Continuing a re-branding exercise that kicked off in February, Star has integrated its corporate logo across all its channels from Sunday, 20 May. The new logo has ‘Just Imagine‘ as the company‘s catch line. "We had outgrown the earlier logo which had TV in it. The logo‘s key line ‘Just Imagine‘ signifies that we are more than just a television company. We are today a multimedia company into radio, Internet partnerships, cable partnerships and films," says Yash Khanna, Star‘s head of corporate communications.

Tamil Nadu politics has this tendency to rotate the party that occupies the seat in the state legislature. So when the DMK received a whipping from the AIADMK at the state‘s hustings, the results were not really unexpected.This despite the smear campaign carried out by the DMK against AIADMK chief Jayalalitha just before the state went to the polls to elect a new assembly.

What will the loss of the DMK and Jayalalitha‘s victory mean for the cable and satellite television industry? Well for one, the industry is expecting the resurgence of the AIADMK backed Jaya TV, which has been drifting around with a very pronounced limp. Jaya TV (once christened JJ TV) was never a player of significance with the two leaders - Sun TV and Raj TV - in the market place solidly entrenched in the viewership stakes, thanks to the Tamil movie libraries which they have signed on for perpetuity.

However, Jaya TV will surely try to change this and make a push to grab the best movies once again, apart from starting investigations into Sun TV‘s and the DMK‘s "misdeeds".

Look out for a war on the cable TV ground networking front. Jayalalitha knows that he who controls the ground, can decide what is beamed into television homes from the skies.

Around five years ago, she had initiated the setting up of a master control room which would provide a centralised feed to all of Chennai and it would spread to the other districts of Tamil Nadu over time. In those days, Siticable was battling to corner a share of Chennai‘s cable TV market. Ditto with Incable. The only player that had a sizeable presence was BiTV‘s Cable TV Networks (now the Star India owned Hathway Cable TV & Datacom). Just as the AIADMK was getting its act together in cable TV, in May 1996, Jayalalitha lost the assembly elections and resigned. This resulted in her plans evaporating. The master control room remained a stillborn idea.

With the DMK rising to power, Sun TV promoter and DMK scion Kalanithi Maran‘s star was on the ascendant. Along with his brother Dayanidhi Maran, he quickly set up a Master Control Room - under the aegis of Sun/Sumangali Cable Vision - which today offers a feed to more than 70 per cent of Chennai‘s two million C&S universe. The SCV onslaught was so fierce, that Hathway retreated from the market place. It did a deal with SCV, winded up its headends and agreed to share advertising revenues for programming that it would air on the SCV network.

Will Star continue with its old arrangement with SCV is something that will have to be watched out for. Of course, some of the cable affiliates of Sun Cable Vision would continue with the old arrangement, but there‘s no doubt there will defections to the Jaya cable TV camp.

The coming of Jayalalitha to power could also hamper the plans of Sun TV to go digital, encrypt its bouquet of channels and go pay at some stage in the future. For around a month now the network has been beaming out test digital signals of its channels. If Jayalalitha grabs hold of the ground, then Maran‘s plans to pursue pay TV may well have to be dropped or curtailed for a while at least.

Yes Sun TV is popular and there would be a major furore amongst Tamilians if it were shut off from C&S homes. But in a consumer unfriendly country, will that matter to anyone? This is a call that Sun TV‘s Kala will have to take very cautiously. .

Broadband may still be a while away but Gaurang Shah CEO, SparkTv, wants to position his company as one of the leading content providers to the media industry when it does happen.

"Interactive Television is one of the next big things coming and with the advent of broadband technology there would be a mad rush of channels trying to exploit this medium," says Shah. "Since we were among the first people to explore this area, we need not fear competition. A year or two from now others might acquire the technology but we still would be ahead since we have the technology as well as the knowhow," he says.

And Shah is confident the first mover advantage will keep Spark ahead of the competition. Shah‘s plans for SparkTv include interactive content production, repurposing existing video, interactive video authoring, virtual anchors, virtual stage and live and delayed webcasting. With a fully equipped studio, Spark presently provides facilities right from copy writing and design services to full animation and video creation, he says.

Shah said he had pumped in Rs 10 million into developing the idea. Since the set-up required for content creation was already in place, there was no additional investment in new equipment, he pointed out.

SparkTv was looking at producing 30 hours of programmes in a month, developing original content as well as re-purposing the content the channel already has to make it interactive. Shah said he expected a turnover of RS 500 million annually once broadband becomes a reality in India.

And when would this happen? Shah said he saw it interactive TV becoming a viable proposition within the next two years. Shah claimed deals had already been struck with three major players but he couldn‘t reveal their names because of non-disclosure clause in place.