It may have lost Avinash IPS to another production house, but Miditech is set to launch another series on Star Plus.

After Commando, the reality series on the Indian army it made for the BBC earlier this year, Miditech has targeted the Indian Air Force with Saara Aakash, a ficitonal series focusing on life against the backdrop of the IAF. A break from the regular family dramas and marital crises abundant on television, Saara Aakash revolves around the triumphs and tribulations of young IAF fighter pilots. Ashish Choudhary, Anuj Saxena, Manav Goel and Manish Goel play the main characters. The series has been shot mostly on location at Lohegaon Air Base, Pune.

The series portrays the officers, both young and old, who have chosen this profession with a sense of purpose, as the real life heroes that they are. It gives an insight into the lives of the officers as they go about their business of defending the country, says the production house.

ETC Networks seems to have turned the corner.

After posting losses of Rs 136.12 million for the year ended 31 March 2002, the company has claimed to have notched up a net profit after tax of Rs 62.26 million for Q1 2002-03. The growth, of more than 464 per cent over last year‘s corresponding figures of Rs 11.03 million, has been achieved due to an improvement in the performance of both ETC Music and ETC Punjabi, the company claims.
Total income of the company for the quarter ended 30 June 2002 stands at Rs 111.77 million as against Rs 771.85 for the same period last year, a growth of 44.8 per cent. Cost control measures and improvisations in the revenue mix, says the company, have helped improve the EBITDA margin from 21.3 per cent to 56 per cent over last year‘s corresponding figures.

Zee Telefilms (which now holds 51 per cent stake in ETC Networks) group broadcasting CEO Sandeep Goyal has responded to ETC‘s better performance this quarter with, "The process of integration is continuing in full swing and we have launched Alpha ETC Punjabi earlier this month in UK. This channel will be launched in the US and Canada markets in the months to come."

ETC claims to lead in the market share and reach of both its channels. Quoting TAM figures, it says that out of the top ten programmes in the music channel segment, etc occupies five slots, while ETC Punjabi continues to lead the Punjabi language segment.

While the company had managed to halve its programming and telecast expenses to Rs 125.871 million in FY 2001-02, its turnover had dived to Rs 313.3 million from Rs 538.2 million the previous year.

TV Today Networks, promoter of leading Hindi news channel Aaj Tak, has applied to the foreign investment promotion board (FIPB) seeking permission to induct foreign equity, senior government sources revealed today.
GE Capital, the finance arm of General Electric, proposes to take a roughly 5 per cent stake in TV Today, which is why the FIPB application is being made, the sources say.

Efforts to get in touch with Aaj Tak CEO G Krishnan proved futile as he is abroad at the moment.

TV Today‘s quest for fresh funds may well be linked to reports that that the group is planning to launch an English news channel before the year is out.

The success of Aaj Tak, which broke even in seven months of its launch on 1 January 2001 and made it to the top slot despite not having a first mover advantage would certainly make TV Today an attractive proposition for any prospective investor.

Of course, it may just be that TV Today is only looking for some serious money to buttress Aaj Tak as it girds to do battle with the new avatar that Star News will present to the world come 1 April 2003.

Joining the trend among most channels to switch from an analog feed, music channel MTV is preparing to go digital by end-July.
Sanjeev Hiremath, vice-president, network development, South Asia, licensing and merchandising, said till the full transition to digital was carried through, the channel would be operating a dual illumination feed, continuing the analog feed on the PAS 10 satellite.
Hiremath said that just over 1,500 Philips Cryptowork boxes had been seeded so far and that he expected to seed a total of 4,000 set tops by the time the channel switched to a completely digital feed by the end of July. Set tops were being supplied to cable operators at a subsidised rate of Rs 12,000 per box, Hiremath said.

Aside from improved transmission quality, a digital feed occupies less transponder space, which makes it far easier to introduce new channels when required, Hiremath said. Will India finally get to see Viacom channels VH1 and the like in the not too distant future? With the introduction of conditional access systems (CAS) around the corner, the possibilities can only increase.

Current Technical Specifications
Analog feed:
Satellite: Panamsat PAS-10
Transponder: 7C
Downlink Polarisation: Horizontal
Downlink Frequency: 4034 MHz

Digital feed:
Satellite: Panamsat PAS-10
Transponder: 11C
Downlink Polarisation: Horizontal
Downlink Frequency: 5154 MHz

Technical Specifications Post Digitalisation
Satellite: Panamsat PAS-10
Transponder: 7C
Downlink Polarisation: Horizontal
Downlink Frequency: 4034 MHz