Indian information and broadcasting minister Sushma Swaraj again resorted to some political speak yesterday on the convergence bill. She said that she was not aware that the Group of Ministers (GoM) was supposed to meet to discuss the Fali Nariman redraft of the earlier convergence draft.
Earlier she and information technology minister Pramod Mahajan had insisted that the GoM was to meet on 21 December. Later they could not do so because they were too busy to meet because of the pressures of Parliament, reports indicated.

Swaraj said that the Bill was very much a priority with the government and it would take efforts to get it into shape. She added that hardly one per cent of convergence had happened in India, so there was no point in saying that the regulation accompanying it has been delayed.

The bottomline of Swaraj‘s statements is that the convergence draft will take some more time to see the light of day before being shaped as a bill. Following this it will be posted onto the Net for people‘s views. It will be placed before a parliamentary subcommittee before being introduced in parliament for enactment. The net is that, it is quite likely that it may scrape through in the budget session of Parliament, if things pan out. Or the industry will have to wait for the monsoon session.

Keep those fingers crossed!!!!

Convergence is the new buzzword. But you wouldn‘t know it by the urgency shown by government ministers to thrash out issues related to the matter.

The meeting of the Group of Ministers (GoM), scheduled for Thursday to finalise the Bill, has been deferred yet again.

The reason this time. According to government sources, the GoM meeting had to be deferred as members of the group were busy with Parliament proceedings.

No new date has been fixed yet.

It may be recalled that the Bill has already had two redrafts by the Fali nariman Committee before the latest redraft was ordered.

The courts have decided for the present but the battle lines are still drawn between peeved actor Anupam Kher and Zee Telefilms over his summary dismissal from the flop game show Sawaal Dus Crore Ka.

After the Mumbai High Court on Wednesday turned down his petition against Zee, Kher is now exploring options of filing a damage or a defamation suit against Zee. "I have left it all to my lawyers. They will decide whether it will be a damage suit or defamation suit, or to apply for compensation according to the arbitration clause in the letter the court has given us," Kher said at a hurriedly called press meet in New Delhi on Thursday.

Zee, meanwhile, served a legal notice on Kher on Thursday asking him to apologise within 10 days for allegedly making defamatory statements against the company or face a Rs1,000 million defamation suit. It states that Kher had defamed the company in the press by saying the studio set up for the game show allegedly did not have proper electricity and that the programme was bad.

He had also allegedly said there was no coordination between the organisers and participants. The contract did not provide for any of the parties to talk to the press regarding the game show, Zee sources added.

SDCK will air its last episode on Friday with Kher and Manisha Koirala as hosts before taking a break to possibly emerge in a new avatar.

Kermit Channel has ceased transmission in India, the only market where the children?s channel was still distributed in Asia.

Crown Media Holdings, the Los Angeles-based company which transmits Kermit, had been in discussions with Modi Entertainment Network (MEN) for pay TV signals throughout India, about a possible joint venture to leverage Kermit?s subscriber base for additional distribution and advertising revenue.

Both companies have now taken a mutual decision not to proceed further.

Following this development, MEN is in active talks with Hallmark Entertainment Network for the possible launch of a new channel targeting family audiences.

If that doesn?t work out, some sort of an alliance is definitely on the cards, according to sources.

Crown ceased broadcasting Kermit in all other Asian markets in November. Instead, six hours of dedicated programming for kids was added daily to the Hallmark feed. Three hours midmorning and three in the afternoon. The company now will take the same approach in India.

The decision to pull out Kermit from India was apparently taken by EM TV of Germany. EM holds the controlling stake in the channel after it bought out Kermit creator Jim Henson?s 50% holding.

Sony Entertainment Television?s Jeeto Chappar Phaad Ke (JCPK), which is set for launch in January, is generating a tremendous response from the public with over 900,000 entries received in just 12 days.

Rekha Nigam, senior VP, programming and production, said there would have been an even heavier rush if entries had been allowed through call centres and the Internet rather than only on competition postcards. The cut-off date for sending in the postcards was 25 November.

Sony looks to have a winner on its hands if the advance buzz around the channel?s riposte to Star TV?s Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) is anything to go by. Ten second ad spots have been sold at Rs275,000 which is much higher than what Star charged for KBC (Rs80,000) at the time of its launch. KBC rates peaked at Rs450,000 and has now settled at Rs350,000.