Mumbai-based Crest Communications, a fairly new entrant into the the television serial business, has set itself a target of having six programmes on air before the end of 2001.

Crest, which is better known for its 2-D and 3-D animation and graphics services, will be focussing its programming towards providing quality entertainment for the whole family, according to AK Madhavan, senior vice-president, international business.

At present Crest is working on the pilot of a gameshow for children which will have a high level of interactivity as well as technological innovation, Madhavan says.

An idea being explored is to use phone lines not only for calling in but also to allow a participant to play using the keys on his phone instrument as a game console, says Madhavan. For this, Crest is in contact with national telephone services provider MTNL, he adds.

Madhavan said of the six projects they were planning, two will be high quality products with the kind of production values seen in the critically acclaimed TV series Malgudi Days.

The other four would be your average bread and butter variety of soaps and sitcoms, the kind which were proliferating across the small screen at present, Madhavan said.

Queried on the costs involved, Madhavan said the top rung series would cost in the region of Rs 600,000 per half hour episode while the other four would cost between Rs 200,000 and Rs 300,000 per half hour episode.

Three Crest programmes have aired on TV till date. They are "Mere Angane Mein", a sitcom on Sony Entertainment Television; "Meri Marzi", a chat show for "tweens" (nine to 14-year-olds) on Doordarshan Metro. And "Purush Kshetra" on Zee TV which was hosted by Kiron Kher and modelled on the lines of Oprah Winfrey‘s celebrated talk show.

Prakash Jain, promoter of the Prabhat and Suprabhat regional language channels, yesterday categorically denied that he was scouting for buyers for the two channels.

While scotching market rumours that his Marathi channel Prabhat and Kannada channel Suprabhhat were on the selling block, Jain however, said he was open to alliances which would bring in fresh investments.

Jain made his comments in response to rumours circulating that sale talks with the Hindujas, owners of In Cable and later with industrialist VM Jog of Jog Constructions, had fallen through.

The whole Zee network is going pay from May, group corporate affairs head RK Singh confirmed today, adding that the rollout of set top boxes for Zee TV has already begun.

Singh said the entire Zee network, including the four regional language Alpha channels and Nickelodeon, would be included in the package which would cost between Rs 20 and 30.

While Singh would not give an exact figure on the price, a Mumbai-based cable operator revealed that Zee was selling their bouquet at RS 25 and the cost of the set top box for Zee TV was RS 14,000.

Singh wouldn‘t reveal when the switchover to pay would take place but didn‘t exclude the possibility of it going through some time in the middle of May.

Cable operators would be offered a la carte as well as network rates, Singh says.

The Zee Network includes, Zee TV, Zee News, Zee Cinema, Zee MGM, Zee English and Zee Music. The Alpha channels are Marathi, Punjabi, Gujarati and Bengali. Zee distributes Nickelodeon in India and hosts two one hour programming slots for the children‘s channel, mornings and evenings, on Zee TV.