Star takes home 14 awards at PROMAX & BDA 2002
STAR snatched more awards than any other Asian broadcaster at this year's PROMAX and BDA (Broadcast Designers' Associ
MTV anchor Cyrus Broacha is slated to moderate an hour long programme which will have former US president Bill Clinton among other panelists who will take questions from young adults from over 25 countries on the global AIDS epidemic. The MTV special, titled Staying Alive: A Global Forum on HIV/AIDS, will be taped on 11 July in Barcelona and will be telecast from 12 July onwards on more than 30 MTV channels around the world. The special, says the channel, is part of a new youth-oriented AIDS awareness campaign MTV is launching in conjunction with the Kaiser Family Foundation and Family Health International. Joining Clinton on the panel will be Peter Piot, head of the Joint UN Program on HIV/AIDS, Brazilian Health Ministry official Paulo Roberto Teixeira and Vicki Ehrich of British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline Plc. The former president, an honorary co-chairman of the International AIDS Trust foundation, first appeared on MTV during his initial bid for the White House in 1992, when he appeared on a town hall-style special in which he played his saxophone and gamely answered questions about what sort of underwear he wore. He later credited the MTV appearance with helping energize young people about politics and went on to unseat Republican incumbent President George Bush in the general election. The special show is the second in a series of "social awareness" specials MTV has aired this year. In February 2002, the channel organized "Be Heard: An MTV Global Discussion With Colin Powell," a forum that had young adults across the world shooting questions at the US secretary of state. |
One more channel readies to take the pay mode plunge. The difference this time being that it will be the first pay channel to be offered as an independent offering and not part of any bouquet.
B4U Movies begins a dual illumination feed from 15 July, with plans to be fully encrypted by 31 July. "All the technical parameters are in place. But keeping in mind last minute hold-ups, it still may take till end-August for the full rollout, B4U Worldwide CEO Ravi Gupta said. B4U is using the Smart-card from Nagravision as the encryption module.
Queried as to the subscription price, Gupta said it would be Rs 8.90 per month. B4U is offering 15 per cent discount on its subscription rate to cable operators making advance payments or quarterly payments.
Where B4U Music will be different from the others is that it will be the only pay channel that is not offered as part of a bouquet. When it was put to Gupta that this would likely prove disadvantageous, he had this to say: "Yes, but that‘s a short term way of looking at it. The reason to go it alone is because of the price sensitivity of the market. We believe that especially in the non-metro markets there are operators for whom single channel option like B4U are worth going for."
"I do not want to tie up with anyone at the present juncture. I want to keep my options open. I prefer to wait for a time where I am able to offer my channel non-exclusively to all the bouquets. And we will be constantly tracking developments. Being independent allows us the freedom to take a call on it when we feel it is advantageous for us," Gupta said.
Whether Gupta is correct in his reasoning will be known soon enough anyway.
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