The Mumbai High Court on Wednesday quashed film actor Anupam Kher‘s hopes of getting back at Zee Telefilms for the summary way in which he was dismissed as host of its flop game show Sawaal Dus Crore Ka (SDCK). In his petition, Kher had challenged his ‘arbitrary‘ termination. He had also sought an injunction from the court to restrain Zee from discontinuing with the programme without him as a host.
Zee in its defence blamed Kher as the one who breached the contract by speaking to the media and said it was justified in removing him from the show, Press Trust of India reported. After hearing both the parties at length, Justice KK Baam, rejected Kher‘s petition on the ground that such a dispute could only be decided through arbitration. Since nothing survived in the petition, it was disposed of by the court. Kher is now free to refer the matter to arbitration or prefer an appeal against this order.

"No doubt, Anupam is a good artist. Yet, he cannot compel Zee to retain him as a host," the judge remarked. Kher had challenged the notice of 9 December served on him by Zee informing him of its decision to drop him from SDCK.

Kher‘s counsel Janak Dwarkadas contended that Zee had no right to terminate his client‘s services without giving him 60 days prior notice as this was one of the conditions of the contract signed between Kher and Zee on 13 October. Zee‘s erratic dealings had publicly humiliated and psychologically traumatised Kher, Dwarkadas claimed. Zee‘s counsel V Tulzapurkar countered that Kher had himself committed breach of contract by his utterances in the media which included his saying he was not interested in the show. Neither Zee nor Kher responded to calls requesting further details on the developments.

Meanwhile, the Cine TV and Artistes Association (CTVAA) committee, to which Kher had sent a complaint relating to the same case, was yet to meet on the matter. Association Secretary Dharmesh Tiwari had said on 14 December that a meeting would be taking place within a couple of days. Gathering all the committee members from their various commitments is proving a major hurdle.

Music Broadcast Pvt. Ltd, a company promoted by the Mittal group, has signed a licence agreement for operating FM channels.

It is one of 16 companies to have signed licence agreements after furnishing bank guarantees amounting to Rs1587.5 million for operating 37 FM channels, according to the United News of India.

Music Broadcast won its licence after committing Rs413 million as bank guarantee. It will be operating from six centres: Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore, Nagpur, Lucknow and Patna.

The company looks set to be a major player in the FM wars because of its association with the Star TV Network. Star will handle the service end, essentially ad sales, according to Yash Khanna, Star TV‘s Head of Communications.

Queried whether Star was also looking at providing content for the channel, Khanna said he could not comment as discussions were still in progress. Details of the contract were being worked out, he said. Once the final agreement had been reached a clear picture would emerge, he added. Though letters of intent were issued to 26 companies for operation of 93 channels, only 16 companies won licences.

However, nine broadcasting companies, who had been successful in the bidding, had filed five cases in Delhi High Court. "These are being heard simultaneously," Information & Broadcasting Minister Sushma Swaraj said in the Rajya Sabha. The modalities of Star‘s deal with Music Broadcast will be watched with interest as a pointer to how the FM ‘wars‘ may play out.

Production company Nimbus Communications has postponed the launch of its entertainment channel, ShowBiz TV, by two to three months.

Uday Sinhwala, Nimbus? Head of Television, said the channel will now be launching anytime in the next three months.

There were still some glitches to iron out, Sinhwala said, explaining the cause of the delay. "We don?t want to tie ourselves to a launch schedule and then realise after the channel goes on air there are things which need ironing out," he said. Sinhwala added that their women?s channel would go on air towards the end of 2001.

Informed sources have surmised that one reason for the postponement was that the programming library was not yet in place and additionally, the management feels the ad market is not buoyant enough to support such a channel currently.

Showbiz TV will be loosely modelled on E! which is a very popular showbiz pay channel in the US partly owned by Time Warner group Nimbus will also be picking up some content from E!

Leading sports channel ESPN-Star is set to hike its package rate by 8.5 per cent to Rs16 per subscriber home from 1 January, 2001

The rates were separately pegged earlier. ESPN?s pricing of Rs 8.25 has been in force since October 1999 and Star Sports has been pegged at Rs6.50 since January 2000. Both channels will however continue to be available as stand alone services.

Cable operators were informed on 10 December about the porposed hike and have indicated they have no problems with the move. Pranesh Kerkar of Seven Star Cable Network said the hike would be absorbed by the operators, leaving subscriber rates unaffected.

ESPN-Star has lined up 225 days of live cricket coverage for 2001 which includes 70 one-day internationals.

The coverage will include India?s tour of Zimbabwe (two test matches), the India-Zimbabwe-West Indies Triangular series (7 one-day internationals), the Sahara Cup cricket (five internationals), and the India tour of South Africa (three test matches and 7 one-day internationals).

ESPN-Star will also cover the Pakistan, England and Australia Triangular One-day Series (10 one-day internationals) and the Australia Vs England Ashes Series covering 5 test matches.

The Zee Group, in a major restructuring bid as advised by AT Kearney, has brought all of its diverse activities and businesses under four broad categories - content, corporate, access and education. The company?s three lead businesses of content, access and education will have separate heads while support functions like strategy, human resources, finance, legal, corporate communications and marketing research will be handled by the head of corporate services.
At a lengthy open house meeting in Mumbai yesterday, company chairman Subhash Chandra and heads of businesses along with AT Kearney, elucidated the entire structure and strategy of the company, which they claimed, was to ensure a vision for a common pursuit, purpose and goal. In the new dispensation, Alok Dutta, Chief Operating Officer, will be coordinating the content businesses. He will oversee broadcasting, including the businesses of all the Zee Network channels, portals, music, news and sports. Dutta will report directly to Chandra.

R.K. Singh, who was the Chief Executive Officer and earlier responsible for all broadcasting has been designated Group Head of Corporate Services. He will additionally be overseeing international businesses that have been clubbed under the access environment.

Dev Naganand will head the access business which comprises all the distribution driven businesses, including the businesses of cable networking now renamed Home Networking (HN), Direct-to-Operators (DTO), Direct-to-Home (DTH), Internet ISP through cable and numerous other Internet and ISP driven businesses.

The fourth division, the company?s education business will continue to be headed by Uma Ganesh. Zee, the management points out, sees a distinct convergence potential in the education business so will be developing it accordingly.

A pro-active team for functions of finance and accounts, personnel, legal, planning and operations at the operative level will also support each Group Head.

Besides the restructuring of the organisation, AT Kearney has also recommended that Zee should focus on building some new core competencies into the organisation, with special emphasis on collaboration with outsiders, more external focus on learning from customers, competitors and partners, greater focus on employment development, more systematic resource-based management and greater transparency in dealing with shareholders, employees, etc.

The restructure also highlights the company?s new vision of ?network selling? as opposed to ?single channel? selling. While in the past, Zee emphasised on selling channels as individual single channels, today, in its new structure synchronised with this strategy, more emphasis will be on ?network selling?. The Zee Group, says it, will reorganise according to the AT Kearney structure immediately.

The management says that it is confident that the spotlight on the new structure will bring increased focus in the company?s approach to content creation, on the one hand and distribution, on the other, even as corporate services seeks to foster alliances with new partners and collaboration with business constituents with greater zeal and gusto.

Zee Telefilms on Friday denied press reports that it planned to drop 16 serials currently airing on the channel.
Sainath Aiyar, Head Corporate Communications, said there was no substance in the reports that said Zee was dropping the serials in an effort to get the punch back in its programme selection.

Falling ratings and the bad press and legal headaches surrounding the suspension of its failed game show Sawaal Dus Crore Ka (SDCK) have pushed Zee on the defensive and Aiyar was quite outraged by the number of ?uncorroborated? reports about the beleaguered channel which were circulating.

Indiatelevision.com put it to Aiyar that the lead time the channel had given itself to correct the inherent flaws in SDCK was way too short. It was pointed out to him that Jeeto Chappar Phaad Ke, Sony?s answer to Star TV?s Kaun Banega Crorepati gameshow, had been in gestation since August for a planned January release. According to press reports, the new avatar of SDCK is scheduled to go on air in the first week of January. Aiyar clarified that the new show would only be aired when the Zee team felt confident of its having the strength to sustain itself and that could be anytime in January, not necessarily in the first week.

Mumbai?s Mid-Day newspaper reported on Friday that the show was likely to finally reappear with a new name attached - Aao Chakkar Chalayen. As for who will host the show, the names doing the rounds other than Ashutosh Rana are: Dilip Kumar, Feroz Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Naseeruddin Shah and Madhuri Dixit.

Will the new improved SDCK really see the light of day in January? Or will Zee cut its losses and give the show a quiet burial? That is the real ?sawaal dus crore kA (Rs10 crore question).