ESPN-Star Sports, a fifty-fifty joint venture between Star Television and ESPN started in 1996, is launching India‘s first live sports news programme on September 25. While talking to the press conference in Mumbai, Manu Sawhney, Managing Director, ESPN Software India said, "Sportsline is one of the biggest in-house programming initiatives for the company. Sportsline will provide the Indian sports fans the most up-to-date news and best sporting action around the world."

Sportsline will be featured three times a day with three repeat telecasts. Sportsline Today, the morning bulletin, is scheduled for 7:00am every weekday morning, which will be updated version of previous night‘s news. Sportsline Tonight, the evening news bulletins, will be telecast live at 7:30pm and 10:00pm.

Through the half-hour, the news will contain various elements such as international headline news, cricket news, football wrap-up, India diary, sponsored section, cricket rankings, India results and play of the day.

The programmes will be anchored by John Dykes, Alan Wilkins and Misha Grewal, Harsha Bhogale will be exclusive ‘onground‘ hosts. Sunil Gavaskar and Geoff Boycott will be special guests on the show to provide exclusive insights, analysis and forecasts about on-going cricket matches.

ESPN Star has tied up with the various agencies as well as channels for programmes. Dez Carckhill will be the producer.

When asked about the growing competition in Sports channels market, Mr Sawhney while welcoming the healthy competition which can give quality programmes to the viewers, did remark that ESPN Star Sports has already build its brands over the last four years as quality programme provider.

The subscription fees for the ESPN Star Sports is not going to be increased in near future.

The citadel is cracking. After retaining his employees for longer than many an Indian production house, Prannoy Roy‘s New Delhi Television (NDTV) has been hit by some defections.

Three top anchors and programme hosts - Shireen, Arup Ghosh and Sharad Sharma - quit NDTV today to set up a TV software company called Network 1 Pvt Ltd. Shama, the chief executive of the proposed company, says the aim is to build up an organisation where talent would be given due recognition. As if this was not enough, NDTV has lost two other senior journalists in its Mumbai bureau, including long time Mumbai correspondent Shishir Joshi.

The Sharma-Shireen-Ghosh trio is expected to make programmes for other satellite channels and, according to Mumbai-based sources in the TV industry, are expected to open negotiations with TV channels soon. NDTV was unavailable for comments. But sources in NDTV said that the rebel `Trimurti‘ put in their papers on Tuesday morning after meeting up with Prannoy Roy, who has just returned after a trip to the US.

Elaborating on their mission statement to realise their dreams in a growing industry as entrepreneurs, Sharma says, "Network 1 is going to bring in the latest digital technology and the best talent to create a world class production facility that has vision and credibility."

According to Arup Ghosh, one of the best bilingual anchors that NDTV had, "I believe that talent should be given its due recognition with enthusiasm and teamwork complementing it."

However, Ghosh refused to elaborate when asked whether he meant that during his over five years of stay at NDTV his talent had not been given due recognition and that was the reason for quitting. The initial programming thrust will be producing, anchoring and presenting TV programmes of the non-fiction genre for anybody and everybody. Plans are to add the Internet and radio also to their portfolio and dabble in the entertainment sector too.

Media watchers see this as a major dent in the castle of Roy, one of the most well-known faces of Indian TV. Their contention: at this juncture when NDTV‘s relationship with the Rupert Murdoch-owned Star TV is uneasy owing to various issues, three top anchors and hosts quitting the organsiation will make life that much diffuclt for the Roys, while that much easy for NDTV‘s competitors.

Discovery Communications will bring to the Indian subcontinent two more channels next year, including the popular ‘Discovery Health‘ and another channel which will be a toss between its history channel called ‘Civilisation‘, ‘Discovery Kids‘ and ‘Discovery Travel & Adventure‘. All these blocs are currently aired on the main channel.
Discovery health would include some India specific programming including Yoga and Ayurveda in keeping with the channel‘s policy of focussing on local programming.

Discovery has however decided to continue as a stand-alone platform rather than join one of the larger broadcasting bouquets such as Zee, Sony, CNBC or Nickelodeon. National Geographic which is being included in the Star TV bouquet is cutting into Discovery‘s revenues due to attractive packages offered by Star TV. Discovery markets itself for Rs 5 per subscriber while National Geographic markets itself for Rs 2 per subscriber.

Doordarshan‘s marketing seems to be working with more and more Indians opting to stay in India and watch the Olympics on Doordarshan than spend a little more than a lakh to go to Sydney.

However analysts watching Doordarshan‘s marketing of the Games have compared it with ESPNs and Star Sports glitzy advertisements on their bouquet of channels and have criticised Doordarshan for not doing so on its wide network of channels. DD is expecting to rake in Rs 200 million in ad revenue.

Pritish Nandy Communications has received the broadcast management rights for the three DD channels and is claiming that its revenues will soar from Rs 140 million in ‘99-00 to Rs 500 million this year. The fact that no one expects Indians to win any medals and Indians obsession with cricket have not helped either.

To add icing to the cake, DD will be flying a 21 member team to Sydney to customise the feed for India and provide special graphics. Analysts however feel that DD would have been better off sticking to the live feed in the form of six channels which it will get from the Sydney Games authorities.

All this talk does however make one feel that the Olympic athletes are not going to be the only ones to perform gymnastics this Olympics. Indian viewers may well have to do some head stands to get a load of the action, knowing DD‘s tendency to mess up even when the going is simple and good.