The Zee Group?s Internet portal company, Econnect India Ltd, has announced its plan to restructure its business strategy. Econnect India, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Zee Telefilms, will now focus on entertainment-based content and website development and design for group companies as well as third parties, a Zee release states.

At the same time, www.zeenext.com, the portal maintained by Econnect, has now been relaunched with focus on entertainment and lifestyle-related content. The move is expected to ensure better synergies with the Zee Group?s core content, the release claims.

The new initiatives are aimed at helping Econnect tap new business opportunities, even as it serves as the Internet interface of the Zee Group, the release says.

One fallout of the restructuring process has been that close to 60 people have reportedly been asked to leave.

There‘s a new channel on the block that has been beaming as a test signal since 2 April and its called Channel Guide.

Channel Guide officially launches on 15 or 16 May with the aim of being the "channel junction" for the television viewer, says the company‘s COO Ravi Deshmukh. It will be a free to air digital channel beaming off Thaicom-3.

The channel hopes to cover television, films, theatre, music and events with a very localised perspective. It will have genre-wise (also language-wise) anchored slots incorporating footage as well as interesting commentary about featured programmes.

Deshmukh appears undaunted about launching a channel at a time when the industry as a whole is facing a cash crunch with broadcasters cutting back on their projects rather than attempting new ventures.

Deshmukh says his channel provides a valuable service to the industry as a whole and expects both broadcasters and cable operators to support the channel. He aims to take his channel to 60 towns and cities across the country within the next four months.

Its unofficial!!! Industry sources confirmed today that Sony Entertainment will become encrypted from 30 June.
The channel will be priced at Rs 8 per subscriber with the set top box costing the cable operator Rs 6,000 initially and a balance of Rs 6,000 to be paid after six months

Industry grist had it that SET would be following Star TV and Zee TV (encryption 1 June) and would go pay by year-end but it looks like the channel calculated there is no need to wait that long.

With the target date advanced by almost six months, whether it will manage to roll out all the boxes to its cable affiliates is not clear. But the channel‘s management had a meeting two days ago where a decision was taken to set that as the target date. The company has to import the set top boxes, which can prove cumbersome as Zee TV has found out in the past when its boxes from Philips were delayed. Even Discovery had its set tops caught up in customs for quite a while. Hopefully Sony will not be caught on the wrong foot a la Discovery.

Sony officials declined to comment, saying that an official announcement is to be made soon.

National broadcaster Doordarshan‘s Metro channel‘s light night slot will be up for bidding again, according to reports. Prasar Bharati, which got a pathetic response in January when it invited bids for the late night slot on DD Metro, has decided to call for fresh bids, it has been reported.

Prasar Bharati made a killing when it sold six "golden hours" on DD 2 for a period of one year to Australian media magnate Kerry Packer for Rs 1210 million but its auction of the 10 pm hrs to 12:30 am slot fell flat.

How the fresh call for bids will be received might also be based on what the floor price is. Earlier the rates for different half hour slots were Rs 150 million from 10 pm, Rs 75 million from 10:30 pm, Rs 20 million from 11 pm, Rs 15 million from 10:30 pm and Rs 5 million from midnight.

It remains to be seen whether Channel Nine will again be barred from bidding as was the case last time round. Prasar Bharati may just take a cue from the earlier situation where only Pritish Nandy Communications made a bid for a one 30-minute slot and have a rethink on that issue as well.