major brawl has broken out between Zee TV-owned Siticable and the management of Nickelodeon, the Viacom-owned kid?s channel launched in India last year. The reason: the latter?s discontent about how the channel is being distributed by Siticable in India. Apparently, the pay TV service has managed to get a cable TV penetration of less than 3-4 million, and a paying subscriber base less than one tenth of that.
The Nickelodeon Singapore office has been working on handing over the management of the business to MTV India. The details of the distribution deal will become clearer in the next two months. According to sources within MTV, the company would like to distribute the channel on its own as its management feels it has built up enough of a relationship with Indian cable operators. MTV India managing director Alex Kuruvilla believes that his company has enough strengths in distribution to take on independent channels outside of the Viacom network and distribute them in India.

The problem as far as the kid?s channel is concerned, according to sources, is that Nickelodeon and Siticable are bound together by a five year agreement. Of this just about a year has been completed. And there is no way Siticable will give it up easily. MTV India is just as determined to distribute it itself. The battle therefore may have just begun.
 

The Emerald island is going to see a lot of Harish Thawani, the promoter of media firm Nimbus Communications. The reason: Thawani has in partnership with the World Sports Group bagged the rights for Sri Lankan cricket for the next three years. The deal covers 14 tours and would involve 180 days of international cricket, reveals Thawani, who has emerged as one of the most important players of the sports rights business over the past two years.
While he is unwilling to give any fix on the price that WSG-Nimbus put in to be the successful bidder for the rights, industry estimates are that they cost him close to $30 million. The other bidder TWI apparently was not willing to match the bid.

The bid covers global telecast (both radio and TV) , sponsorship and stadium signage rights. Sources indicate that the final tab that WSG-Nimbus may have to cough up could be in the range of $45 million. WSG-Nimbus is a 50:50 joint venture between the UK based WSG plc and India?s Nimbus.

According to industry sources, WSG-Nimbus is likely to cut a deal with Zee Sports as the latter is quite hungry to grab quality cricket content, or whatever is left of it. News Corp has got the telecast rights to ICC backed cricket. And close associate, ESPN-Star Sports, has the rights to almost all the international cricket matches in Australia, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, England, West Indies, Pakistan.The only other player with cricket rights is Mark Mascarenhas of World-Tel who apparently has not found too many takers for the Bangladesh cricket property he has acquired for some $12 million for four years.
 

Doordarshan the national television service of India has revamped its entire site (www.ddindia.com) making it more userfriendly for a consumer target. Its sections include latest News, Bollywood beat, Explore India - Travel and Tourism, Program Bazaar and a discussion forum.
While latest news is a first hand service of India related content, Bollywood beat is a database of songs sung by Bollywood stars available in Realmedia. Other sections include Matters of India and Matters of Faith which are under construction. DD world live telecasts are also available in clippings. Program Bazaar provides information of programs whose rights DD posseses. A discussion forum has been set up that caters to three categories sports, politics and law and order. However interaction requires you to register first. Salient features include a polling session and a daily programming schedule (also under construction).

The site is powered by DSF Internet Services Pvt. Ltd. whose client roster includes All India Radio, Doordarshan, BMW, Motorola, GE-India, ICMR, Usha International, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India Info, Mantra Online, and many more.

Doordarshan currently has 49 studio centers, operates 21 channels with a network of 1150 transmitters, and reaches 87 percent of the country‘s one billion people.