• Star lines up some more soapy nights

    The decision has been taken.

  • HBO gets bold and sporty in November

    Submitted by ITV Production on Oct 17, 2001

    HBO is all set for the festive season, with an interesting array of movies for its HBO Saturday nights block come November. Kicking things off on the 3rd at 9:30p.m. with ‘BASEketball‘, a flick on a new sport, which combines the features of America‘s two most popular sports: baseball and basketball.

    Based on a true story, BASEketball is the creation of Trey Parker and Matt Stone who also made the witty and acerbic ‘South Park‘ with its controversial songs. The three main characters ‘Coop‘, Reemer, and Squeak Scolari are guaranteed to keep couch potatoes grinning throughout.

    Neve Campbell & Kevin Bacon in Wild Things

    Next is ‘Wild Things‘ on November 10, a mystery flick with more twists and turns than a pretzel. Two seductively cool students played by Denise Richards and Neve Campbell, who attend a posh high school and plan to sue the counsellor Matt Dillon (A Kiss Before Dying) over rape.

    The plot thickens with accusations, detectives and legal frame-ups leading to an interesting climax. Interestingly, the logical sequence of events is revealed as the end credits roll.

    HBO relies on a good, solid old-fashioned drama ‘October Sky‘ on November 17 to draw in the thinking viewer. it tells the true story of Homer Hickham who in 1950s West Virginia, harbours ambitions that do not exactly reflect his background. His father Chris Cooper (American Beauty) is a blue-collar coal miner and has trouble coming to terms with his son‘s desire of becoming a space engineer.The father son relationship gives the film its soul. Jake plans to start his project for the science fair using a cherry bomb and flashlight. Fortunately, his teacher, Oscar nominee Laura Dern (Rambling Rose) encourages him and acts as his mentor.

    The Summer
    Gang Party

    On the 24th, HBO takes the plunge into the world of horror with ‘ I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.‘ Jennifer Love Hewitt, who also starred in the original, returns for the sequel to holiday in the Bahamas with her friend. The son of the angler who was killed in ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer‘ could be after her in this one. The setting of a deserted island is inspired as it instils in the viewer a weird sense of foreboding.

  • HBO gets bold and sporty in November

  • Balaji could touch Rs 1000 million in revenues this year

    Submitted by ITV Production on Oct 17, 2001

    Balaji Telefilms is poised to rake in a turnover of close to Rs 1000 million at the end of the current financial year, having worked up the family soap into a luxuriant lather in the last few years.
    The seven-year-old production house, which specialises in hooking the middle class, middle-aged Indian woman to the small screen, is now eyeing youth and the entire family. Balaji plans to enter the arena of weekend programming shortly, directing house-bound families to even more soaps. According to Sanjay Dosi, CEO of Balaji, the production house is not likely to deviate from its tried and tested formula of the tear-jerking family drama, which has reaped rich harvests for the company owned by the family of former film star Jeetendra Kapoor.

    Balaji Telefilms Limited (BTL) is currently riding high on the wave of its successes, with talks doing the rounds of the industry that following the examples of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi and Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii on Star Plus, the company would be hiking the rates for Kkusum, being aired on Sony. Relentlessly continuing the superstition of the success of the K factor, Balaji has recently put two serials, Kavyanjali and Kutumbam Oru Kodu on Vijay TV, enthralling southern audiences. On Star Plus, meanwhile, the soap Kasautii Zindagi Kay, touted as a musical love story, is poised to go on air from 29 October.

    Although Dosi insists that Balaji maintains a good mix of thrillers as well as ‘character-based‘ and ‘family-based‘ serials, he avers that the family soap remains a favourite with Indians across the country, an assumption that forms the basis for yet another daily afternoon soap, Kal, which goes on air on Sony in November.

    The TRP ratings scandal, the association with cornered bull stock-broker Ketan Parekh and the aborted alliance with channel Nine Gold notwithstanding, Balaji continues to do well on the stock exchange, making it the only media company which has had a successful year after launching its IPO in November 2000.

    The secret of its domination may have been the single-minded pursuit of success by creative director Ekta Kapoor, its healthy mix of sponsored and commissioned programmes or its judicious use of several channels, rather than reliance of just a few. But the finger on the audience‘s pulse has ensured that Balaji‘s reach increased from six channels at the start of 2000-01 to ten towards the close, covering Doordarshan, DD Metro, Star Plus, Sony, Zee, Gemini, Udaya, SABe and Metro Gold. This needless to say, resulting in increased programming hours - from 616.5 hours in 1999-2000 to 1457 hours in 2000-01.

    Turnover, consequently, has been jumping by leaps and bounds. From a turnover of RS 200.9 million in 1999-2000, it posted revenues of RS 489 million in the last financial year. And at a time where everyone seems to be revising their growth targets, Dosi doesn‘t rule out a growth rate of 100 per cent this year.

  • Balaji could touch Rs 1000 million in revenues this year

    Balaji Telefilms is poised to rake in a turnover of close to Rs 1000 million at the end of the current financial year

  • Official denies Tara set to shut shop

    Submitted by ITV Production on Oct 16, 2001

    When regional language channels Prabhat (Marathi) and Suprabhat (Kannada) shut down transmission recently no one was surprised. That it was facing severe financial problems was well known and the owner admitting that there was no place for so many channels in the regional market only confirmed what was an open secret in the industry.
    Now that the official seal has been put on the two regional language channels the spotlight has turned to another regional channel bouquet - Broadcast Worldwide, which runs four regional channels under the brand name Tara.

    For the last six months, one regularly has heard the buzz of a complete sellout. But in spite of this the management, led by promoter (and former Star TV head honcho) R. Basu, has managed to stay alive and ticking. Director business development Pradipto Sircar is quite categorical that Broadcast Worldwide is not shutting down any time soon. "I have also been hearing these rumours for quite a long time. Yes there have been problems in the last six months. But when the market itself is going down then everyone is facing the same conditions," says Sircar.

    And what of the reports that the Delhi and Ahmedabad offices have been closed down and that employees have not been given salaries for the last few months? "All our offices are functioning well," Sircar says. "We have rationalised the size of our staff. There was no problem as far as salaries are concerned. Yes, there were some problems in case of payments to production people. Most of them were on contract. But now we have resolved it."

    On the programming front, he rejects the contention that there is nothing on the channels except reruns. "We are going for new programming. And the deal with Vicco Laboratories (reportedly called off) is very much on," he says. "We are showing programmes from their library," Sirkar says. The Vicco library has close to 17 Marathi serials, most of which were aired on national broadcaster DD a few years back.

    But the real clincher appears to be reports from internal sources that Mauritius-based Crombie International Ltd, which Basu had said in May was pumping in $ 800,000 in exchange for 72,500 equity shares of Broadcast Worldwide, never made good on the payment

    When asked what happened to the Crombie investment Sircar says the company has already invested close to the full $800,000. "It was part of an old agreed amount that they have invested," he says. Queried as to how the funds had been allocated, he says that the amount will be used for core function of programming and marketing. "Looking at the market conditions we have to strictly follow the return on investment criteria as returns have depleted to a great extent." He admitted that there was increasing competition from the other regional channels, which made things difficult.

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