TV France International (TVFI), a firm which promotes the production of French Television programmes abroad, kicked off the seventh edition of its international marketplace Le Rendezvous (the French TV Screenings) today.

There is a large contingent representing Indian industry at the event that includes Sandeep Goyal, Zee Telefilms broadcast CEO, Monica Dalton (also of Zee), Tomali Bhattacharaya of Eenadu TV, Naresh Chahal of the Indian Broadcasting Foundation, Shailaja Kejriwal of Star Plus, Rathikant Basu of Tara TV - Broadcast Worldwide and Sanjay Bhattacharji of UTV, among others.

More than 170 buyers have registered to sample the 650 new programmes that 59 French companies like France Animation, CNDP and Gaumont will have on display at the proven硬 seaside resort of Saint-Tropez. The approach of the meet centers around content and ends on 14 September.

The productions cover a wide range of genres like drama series, movies made for the tube, features films and documentaries. Participants can view programmes of their choice at the video library, which is open everyday from 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. For the convenience of international visitors most programs have two versions: French and English.

This event has seen many important transactions occur in the past several years. Last year, the new channels of the Canadian group Astral (the Fiction Channel and the History Channel) which began transmitting last January acquired more than 500 hours of programming for more than 25 million francs.

TVFI also maximises the efforts of French companies participating at international markets, festivals, and special events, such as Le Rendez Vous, MIP-ASIA, The Sitenghi Market, the Tokyo Showcase, NATPE and the US Television Showcase.

TVFI was created in 1994 to support promotion and world sales of French television programmes. TVFI serves as a trade association, providing information and advice on international strategies to its 170 member companies, whose activities encompass programme production, broadcasting, distribution and finance.

The ESPN School Quiz 2001 kicked off in Mumbai last Thursday at the Shanmukhananda Hall in central Mumbai with over 3,000 schoolchildren from 150 schools in and around the city participating for a chance to get onto the national level competition which will go on air later this year.

This year, ESPN is targeting 23 centres to hold on-ground events across India. ESPN will be holding on-ground mega-events at six centers, namely Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Calcutta and Hyderabad. The on-ground school quiz events will be hosted by Charu Sharma. In addition written tests will be held across 17 centers to cover a much wider geographical spread.

Hosted by popular presenter Harsha Bhogle, the ESPN School Quiz 2001 will invite 108 schools from all over India to participate in the on-air quiz programme. These schools will be selected from over 1000 schools which are expected to participate in the ‘qualifying on-ground sports quiz events.

The ‘All India‘ winners of the ESPN School Quiz 2001 will receive, in total Rs 850,000, which will be spent for developing sports facilities at their school. Manu Sawhney, managing director of ESPN Software India, said whatever money was won would have to be spent by the school for sports development. ESPN would also look into the implementation of the prize money through follow-up visits to the school, Sawhney said. The individual team members along with their teacher will get a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be flown to a major international sporting event of their choice - European Cup finals, Wimbledon, Formula 1, Cricket or NBA - that is featured on ESPN, a company release says.

The show has five main sponsors with Milo as the presenting sponsor and Nike as the on ground sponsor. Camlin and Hero Cycles are the associate sponsors of the quiz.

Sawhney said the event was really growing at a fast clip and would have 23 centres up from 16 last year.

Aditya Sharma and Ishan Wagaskar representing the Rajhans Vidyalaya in the western suburbs of Andheri emerged winners in the first on-ground event of the sports quiz. Others schools which qualified for the national on-air quiz include St Mary‘s High School, Mazgaon, Bombay Scottish School, Campion High School, Modern English School, Chembur, and Chembur English High School.

Manu Sawhney, Managing Director of ESPN Software India Ltd. said: ‘We at ESPN STAR Sports are committed to promoting sporting excellence in India and ‘ESPN School Quiz 2001‘ further exemplifies our efforts in this direction. The national sports quiz provides a platform for the participants to represent their school in this forum, and bring pride and glory to their institution. ESPN is known for building brand equity with their viewers, and through this quiz we take a step further to strengthen this relationship.‘

Apart from the winner‘s Grand prize of RS 500,000, other prizes on offer are:
* RS 200,000 per team for national semi final winners.
* RS 100,000 per team for zonal final winners.
* RS 50,000 per team for Zonal semi final winners
* ESPN Milo gift pack for all first round winners.

All participants will get ESPN certificates of excellence, School Quiz Olympiad badges and T-shirts. This year, the sports quiz will be extended on the espnstar.com website and viewers can participate in the on-line version of the sports quiz at their convenience, the release says.

‘Sports Quiz offers an opportunity for our younger audiences to experience the sports brands on-ground, on-line, on-air and off-air. It also offers a phenomenal opportunity for our sponsors and advertisers to target the millions of school children around the country,‘ said Sawhney.

mpetition which will go on air later this year.

Channel Guide, which started beaming its test signals four months ago, was formally launched earlier this week at the Club in the northern Mumbai suburb of Andheri.
Channel Guide India managing director Rajesh Jain says that loads of research has gone into the channel before its launch.
‘We are spending more on state-of-art technology and distribution, but the programming cost is almost nil for us. All the data is provided by the advertising channels themselves. I feel this will help us to break even in fourteen months,‘ says a visibly relaxed and confident Jain.

The television channel is an innovation for the Indian market as it is hoping to serve as a promotional platform for the entire entertainment industry - namely, television, films, music and events.

‘It also provides programming info to viewers in a simple format. Any person will get to know maximum within six minutes what is going on on any of the channels,‘ he points out.

At present, Channel Guide is not charging advertisers and partners for placing their promos. Channel Guide COO Ravi Deshmukh says that advertisers will be provided prime and non-prime time slots with rates for the former being on a par with the prevailing commercial market rates.

Deshmukh reveals that that three channels have already confirmed their partnership status with Channel Guide.

From 1:00 pm to 7:00 pm, time slots will be sold to advertisers - be they channels or event creators or producers - for shows/events that each of them wants to promote. The rest of the time will be allocated to promos of various channels in a format designed by Channel Guide programming executives themselves.

Each screen can have a maximum of 16 small windows, showing what is going on 16 channels at any point of time along with a live programming schedule which will change every few minutes. The management is planning to reduce the number of channels visible to four at a time.

Programming blocks in Hindi and English have been set aside. "In the near future we are going to dedicate separate time slots for regional languages," says Deshmukh. "Marathi, Gujarathi, Bengali and Punjabi are the four languages on the cards."

One of the shows that Deshmukh is extremely kicked about is Meet the Telebrity featuring a popular TV personality. The first episode features Amar (Mihir) Upadhayay.

Channel Guide is beaming off Thaicom-3 as a free-to-air service. The channel is looking forward to getting an Indian uplinking from either Delhi or Hyderabad.

Technical Specifications:
Satellite : Thaicom - 3
Downlink Frequency : 3554 MHz
FEC : 2/3
Downlink Polarisation : Vertical
Symbol rate : 13333 Kg Symbol/sec
Free-To-Air