The television industry has dismissed Sahara TV as a lost cause. Eyes have mainly been on Star, Zee and Sony Entertainment. However, if the aggressive stance that is emerging from Sahara is anything to go by, the industry may well be wrong in taking their sights off the ethnic channel.

While Sahara has dropped its plans to launch a clutch of channels to build up a network, it is moving ahead on all four cylinders on its mother channel. Sahara TV promoter Subroto Roy has brought in external help to help it get that extra edge. A committee consisting of Modi Entertainment Group‘s Buena Vista Television CEO Pratik Basu, programming head Basaav Raj, its advertising agency Percept Advertising‘s promoters Harindra and Shailendra Singh, and other senior managers from within the company. While Buena Vista is handling the ad sales, the Percept duo along with the Sahara team are looking after programming and marketing of the channel.

And the result of their inputs is already beginning to show. Better and more focused outdoor promotions, and slicker on-air promos - translating into a jazzier Sahara TV. An industry Source indicates that the current initiative is part of a larger gameplan to relaunch the channel. The effort will culminate in a big bang in the coming festival season.

"The FPC is going to change considerably, and there will be sustained marketing activity," she says. "Currently, three properties are being developed: "Haqeeqat", "Daman" and "Draupadi". Additionally, the Sunday Hindi movie block will also see some activity."

Some RS 100-120 million has been set aside for this. If one adds the fact that the Sahara group has bagged the sponsorship for the Indian cricket team, one can be sure the Sahara group will be ubiquitous in most media.

Who has cause to worry? People say that Sabe TV and Sony Entertainment are likely to be hit courtesy the Sahara march. Reason: they have yet to get their act together on the programming front.

The media has recently been agog about an impending alliance between Sony Entertainment and Time Warner on the television front in India. That seems to be a non-starter at the moment. Asks SET India CEO Kunal Dasgupta: "What tie-up with Time Warner? There‘s nothing of the sort going on?"

Adds a SET India director: "Nothing has been finalised. Things are at a very premature stage." Sources reveal that Time Warner is talking to a host of other companies for an alliance. Earlier, it did have parleys with TV Today‘s Aaj Tak, and Sab TV.

ESPN Star Sports (ESS) will be launching a dedicated Southeast Asia feed for Star Sports from August. The feed, which is based on viewing habits and preferences of viewers from the region, is customised in both programming and presentation to deliver sports popular with Singaporean audiences, a company release states.

This includes the best of European football (English Premier League, UEFA Champions‘ League, Serie A and Spanish Liga), Formula One motor racing, golf and tennis. ESS will also launch SportsCenter, the region‘s only live daily sports news service, the release says.

The news came in the wake of an announcement that ESS and Singapore Cable Vision (SCV), its Singapore pay TV partner, have reached an agreement to renew the carriage of ESPN and STAR Sports channels in Singapore. The contract will run for five years, effective 1 July.

It has also been confirmed that the English Premier League (EPL) will be available in Singapore on only ESPN and Star Sports channels 23 and 24 on SCV MaxTV. (In February this year, ESS won the exclusive Asian broadcast rights for the Premier League.)

Announcing the conclusion of the broadcast contract with SCV, ESS managing director Rik Dovey said: "This multi-year agreement between SCV and ESPN Star Sports signifies two things - commitment and confidence. Both companies are committed to bringing viewers in Singapore the best sports television sporting action and, working closely together, both companies are confident of further developing the pay TV market in Singapore."

Dovey added that ESS‘ English Premier League programming, together with the company‘s UEFA Champions‘ League, Spanish Primera Liga, Chinese National Football League, Korean Football League, major Asian internationals and the Italian Serie A coverage, "completes what is the strongest football programming line-up of any sports broadcaster in the world."

The board of directors of ETC Networks Limited will meet on Tuesday, July 31, 2001 to consider, inter alia, un-audited financial results for the first quarter of the financial year, 2001-2002, a company release states.

ETC Networks Limited runs two channels - etc and etc Channel Punjabi - and the company has registered a profit after tax (PAT) of Rs 24.3 million on a turnover of RS 538.2 million for the year ended 31 March 2001.

etc is a music based entertainment channel with music dominating 85 per cent of the programming content and is beamed from Thaicom-3 and is a free to air analog / digital channel.

etc Channel Punjabi is a Punjabi family entertainment channel compromising of serials, religious programmes, music and feature films. It is a free to air channel and is available through digital transmission signals beamed from Thaicom-3.

Besides having a very wide presence in Punjab, it has enabled etc Channel Punjabi to penetrate deeper into rest of the country and other international markets, the release adds.

There seems to be no end to the modifications that are being envisaged for the Communications Convergence Bill. The revised draft of the Communications Convergence Bill 2001 has just been re-revised. Industry sources indicate that at the latest meeting of the Group on Telecom and IT (GOT-IT) held on 21 July, it has been proposed that within the ambit of high-powered Communications Commission of India that the bill envisages, there should be two separate bureaus - a carriage bureau and a content bureau.

Earlier talk was around content management remaining a part of the convergence bill. And the information and broadcasting ministry was to convene a forum for the media industry to discuss the nature of the "content" bureau within the CCI.

Information and broadcast minister Sushma Swaraj‘s idea was that all content, including that relating to the Internet, should be regulated by a content bureau. Swaraj wanted that communications should be delinked from the ambit of the bill, the sources say. The telecom and communications ministries strongly opposed this pointing out that the it negated the whole concept of convergence. It was after this that a compromise formula was adopted where there would be two bureaus - a carriage bureau and a content bureau.

The revised bill prepared by the sub-group under Fali Nariman will have to be sent to Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha, who heads GOT-IT, and the prime minister. Then it will probably be referred to the Standing Committee. After which we can expect it to be put on the government website for invitations for further suggestions from the public. In this scenario how the government plans to keep to its stated aim of tabling the Bill in parliament during the upcoming monsoon session remains a mystery.

One thing has been agreed upon though. When the bill is finally ready for introduction in parlaiment it will be piloted by the communications ministry, the sources say.

To read the January 2001 modification of the convergence bill click on the link below.