ESPN Star Sports yesterday introduced an Asian version of the popular sports news show Sportscenter.

SportsCenter will be Asia‘s first live half-hour sports news programme which will provide millions of television viewers with a crisp and incisive update of the latest happenings from international and regional sporting events, a company release states.

SportsCenter will be broadcast in English to viewers in Southeast Asia via ESPN Asia. A Mandarin language version will be broadcast on ESPN China, covering North Asia (China and Chinese Taipei).

ESS introduced a Hindi version of SportsCenter to viewers in India in April this year. Since its inception four months ago, SportsCenter Hindi has attracted 24 per cent of the cable viewing population, the release says.

Launched in 1979 in the US, SportsCenter is so popular that it is watched by more than 11 million people daily. Currently SportsCenter (International version) is watched by more than 150 million households outside the US on 20 international networks, the release says.

The Asian version will be following the US programme‘s original format of news, feature stories, analysis, clippings and guest commentators. ESS‘ managing director Rik Dovey said: "SportsCenter is a habit for millions of diehard sports fans across the world. With the introduction of a SportsCenter tailored to the viewing habits and tastes of our Asian audience, we will create millions more fans for this landmark show."

He also stated that that this initiative was a big step for the company as developing such a comprehensive news bureau was a major investment. The resources required to put out live news are considerable. And doing so in multiple languages only intensifies the effort required. In fact, with the introduction of the English and Mandarin services to Asia, ESPN STAR Sports has tripled its output of live sports news programming.

He further went on to explain that: "ESPN Star Sports has set itself the target of being Asia‘s complete sports provider and the benchmark by which all other networks measure themselves. To achieve this ESPN must continue to innovate and to provide viewers with what they want to watch, when they want to watch it, and in a format that is relevant to them."

SportsCenter will be aired daily from Monday to Friday. Bulletins will be telecast Live at 8 PM with a repeat at around 11:30 PM, then at 2:30 am , with one more repeat thereafter.

ESS‘own 60,000 sq. ft production facility in Singapore will be producing SportsCenter. It will include sports news clippings from ESPN SportsCenter, SNTV (Sports News Television), - a leading provider of sports news clippings - and Sky Sports. SportsCenter will also include cricket clippings from ESS‘ portfolio of sporting rights - including the English Premier League, Formula One and the major tennis and golf events throughout the year.

For each live program broadcast of SportsCenter, ESS utilises a team of 40 veteran news and sports producers, presenters, technical/production assistants, editors and reporting crewreporters. The news team brings to Asia a wealth of knowledge and experience from the international and regional sports television scene sourced from all over the world, including ESPN‘s SportsCenter, TWI, BBC, ITV, New Delhi Television, Hong Kong‘s TVB, Australia‘s Channel 9 Network, TV South Africa and Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

B4U Networks has terminated its distribution deal with Modi Entertainment Network (MEN) blaming it for what it says is the surreptitious manner in which the channel distributor reached an agreement with French channel Fashion TV deal to the exclusion of the former.

According to network distribution head Debashish Dey, B4U‘s contract with Fashion TV runs till 2005 and the deal signed between FTV and MEN on 9 August was illegal. B4U has served a legal notice on FTV for breach of trust, says Dey. Queried as to what was the status of music channel MCM in the imbroglio, Dey could provide no details.

Henceforth, both B4U Entertainment (soon to be B4U movies) and B4U Music would be handled by the network itself, Dey said.

Dey alluded to MEN‘s earlier loss of distribution and marketing rights for sports channel ESPN and the recent loss of its deal to monitor distribution of national broadcaster Doordarshan‘s Metro channel while stating that FTV would regret breaking its ties with B4U.

Officials from MEN were unavailable for comment on the issue.

Sports in India means cricket, cricket, and only cricket. To the world at large however there is far more to sport and that is what ESPN is attempting to bring to the notice of the Indian viewer. Come 18 August, ESPN kicks off an ambitious programming initiative built around the world‘s most popular sport - soccer.

The centrepiece of the thrust is the pan-Asia telecast rights ESPN Star Sports has acquired for the English Premier League (EPL). And in keeping with the current thinking among television strategists, appointment viewing is what ESPN hopes to garner in this no-expenses spared soccer-centric programme push.

Speaking at a press briefing in south Mumbai yesterday, Manu Sawhney, managing director, ESPN India, outlined four thrust areas which would be utilised to push the property in India. Multimedia - print, television and online activities; contests, live screenings in clubs, and school campaigns. Sawhney said the various promotional activities would be rolled out over the coming two months and expressed confidence that there was a market just waiting to be tapped on the soccer viewing front. He identified the big cities and the states of Kerala, Goa and West Bengal as primary focus areas.

Pepsi, Samsung, Madura Garments were the three principal advertisers for EPL and had signed one-year deals, Sawhney said. Questioned on whether the soccer initiative was a joint one with Star Sports, he said this was essentially ESPN‘s baby.

On the programming front ESPN is set to showcase three live games a week on prime time - one on Saturday and two on Sundays. The network also will telecast one additional game every Saturday (deferred relay), one additional Manchester United game and football-related magazine-style programmes, through the week .

And the backend efforts that go into getting a real "close-up and personal" fell of the goings-on on the pitch is quite amazing, going by the information put out by ESPN (no costing figures though). A total of 130 crew on-ground and at studio are involved. A fleet of ten trucks and support vehicles, with standby power generators. Twenty-five cameras are used for each game with that number going up to 35 for a finals fixture. For the audio 20 directional microphones are deployed.

Queried on what other properties ESPN was focussing on other than cricket and now soccer, an ESPN official said Formula One car racing, sports news and quiz-based shows had a lot of potential for development. Actions