Scotching media speculation to the contrary, WSG Nimbus asserted on Wednesday that it continued to hold the commercial rights for international cricket to be played in Sri Lanka over the next three years.

A company release said WSG Nimbus had honoured all its obligations to the Board of Control for Cricket in Sri Lanka (BCCSL). While admitting that there had been differences between the two parties, WSG Nimbus said they were due to evidence of tour confirmations not being made available by BCCSL as earlier agreed upon.

BCCSL and Nimbus have now modified their agreements to the mutual satisfaction of both parties and have signed a fresh deal which vests commercial cricket rights of Sri Lanka international cricket 2001-2003 with WSG Nimbus, the release said.

It was in November 2000 that WSG Nimbus bagged the rights for international cricket in Sri Lanka for a period of three years. The deal covered 14 tours and involved 180 days of international cricket.

Building on its successes over the past year in Australia and the Philippines, Turner Networks Asia (TNA) is gearing up to make a splash in the Indian market by merchandising and franchising popular characters from Cartoon Network.

The Power Puff Girls - a popular toon series featuring three little girls on Cartoon Network - will kick off the act with a music CD and toys based on the same characters. For the music CD local Indian singing acts will be roped in along with performances by US performers. "The Power Puff Girls have very positive associations as focus groups have shown us they are seen as super heroes and are trying to position them for women of all ages," says vice-president TNA, Off Channel Commerce Group, Levina Li. "The 20-somethings will form the peak of our pyramid while the mass will come from our core audience of four to 14-year-olds."

TNA has already made forays into Australia (a year ago) and the Philippines and next on the list is India, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan and Thailand.

Crown Media Holdings on Wednesday announced the formation of Crown Interactive, a new division of the company designed to leverage the wide array of products and services from Crown Media‘s affiliated companies, Hallmark Cards and Hallmark Entertainment, in the burgeoning interactive television marketplace.

Crown Interactive has formally begun its beta testing stage in Singapore, offering video-on-demand (VOD) on a non-exclusive basis in conjunction with Sharkstream, a streaming portal specialising in interactive multimedia entertainment for the Asia Pacific region. Sharkstream is a subsidiary of Indian media company United Television (UTV).

Consumers throughout Singapore can now view full screen streaming video of some of the best titles from the Hallmark Entertainment library, including, "Gulliver‘s Travels", "Merlin", "Cleopatra", "Jason and the Argonauts" and "Arabian Nights". Other cutting-edge interactive services and capabilities including video greetings and e-commerce should be added to the Singapore platform during its beta phase period with a full roll out of Crown Interactive in the region scheduled to begin during the second quarter of 2001, according to a press release.

By leveraging Hallmark‘s readily available, cross-divisional assets, including technology, creative resources, infrastructure, content and professional relationships worldwide, the Crown Interactive platform will become a comprehensive, user-friendly broadband service for consumers and platform operators, available through both PC-based systems and digital set-top boxes.