• tara

    Official denies Tara set to shut shop

    Oct 16, 2001

    When regional language channels Prabhat (Marathi) and Suprabhat (Kannada) shut down transmission recently no one was

  • ESPN Star Sports scores with
    Premier League broadcast sponsorships

    Submitted by ITV Production on Oct 16, 2001
    News Headline

    ESPN Star Sports (ESS) has finalised a broadcast sponsorship deal for the world‘s most popular football league, the English Premier League.

    The one year sponsorship agreement will see Toshiba and Carlsberg Asia Ltd, the other sponsors, enjoying regional association with the 2001/2002 EPL season through a combination of multi-level integrated benefits. This includes on-air entitlements around all ‘live‘ matches and repeats on ESPN and STAR Sports, as well as marketing and on-line benefits.

    ESS managing director Rik Dovey has termed the sponsorship agreement with Toshiba and Carlsberg as a fitting partnership, acknowledging "their already strong involvement with football globally." ESPN STAR Sports is a 50:50 joint venture between two of the world‘s leading cable and satellite broadcasters, ESPN Inc. and STAR TV.

    "The popularity of the English Premier League is now at an all-time high, watched by over 165 million people across Asia. Sponsors have been quick to see the benefit of associating with the League, and we are thrilled to be able to provide them with a way to leverage its potential", he said.

    Toshiba‘s sponsorship also extends to Goals! - a presentation of the week‘s best plays drawn from the Premier, Spanish, Italian and Champions leagues.

    The drama and excitement of the EPL season began on 18 August, 2001, covered live by ESS‘ two channels, ESPN and STAR Sports. Football fans across Asia will be able to watch 165 ‘live‘ games and over 1000 hours of EPL programming. There is also a line-up of support news programming throughout the week, including pre- and post-game analyses, predictions and information, a first for English Premier League coverage in Asia. Beyond the coverage on air, there are a series of interactive activities on a newly designed espnstar.com.

  • espn

    ESPN Star Sports scores with Premier League broadcast sponsorships

    Oct 16, 2001

    ESPN Star Sports (ESS) has finalised a broadcast sponsorship deal for the world's most popular football league, the E

  • Sun Network will feed the movie hungry KTV

    Submitted by ITV Production on Oct 15, 2001
    News Headline

    Southern regional language powerhouse Sun Network does not let the grass grow under its feet. Hardly had the dust settled on the relaunch of potential rival Vijay TV under the Star India banner, than it announced the high profile launch of its movie channel - Kondattam TV (KTV) - set for 22 October.
    Indications are that the launch of the channel was advanced in response to the happenings on the Vijay front. Promoter Kalanidhi Maran is pulling out all the stops to ensure that Star is not allowed to gain a firm foothold in Tamil Nadu, it appears.

    Kondattam, which means celebration, is targetted at the family. The focus is movies, movies and more movies. Three movies will be shown a day, one of which will be a major blockbuster. The new channel will take advantage of Sun Network‘s library of over 5000 movies. Because of this another network will find it difficult to enter the film market, says Santosh Nair, marketing head, New Age Entertainment, which is handling promotion and marketing of the channel.

    Sun Network will hold a 100 per cent stake in KTV, which will be aired 24-Hours in Tamil. Sun has allocated a budget of Rs 70 million to promote KTV. Full page advertisements in major publications like Hindu and Dinathanthi have been appearing over the past fortnight in order to build excitement. Huge hoardings in Chennai have also been taken out.

    Rajnikanth who is a God among movie goers in Tamil nadu, is one of the stars whose films will be shown on the new channel. In fact, when Sun TV had shown Baasha a while back, it got a TRP of 40 (market research agency AC Nielsen‘s TAM data). "If a film gets half that rating on KTV it will be enough for the channel to follow Sun in second position (Sun has an estimated 60 per cent market share among Tamil language channels). Other stars like Kamal Haasan, Sarat Kumar, Satyaraj, and Arvind Swamy will also be showcased," Nair says.

    While New Age will handle marketing, Sun will use its cable arm Sumanagali Cable Vision to distribute KTV. Sumanagali has a vice-like grip on cable connectivity in the state‘s major cities - Chennai, Madurai, Coimbatore and Trichy.

    Nair says plans were afoot for a while to launch the channel. The channel will start as free to air and the possibility of it becoming pay appears to be remote at the moment.

    Other content on KTV will include film-based music programs like countdowns. Plans are also on the anvil to have game shows on the channel, the license for which will be acquired from abroad. There will also be live events like concerts.

    Nair is not worried about the possibility of Sun TV and KTV eating into each other‘s audience since the former‘s content is diversified, while the latter‘s content is film-based. He also foresees KTV breaking even sooner rather than later.

    KTV Technical details:

    Satellite: NSS-703 57? E
    Polarisation: 3750 R
    Freq: 3980 Mhz (Digital)
    FEC: ? Symbol
    Rate: 28,000

  • KTV

    Sun Network will feed the movie hungry KTV

    Oct 15, 2001

    Southern regional language powerhouse Sun Network does not let the grass grow under its feet.

  • Three years after post fell vacant, UR Rao is
    Prasar Bharati chairman

    Submitted by ITV Production on Oct 15, 2001
    News Headline

    Prasar Bharati has a chairman again, after a gap of three years.

    Prof UR Rao, former chief of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), took over as the head of the pubcaster late last week. The post had been lying vacant since the demise of eminent journalist Nikhil Chakravarty, who passed away in July 1998. Chakravarty had taken over the reins of the fledgling Prasar Bharati in 1997, when it was entrusted with the modalities of granting autonomy to the state-run All India Radio and Doordarshan.

    Getting down to business almost immediately, Rao, who is an acknowledged expert in the field of satellite technology, announced yesterday that state run Doordarshan would provide uplinking facilities to private television channels, opening up new revenue streams for the national broadcaster. The proposal comes in the wake of anticipated policy changes from the government allowing private channels to have uplinking facilities from the country.

    Rao, who was previously a part-time member on the Prasar Bharati Board, also said the corporation was trying to shut down DD channels that were not doing very well. Rao said at least two channels, which he did not name, would definitely be closed down. An internal analysis was going on and channels, whose "reach is not high" will have to go off the air, Rao has been quoted as saying.

    Rao, who started his career as a cosmic ray scientist at MIT, has carried out extensive work in high energy astronomy and has published over 250 scientific and technical papers in various journals. Convinced of the imperative need to use space technology for rapid development, Rao took responsibility for the establishment of satellite technology in India and guided the design, fabrication and launch of the first Indian satellite ‘Aryabhata‘ in 1975. Prof. Rao and his team followed this with the launch of two experimental remote sensing satellites, Bhaskara-1 and Bhaskara-11, the first experimental geostationary communication satellite APPLE, two Rohini satellites on India‘s launch vehicle SLV-3, the INSAT-1 series of four satellites (revolutionising the communication scenario in the country) and IRS-1A and 1B, two state-of-art remote sensing satellites. These have since been followed by the launch of INSAT-2A and 2B, IRS-1C and 1D.

    Prof Rao became chairman, Space Commission and secretary, Department of Space in 1984, and during a decade when he also enjoyed tenure as chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), was responsible for accelerating the development of rocket technology within India for launching satellites into low Earth, polar and geostationary orbits. During this time he was also vice-president of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) where he stimulated initiatives in promoting the use of space technology in developing countries.

    The development and deployment of the INSATs have initiated a total communication revolution in India, providing human connectivity even to the remotest corners of India, through business communication, emergency communication, nation-wide radio networking, information networking services and rural telegraphy.

    His predecessor at Prasar Bharati, Nikhil Chakravarty, on the other hand, was a media personality in his own right, though not as technology-savvy.

    As founding editor of Mainstream, the journal whose gloss was in its deliberative content rather than on its cover, he expressed the insights that come from quiet contemplation of serious themes.

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