And now get ready for an Urdu version of KBC.

ARY Digital, which is all set for a mid-January 2002 launch, has secured the Urdu rights for the game show from Celador. ARY Digital was all set for a post Diwali launch in the Middle East, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, but has been postponed due to delays in shifting from PAS 10 to Thaicom 3. The shift has been necessitated to cut down on time lags in transmission, says Live Satellite Media director Atul Saraf, who is distributing and marketing the channel in India.

Saraf expects the channel to reach nearly 20 million homes in the next five months. Currently a 24 hour free to air digital channel, ARY Digital is planning to go pay by April 2002. Positioned as a family entertainment channel, Saraf expects to do better than other Urdu channels that met a sad end in the region, armed as it is with a plethora of cross border soaps and Bollywood based shows. Its only competitor in the region, ETV Urdu, was launched in June this year, but Saraf says ARY Digital will counter the competition with ‘better quality programming‘. The channel, which will have 10 hours of original programming, has already commissioned four serials in the suspense and family genres and is building up a library of Pakistani movies. Most soaps will be shot in London, Dubai and Turkey and should appeal to a pan Asian audience, says Saraf. Seventy per cent of the programming mix is to sourced from Pakistan and the rest from India.

The Urdu KBC will stay true to the ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?‘ format, but the finer details are yet to be worked out, says Saraf. The show will rope in a well known Pakistani actor to anchor the show, and is likely to go on air by mid 2002, he adds. The Urdu version will be the third from the subcontinent to launch a ‘millionaire‘ style game show. Koteeswaran, the Tamil version, went on air in November 2000 on the Sun TV network, at a time when Star and ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?‘ rights owner Celador were threatening to launch regional versions for Indian language channels.

ARY Digital is a television network owned by ARY, one of the largest gold manufacturers in the world, based in London. The channel was launched in August 2001. The network was formerly known as The Pakistani Channel; its name was changed when it was bought over by the ARY Group.

Some heavy duty action on the programming front is what the Sony group‘s AXN channel has lined up for its viewers with a slew of new shows set to debut over the next four months.

Covering essentially action series and reality programmes, 12 new programmes will be launched in the new year, AXN managing director Todd Miller said today.

AXN, which is currently in the middle of a major promotion around the Asiawide premiere of the multi-award winning blockbuster movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" on 29 December, will be launching three new reality shows in February, Miller revealed. These would be launched almost immediately after the two reality shows currently airing on the channel - "Survivor" and "Amazing Race" - complete their run in January. Elaborating on one of the shows which will be screening on AXN, Miller said "Fear Factor" (it aired on the NBC network) was the biggest show of the summer of 2001 on US television. Miller would not provide details of the other two shows. He added, again without giving details, that two new action series would also be premiered every month over the coming four months.

The channel, which concentrated on popularising two programming genres in the first year of its operations - action movies and action series, now has five programming franchises including action adventure-reality, action sports and adventure and action animation. Of these action movies, action series and action adventure-reality constituted AXN‘s principal programming pillars for AXN India, Miller said. Although action animation is not such a big franchise in India it is huge in the Far East, he added.

Queried as to when the channel expected to reach break even status, Miller said he was looking at 2004 or 2005.

On the distribution front, he said the channel currently reached 21.6 million homes, up from 18 million in May with the figure across Asia being 31.5 million.

B4U Music brought some cheer for India at the PROMAX Awards given away in Singapore on 5 December when it took away nine trophies.
Nearly 9,000 entries from across the globe vied for top promotion, marketing and design glories from more than 100 judges at the annual awards. The majority of the award-winning works were from Channel [V].

B4U Music won four Gold, three Silver & two Special Category awards, a company release said. The Special Category Awards (which are different from the Gold & Silver category) acknowledge the most outstanding piece of work from entries that come in from the broadcast industry, throughout Asia, in which B4U Music won ‘Best Of Show‘ & ‘Rocket Award for Rising Talent‘. There were over 700 entries for the Awards.

Commenting on the achievement, Kalyanasundaram, director - creative and editorial, B4U Music said: "With our debut entry itself, we have bagged the maximum PROMAX Awards for an Indian music channel. This endorses us as the most creative channel in the rat race of music entertainment. We don‘t run the race, we lead it."

The PROMAX & BDA Asia 2001, serves to showcase the latest developments in techniques and technology that will determine the future direction of the industry. It is also the meeting ground for those in broadcast, allowing them to connect with other creative minds.

PROMAX & BDA are non-profit organizations representing 4,200 member companies worldwide. The awards are given in recognition of promotion and marketing activity in electronic media. Judges looked for overall creativity, production quality and results in achieving marketing objectives.

(In the original report posted on 7 December, there were details provided of award winners from Star India, among other channels, alongside that for B4U. This information was incorrect in that it referred to awards presented at the PROMAX and Broadcast Designers‘ Association [BDA] Awards 2001 held in Miami in the US in July and not to the Singapore event. The error is deeply regretted: MANAGING EDITOR)