Following close on the heels of its tie-up with the RPG-owned HMV Saregama, Etc has linked up a deal with Sony Music for joint marketing of selected albums.

The first joint venture called Jagratan is in a twin cassette album format and will comprise religious Jagrata bhajans and geets (devotional songs) rendered by the nightingale of Indian music Lata Mangeshkar exclusively for this album. The music is by Surendra Kohli and lyrics are by Balbir Nirdosh.

The album has been produced jointly by Sony, etc and Dainik Jagran - the largest circulated Hindi language newspaper in north India.

With the Navratras festival (Gujarati festival of nine nights of dancing and merriment) around the corner, this exercise is actually a tactical promotion of sorts. This tie-up has come about as etc‘s morning band based on religion, is very strong and has a very good rapport with viewers.

The selling and production will be handled by Sony online distribution and etc will be carrying the online promos, with revenue being shared by both etc and Sony.

Sticking to a schedule laid out at the end of July, B4U Entertainment Channel becomes B4U Movies on 2 October 2001, it was announced today.

In a new avatar 13 months after B4U Entertainment was launched on 3 September 2000, CEO Ravi Gupta and his team will be hoping to leverage what is B4U‘s main strength - its library of movies (over 2,000 films) that it holds the rights to, both current hits and blockbusters and old classics.

And wasting no time, the plan is to encrypt B4U Movies by November, Debashis Dey, chief distribution officer, B4U Television Network Ltd, says. According to Dey: "The proposed date for going pay is sometime in January ‘02. We feel that two months will be a reasonably good period for viewers to sample the channel." However, sister channel B4U Music will remain free-to-air a la MTV.

"After going pay in January the average rate per subscriber per month is proposed at Rs. 6.50p. We also feel that our channel will be a refreshing change, as it is not clustered by a bouquet of unwanted content, which currently the operators are forced to subscribe to," says Dey.

As for the programme line-up, current titles include - Lajja, Devdas, Suno Sasurji, Pyaar Deewana Hota Hai, Baas Itna Sa Khwab Hai, Daraar, Silsila Hai Pyaar Ka, Mohabbat, Beti No 1, among others, apart from hit films like Taal, Josh, Jungle, etc and old classics.

B4U Movies will telecast three hits per week - a Friday premiere, a Saturday blockbuster and a Sunday classic. In addition a super-hit ‘Movie Of The Month‘ will be screened, says Dey.

"In between films we intend to showcase a host of Bollywood based shows, highlighting film shooting, the studios and the classic films attached with them, Bollywood masala, gossip, behind the scenes, raw cuts, countdowns, market, flops, hits, comedies, super stars, and many more unique programmes in innovative formats," Says Dey.

Among the shows that are planned are:
Lehren - A Bollywood video magazine. The long running and popular ‘Lehren‘, will provide updates on Bollywood and the stars.
Studio Beat - A weekly round up from the studios in Mumbai. Using archival footage and interviews with old timers, stories around the studios that made the industry what it is today.
Superhit Hungama - A weekly countdown show set in exotic locations. Money Talkies - An update of the industry that throws light on the losers and the winners.
Box Office - A weekly update on collections and performance, reviews and analyses from trade pundits.
Shot Cut - Full length films cut down to half an hour, keeping only key scenes intact.
Director‘s Cut - Interviews with directors.
Stardom - profiles the stars.
Riot - The show presents some of the most hilarious scenes in Hindi movies. Countdown Caf鼯b> - The Indipop countdown that brings to you the best 10 tracks of the week. Ghazals, Punjabi Pop, Remixes and more.
South Side Story - Film update and news from southern India.
The Preview - Previews of the movies to be telecast on B4U.
Rushes - Daily updates on recent events in Bollywood.

The B4U Network is promoted by steel magnate L M Mittal, Kishore Lulla and Gokul Binani, all based in the UK. Lulla is also the promoter of Eros International LTD, the largest overseas film distributor and the first to take Hindi movies to the UK and the US.

CNN International Networks president Chris Cramer is livid. The reason. "Respected news organisations such as CNN and Reuters have become a target of a war of hatred, misinformation and cynicism," he says.

Cramer is especially annoyed by the spate of emails which have been doing the rounds denouncing the footage of Palestinians in East Jerusalem celebrating the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre as archival material (it is alleged to date back to 1991) and aired on CNN to sway public opinion. Cramer says that the origin of the rumour was from a chat room in Spain and that Reuters Television has since confirmed that the footage was indeed shot on 11 September and was not older material.

Cramer additionally adds that "fictitious CNN websites have appeared in the past week together with other allegations, disseminated via e-mail in South Africa, that CNN had allegedly reported that the attacks had been planned in South Africa." He says that this is totally untrue.

And according to him, what makes things worse is the fact that "e-mail attacks on broadcasters by lobby groups and those with special interests have become the norm in recent years. This was a concerted attempt to distort the news not just lobby against certain aspects of it.

Cyber-terrorism like urban terrorism is now an everyday occurrence, and it is equally as difficult to defend against it. Bitter irony when you consider that some of the earliest embracing of the Internet was by the US military to contain civil unrest in the event of a catastrophic war.