More than two years after promising to open the floodgates to private TV channels, General Musharraf this week approved an ordinance that allows private sector television in Pakistan.
The PEMRA Ordinance 2002 allows the establishment of the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority that will issue licenses to broadcast media operaters. The move is meant to bring in the element of ‘transparency and an invisible system of accountability through media available at local community, provincial, national, and international levels.‘ This spells competition not only for the three state controlled channels in the country, but also to those from across the border that beam their programmes into Pakistan, and have a loyal following.

The Cable TV network, earlier supervised by the IT and T Division, has been brought into the fold of this law and the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority will continue to guide and support its technical side. The PEMRA rules include a Code of Conduct for media broadcasters and CTV operators to ensure decency and responsibility, and a clause stipulating that programming content of broadcasts are to be strictly and regularly monitored. A council of complaints has also been provided in the law to respond to people‘s complaints, and recommendations for disciplinary action against broadcasters violating the code of ethics and other provisions of the law have also been provided.

Foreign television channels however will not be allowed entry, nor will licenses be granted to promoters who are not citizens or residents of Pakistan. Among others excluded from setting up shop in Pakistan are foreign companies established under the laws of any foreign government, companies the majority of whose shares are owned or controlled by foreign nationals or companies whose management or control is vested in foreign national or companies.

While the behemoth PTV and its sister channels will perforce have to shape up to match rivals from the private sector, channels like Prime Entertainment Channel (PEC), Indus Vision and ARY Gold targeting the Urdu population, have already built up a reputation in the country.

UAE based satellite channel ARY Gold‘s strengths, say reports, lies in its current affairs programmes, while the Prime Entertainment Channel has an interesting line up of shows and soaps. Set up recently,

The PEC is reported to be the only entertainment based channel completely dependent on foreign investment.

It‘s been a fairly quiet ride in the FM radio arena till now but the slugfest looks about to begin in real earnest. After having to make do with All India Radio‘s FM service for a long while, April looks like seeing listeners inundated with variety as to which stations they can tune into.

The Interim Tower Clearance order that allows private players to set up radio towers in Mumbai was issued early this week, industry sources have confirmed. And the clock is already ticking to beat the four month extended deadline given by the government for private players who had secured licences for the Mumbai circle to get on air. The original deadline for starting operations in Mumbai was 29 December.

In the metro cities of Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata, however, the private players have eight months to start operations (August 29, 2002) and unlike in Mumbai they will be using All India Radio towers for broadcast.

The players fighting for a slice of the Mumbai pie are the Times Group‘s Radio Mirchi, the India Today group‘s Radio Today, the Star India-PK Mittal promoted Music Broadcast‘s Radio City (Radio City), Millennium Broadcast, and Radio Mid-Day (promoted by Inquilab, publishers of the Mumbai afternoon tabloid "Mid-Day").

Till date operations have taken off in four centres - Radio City in Bangalore and Lucknow and Radio Mirchi in Indore and Ahmedabad. Mumbai will however witness the first real case where multiple players will be fighting it out for the listener‘s ear.

Sumantra Dutta, Star India‘s head of FM operations, while declining to give details as to which area in Mumbai had been earmarked for setting up the tower, said a four month time frame for getting on air was how it looked at this stage.

AP Parigi, managing director, Radio Mirchi, also would said he expected to just about be within the deadline as far as starting station broadcast was concerned.

When queried as to who he saw as the most serious competition, Parigi said all the players who had secured licences brought to the table their own individual skill sets and that included the relatively less talked about Millennium Broadcast which has tasted success in Sri Lanka in the radio arena. Parigi however, said Radio Mirchi had the Times brand, a great team, cutting edge technology and networking built over years backing it.

Parigi said the success of Radio Mirchi in Indore and Ahmedabad had given him enough confidence to declare he would be putting in bids during the next round of FM licence offers as well. This is in stark contrast to Music Broadcast‘s stand that in the current scenario only the metros are viable propositions for FM operations which led to it dropping plans for FM stations in Patna and Nagpur, two of the six cities (Bangalore, Lucknow, Mumbai and Delhi being the others) for which it had secured licenses. This despite the fact that it stands to forfeit the bank guarantees it gave for securing the licenses which are equivalent to one year‘s licence fees for each city - Rs 47.5 million for Patna and Rs 74 million for Nagpur.

With all these stations expected to be blaring their wares soon it remains to be seen whether the fare on offer will be more of the same (as is the case across TV entertainment channels) or if there will be variety as far as content is concerned.

If a show takes up the time slot occupied earlier by the celebrated gameshow Kaun Banega Crorepati, it better be BIG! That seems to be the line that Star Plus has taken by pulling out all stops to ensure that its new weekly soap Sanjivani grabs eyeballs in a big way.

The one-hour show, produced by Cinevista Communications, and airing 9 - 10 pm on Wednesdays, is definitely not cutting any corners in scale or concept. Spread out over 18,000 square feet of space in a suburban studio is a permanent hospital set that has taken over Rs 10 million to put up. The standard betacam has been given the go-by; the entire filming and editing is done digitally. The cost of digital beta filming is four times that of the betacam (which hovers around Rs 3000 per episode) and the resultant picture quality 20 times better. Each episode of the series that explores the human side of hospital life costs over Rs 1 million to produce, avers Cinevista creative director Siddharth.

Set designer Omung Kumar has created a hospital set that is stylish, colourful and very hip - very unlike a hospital, but one with a ‘hopeful feel‘, says director Kaushik Ghatak (because it is loosely based on Chicago Hope?). A veteran of such hit serials like Kyunkii? and Shhh?Koi Hai, Ghatak says Sanjivani has the potential to tap a variety of emotions and relationships in the wider canvas of hospital life. Authenticity has been maintained to the last detail in buying original operating and scanning equipment and infrastructure worth millions. Cinevista has also retained a panel of around eight doctors who advise the crew on medical terms and shots. Ghatak says the team spent eight months of research on assimilating 800 case files from various hospitals to ensure that the incidents portrayed have a ring of truth to them.

And for some star appeal, middle-rung Bollywood actor Mohnish Behl has been signed on for a central character in the serial.

Star Plus too is ensuring that the investment in the series fetches due returns. Hoardings and innovative front and back page advertisements in major English and regional language newspapers marked the launch of the serial. The channel tried another innovative promotion - distributing Band-Aid medicated strips in local trains in Mumbai on launch day (yesterday), stamped with the Sanjivani logo to get the medicine message across.

Two can play at the game. With the Bombay High Court expected to issue a ruling tomorrow on the ongoing spat between the Hinduja Group MSO InCableNet and sports broadcaster ESPN Star Sports, an advertisement appeared in leading Mumbai afternooner Mid Day today detailing how costs for airing all channels have spiralled 475 per cent in the last four years.
InCableNet took the newspaper ad route and gave a detailed breakdown of costs explaining how the current subscription rates were untenable unless conditional access systems were introduced giving viewers the freedom to select what they wished to see.

Earlier it was ESPN Star Sports that took out newspaper ads and distributed leaflets through vendors criticising cable operators as being unreasonable for not signing on to its new subscription rates.

With both sides playing out their battle through the media, the court‘s ruling in the matter has become that much more crucial.