When regional language channels Prabhat (Marathi) and Suprabhat (Kannada) shut down transmission recently no one was surprised. That it was facing severe financial problems was well known and the owner admitting that there was no place for so many channels in the regional market only confirmed what was an open secret in the industry.
Now that the official seal has been put on the two regional language channels the spotlight has turned to another regional channel bouquet - Broadcast Worldwide, which runs four regional channels under the brand name Tara.

For the last six months, one regularly has heard the buzz of a complete sellout. But in spite of this the management, led by promoter (and former Star TV head honcho) R. Basu, has managed to stay alive and ticking. Director business development Pradipto Sircar is quite categorical that Broadcast Worldwide is not shutting down any time soon. "I have also been hearing these rumours for quite a long time. Yes there have been problems in the last six months. But when the market itself is going down then everyone is facing the same conditions," says Sircar.

And what of the reports that the Delhi and Ahmedabad offices have been closed down and that employees have not been given salaries for the last few months? "All our offices are functioning well," Sircar says. "We have rationalised the size of our staff. There was no problem as far as salaries are concerned. Yes, there were some problems in case of payments to production people. Most of them were on contract. But now we have resolved it."

On the programming front, he rejects the contention that there is nothing on the channels except reruns. "We are going for new programming. And the deal with Vicco Laboratories (reportedly called off) is very much on," he says. "We are showing programmes from their library," Sirkar says. The Vicco library has close to 17 Marathi serials, most of which were aired on national broadcaster DD a few years back.

But the real clincher appears to be reports from internal sources that Mauritius-based Crombie International Ltd, which Basu had said in May was pumping in $ 800,000 in exchange for 72,500 equity shares of Broadcast Worldwide, never made good on the payment

When asked what happened to the Crombie investment Sircar says the company has already invested close to the full $800,000. "It was part of an old agreed amount that they have invested," he says. Queried as to how the funds had been allocated, he says that the amount will be used for core function of programming and marketing. "Looking at the market conditions we have to strictly follow the return on investment criteria as returns have depleted to a great extent." He admitted that there was increasing competition from the other regional channels, which made things difficult.

ESPN Star Sports (ESS) has finalised a broadcast sponsorship deal for the world‘s most popular football league, the English Premier League.

The one year sponsorship agreement will see Toshiba and Carlsberg Asia Ltd, the other sponsors, enjoying regional association with the 2001/2002 EPL season through a combination of multi-level integrated benefits. This includes on-air entitlements around all ‘live‘ matches and repeats on ESPN and STAR Sports, as well as marketing and on-line benefits.

ESS managing director Rik Dovey has termed the sponsorship agreement with Toshiba and Carlsberg as a fitting partnership, acknowledging "their already strong involvement with football globally." ESPN STAR Sports is a 50:50 joint venture between two of the world‘s leading cable and satellite broadcasters, ESPN Inc. and STAR TV.

"The popularity of the English Premier League is now at an all-time high, watched by over 165 million people across Asia. Sponsors have been quick to see the benefit of associating with the League, and we are thrilled to be able to provide them with a way to leverage its potential", he said.

Toshiba‘s sponsorship also extends to Goals! - a presentation of the week‘s best plays drawn from the Premier, Spanish, Italian and Champions leagues.

The drama and excitement of the EPL season began on 18 August, 2001, covered live by ESS‘ two channels, ESPN and STAR Sports. Football fans across Asia will be able to watch 165 ‘live‘ games and over 1000 hours of EPL programming. There is also a line-up of support news programming throughout the week, including pre- and post-game analyses, predictions and information, a first for English Premier League coverage in Asia. Beyond the coverage on air, there are a series of interactive activities on a newly designed espnstar.com.

Southern regional language powerhouse Sun Network does not let the grass grow under its feet. Hardly had the dust settled on the relaunch of potential rival Vijay TV under the Star India banner, than it announced the high profile launch of its movie channel - Kondattam TV (KTV) - set for 22 October.
Indications are that the launch of the channel was advanced in response to the happenings on the Vijay front. Promoter Kalanidhi Maran is pulling out all the stops to ensure that Star is not allowed to gain a firm foothold in Tamil Nadu, it appears.

Kondattam, which means celebration, is targetted at the family. The focus is movies, movies and more movies. Three movies will be shown a day, one of which will be a major blockbuster. The new channel will take advantage of Sun Network‘s library of over 5000 movies. Because of this another network will find it difficult to enter the film market, says Santosh Nair, marketing head, New Age Entertainment, which is handling promotion and marketing of the channel.

Sun Network will hold a 100 per cent stake in KTV, which will be aired 24-Hours in Tamil. Sun has allocated a budget of Rs 70 million to promote KTV. Full page advertisements in major publications like Hindu and Dinathanthi have been appearing over the past fortnight in order to build excitement. Huge hoardings in Chennai have also been taken out.

Rajnikanth who is a God among movie goers in Tamil nadu, is one of the stars whose films will be shown on the new channel. In fact, when Sun TV had shown Baasha a while back, it got a TRP of 40 (market research agency AC Nielsen‘s TAM data). "If a film gets half that rating on KTV it will be enough for the channel to follow Sun in second position (Sun has an estimated 60 per cent market share among Tamil language channels). Other stars like Kamal Haasan, Sarat Kumar, Satyaraj, and Arvind Swamy will also be showcased," Nair says.

While New Age will handle marketing, Sun will use its cable arm Sumanagali Cable Vision to distribute KTV. Sumanagali has a vice-like grip on cable connectivity in the state‘s major cities - Chennai, Madurai, Coimbatore and Trichy.

Nair says plans were afoot for a while to launch the channel. The channel will start as free to air and the possibility of it becoming pay appears to be remote at the moment.

Other content on KTV will include film-based music programs like countdowns. Plans are also on the anvil to have game shows on the channel, the license for which will be acquired from abroad. There will also be live events like concerts.

Nair is not worried about the possibility of Sun TV and KTV eating into each other‘s audience since the former‘s content is diversified, while the latter‘s content is film-based. He also foresees KTV breaking even sooner rather than later.

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