senior V-P, head of content & communication Sameer Nair said that the selection of an all girls band this year would be followed with an all boys band next year. The following years will see the selection of mixed groups via Popstars.

In other countries, Popstars has been able to catapult the bands it promoted to the top of the chartbusters. Bardot in Australia, HearSay in the UK and Sugar Jones in Canada have all been Popstars products. The series is currently underway in the US.

[V] makes a play for the top with 'Popstars'

Dec 10, 2001

Awesome.

ARY Digital hopes to grab eyeballs with Urdu version of KBC

Submitted by ITV Production on Dec 08, 2001

News Headline

And now get ready for an Urdu version of KBC.

ARY Digital, which is all set for a mid-January 2002 launch, has secured the Urdu rights for the game show from Celador. ARY Digital was all set for a post Diwali launch in the Middle East, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, but has been postponed due to delays in shifting from PAS 10 to Thaicom 3. The shift has been necessitated to cut down on time lags in transmission, says Live Satellite Media director Atul Saraf, who is distributing and marketing the channel in India.

Saraf expects the channel to reach nearly 20 million homes in the next five months. Currently a 24 hour free to air digital channel, ARY Digital is planning to go pay by April 2002. Positioned as a family entertainment channel, Saraf expects to do better than other Urdu channels that met a sad end in the region, armed as it is with a plethora of cross border soaps and Bollywood based shows. Its only competitor in the region, ETV Urdu, was launched in June this year, but Saraf says ARY Digital will counter the competition with ‘better quality programming‘. The channel, which will have 10 hours of original programming, has already commissioned four serials in the suspense and family genres and is building up a library of Pakistani movies. Most soaps will be shot in London, Dubai and Turkey and should appeal to a pan Asian audience, says Saraf. Seventy per cent of the programming mix is to sourced from Pakistan and the rest from India.

The Urdu KBC will stay true to the ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?‘ format, but the finer details are yet to be worked out, says Saraf. The show will rope in a well known Pakistani actor to anchor the show, and is likely to go on air by mid 2002, he adds. The Urdu version will be the third from the subcontinent to launch a ‘millionaire‘ style game show. Koteeswaran, the Tamil version, went on air in November 2000 on the Sun TV network, at a time when Star and ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?‘ rights owner Celador were threatening to launch regional versions for Indian language channels.

ARY Digital is a television network owned by ARY, one of the largest gold manufacturers in the world, based in London. The channel was launched in August 2001. The network was formerly known as The Pakistani Channel; its name was changed when it was bought over by the ARY Group.

AXN launching 12 new shows over next four months

Submitted by ITV Production on Dec 07, 2001

News Headline

Some heavy duty action on the programming front is what the Sony group‘s AXN channel has lined up for its viewers with a slew of new shows set to debut over the next four months.

Covering essentially action series and reality programmes, 12 new programmes will be launched in the new year, AXN managing director Todd Miller said today.

AXN, which is currently in the middle of a major promotion around the Asiawide premiere of the multi-award winning blockbuster movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" on 29 December, will be launching three new reality shows in February, Miller revealed. These would be launched almost immediately after the two reality shows currently airing on the channel - "Survivor" and "Amazing Race" - complete their run in January. Elaborating on one of the shows which will be screening on AXN, Miller said "Fear Factor" (it aired on the NBC network) was the biggest show of the summer of 2001 on US television. Miller would not provide details of the other two shows. He added, again without giving details, that two new action series would also be premiered every month over the coming four months.

The channel, which concentrated on popularising two programming genres in the first year of its operations - action movies and action series, now has five programming franchises including action adventure-reality, action sports and adventure and action animation. Of these action movies, action series and action adventure-reality constituted AXN‘s principal programming pillars for AXN India, Miller said. Although action animation is not such a big franchise in India it is huge in the Far East, he added.

Queried as to when the channel expected to reach break even status, Miller said he was looking at 2004 or 2005.

On the distribution front, he said the channel currently reached 21.6 million homes, up from 18 million in May with the figure across Asia being 31.5 million.