• sony

    Three matches already on Sony marriage-show 'Shubh Vivaah'?

    Sep 28, 2001

    Matches they say are made in heaven or as in this case on heavenly sets.

  • Ekta Kapoor is E&Y?s Start-up Entrepreneur Of The Year

    Submitted by ITV Production on Sep 28, 2001
    News Headline

    Balaji Telefilms‘ creative director Ekta Kapoor‘s must be finding it difficult finding cupboard space going by the number of awards she has been collecting. Kapoor added another to the list when she was awarded the Ernst & Young (E&Y) Entrepreneur Of The Year (EOY) award for 2001 at a high-profile ceremony in Mumbai yesterday which had minister for information and broadcasting Sushma Swaraj and a host of industrialists and government officials in attendance.

    Kapoor is the first woman entrepreneur to receive the coveted E&Y Startup Entrepreneur Of The Year award in India.

    The main award of the night - Entrepreneur Of The Year - went to the promoter-chairman of Hero Honda, Brijmohan Lall Munjal. Yogesh Deveshwar, chairman of tobacco major ITC, won the Manager Entrepreneur Of The Year.

    Jamshed J Irani, former managing director of Tata Steel, received a lifetime achievement award, while the four industry-category awards went to Suresh Krishna of Sundaram Fasteners (manufacturing), Prathap C Reddy of Apollo Hospitals (services), Jerry Rao of Mphasis BFL (information technology, communications and entertainment) and Anji Reddy of Dr Reddy‘s Laboratories (healthcare and life sciences).

    The recipients were selected by a six-member jury, headed by Rahul Bajaj, chairman two-wheeler major Bajaj Auto.

    The Ernst & Young EOY Programme was first established in the United States in 1986 and is now conducted in over 20 countries. The awards came to India in 1999.

  • Zee AGM

    Issues that may come up at Zee AGM today

    Sep 28, 2001

    Subhash Chandra-promoted Zee Telefilms holds its annual general body meeting today in Mumbai.

  • TRPs to top agenda at crucial IBF meeting today

    Submitted by ITV Production on Sep 28, 2001
    News Headline

    It‘s all happening at the Indian Broadcasting Foundation. The representative body of broadcasters is meeting today at 6:00 pm at The Club in Mumbai‘s western suburb of Andheri, with - you guessed it - the TRP issue at the top of the agenda.

    With Zee broadcasting CEO Sandeep Goyal having declared that he has absolutely no faith in both the ratings agencies - ORG Marg‘s INTAM and AC Nielsen‘s TAM Research - the meeting is expected to produce some fireworks.

    Star India CEO Peter Mukerjea, Sony Entertainment Television CEO Kunal Dasgupta and vice-chairman and managing director of SABe TV Markand Adhikari are also among those who have confirmed they will be present.

    According to Dasgupta, another issue that will be raised regards the "hedging" that Star and Zee apparently resorted to after the recent IBF decision to ban three agencies - McCann Erickson, HTA (Hindustan Thompson Associates) and HTA Fulcrum (handles the Hindustan Levers account) - for alleged payment defaults.

    It was the first concrete decision by the IBF to play a role like that of the Indian Newspaper Society (INS) which blacklists agencies that play truant as far as payments to member newspaper organisations are concerned. Once the agency is placed on the blacklist, other INS members are supposed to co-operate and not carry any of their ads.

    Though the IBF declared its blacklists on 15 September (a Saturday), till 19 September (Wednesday) when the dispute was resolved, neither Zee nor Star had instituted the ban. Even allowing for the fact that it takes 48 hours to make changes as far as ad scheduling is concerned for broadcasters that uplink from outside India, the embargo should have been effected by Monday evening or Tuesday morning at the latest.

    On Wednesday, when the embargo was called off, Star was quoted as saying it would take at least till Friday to pull out the ads.

    It is not clear whether any other issues will be raised at the meeting.


  • TAM Media Research

    TRPs to top agenda at crucial IBF meeting today

    Sep 28, 2001

    It's all happening at the Indian Broadcasting Foundation.

  • Issues that may come up at Zee AGM today

    Submitted by ITV Production on Sep 28, 2001
    News Headline

    Subhash Chandra-promoted Zee Telefilms holds its annual general body meeting today in Mumbai. The meeting comes at a time when the company is organising a major revamp on the programming front and indicates a "genuine effort to get things working again," seems to be the general view among a cross-section of financial analysts.
    Although the issues that are listed on the agenda of the meeting are pretty tame (including approval of salaries to be paid out to the company‘s directors), the topics that may come up for discussion, according to the analysts, are:

    The positives first - 1) How has encryption of the Zee bouquet proceeded? No real problems there as it has gone off pretty well which augurs well for the company as far as fund flows are concerned.

    2) What level have discussions reached to bring on board a strategic partner? While, there is a low likelihood of specifics being forthcoming, the industry seems to be taking the moves in that direction as a very good sign for the long-term as it would bring with it a more transparent and organised corporate ethic.

    3) The moves to streamline operations within the group by merging the many companies under the Chandra umbrella into fewer entities will be welcomed.

    4) How has the new programming strategy fared? Though some issues may be raised over why the over-all pick-up has not been as spectacular as Zee would have liked, there can be no quibble really as to the kind of effort that has gone into it so it is not expected to raise too many hackles. The fact that the revamp is still in its early phase naturally helps things.

    The negatives - 1)The problems over the links with cornered bull operator Ketan Parekh are still to be sorted out. Especially since Zee has been specifically mentioned in the report prepared by market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi).

    2) There is still some Rs1200 million that Chandra has to return to Zee Telefilms from the monies that were transferred to investment companies of Chandra‘s Essel group which were meant to help bail out Parekh.

    All-in-all the overall industry sentiment seems to be cautiously optimistic, with the rider that there is still a lot of work to be done.

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