Sony Entertainment Television officially launched Max, its films, sports and events channel at a glittering bash in Mumbai‘s Oberoi Hotel on 10 March. Set CEO Kunal Dasgupta says that the channel has acquired the best of films for airing in the coming year. Hindi blockbusters like Hum Dil de Chuke Sanam, and even more importantly the biggest hit of the year "Kaho Na Pyaar Hain" which is still running to packed houses in India. "We have acquired a library of 800 movies for the channel.. and it‘s a fare that will attract audiences," says Dasgupta. "This apart also we have got one day cricket in Sharjhah, in March end, the cricketnext.com cup in Bangladesh, and other matches too." Apart from cricket special events around singing stars Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhonsale, among others are planned.

"The key words are maximum movies, maximum cricket, maximum events - Max," says Kacon Sethi, who heads Max.

The launch event was attended by a galaxy of television and film personalities: Jackie Shroff, Bhagyashree, Salil Ankola, video rights king Raman Maroo, one of the Taurani brothers, Rajiv Kapoor, Archana Puran Singh, Simone Singh, Fahad Samar, Jaaved Jaffrey, Ravi Behl, Mark Masceranhas, Krishen Kumar of T-Series, Mahesh Anand, Sonu Nigam, et al.

Rupert Murdoch‘s News Corp, which holds a 37 per cent stake in the Ronnie Screwvala promoted United Television (UTV) is negotiating with Screwvala to retain a stake in his company.News Corp had a 49 per cent stake in UTV prior of selling a 12 per cent stake off to Warburg Pincus which already held 24 per cent of holding in the company. The deal reduced Murdoch‘s stake to 37 per cent and he last year, had announced to sell it off to Mr Screwvala. Now Murdoch is in talks with Screwvala to retain 15 per cent stake in UTV. UTV will be listing on Indian brouses by May-June this year.

After his increased interest in India, Murdoch seems not willing to give up his stake in the huge media house UTV. News Corp is already getting ready to capture a market share in India in the era of convergence by plans to acquire Internet companies, ISPs and telecom companies as well as creating portals. Already having a chunk of the television market through its subsidiaty Star TV, News Corp wants to get deep in the convergence market. Since content would be an important issue in the forthcoming world of broadband, Murdoch won‘t like to give up his whole stake in the company which is rich in content and which could add value to his holding.

Incidently, Murdoch would visit Mumbai this weekend where UTV is based. But the exact purpose of his visit is still unknown and this could be a part of his agenda.

Adults beware, because kids have a mind of their own. This is one of the conclusions that one could draw from the recent study conducted by Cartoon Network in association with ACNielsen in the Asia Pacific region.
The study called New GenerAsians surveyed over 7700 children aged 7-18 living in 29 cities across Asia Pacific. It surveyed over 2000 kids from ten cities in India alone, more than any other country in the region. According to Anthony Dobson, Executive Director of Research & Strategic planning for Turner Entertainment Networks Asia, this was because "The sample size was not based on the population per se. India is the most culturally diverse country than any other in the region. There are more languages spoken here, more than China. Hence the larger sample size from India." The cities, which were part of the study, were Ahemdabad, Banglore, Culcutta, Chennai, Cochin, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kanpur, Ludhiana and Mumbai.

Some of the results were indeed startling, especially from the Indian kids. They revealed a strong preference for desi brands. Out of the 18 product categories researched top ten brands that enjoyed the strongest brand equity among the Indian kids are local. When asked what their favourite brands were in categories like jeans, shoes, chips, watches etc the answers were: Titan watches, Ruf ‘n Tuf jeans, Uncle chipps, Action shoes, Boomer Chewing Gum, Maruti car and Action Sportswear in their respective categories. This is in stark contrast with the rest of the region where the top spot is occupied by foreign brands. International brands that figure in the top ten for brand recall among kids in India include Cadbury, Pepsi and Kwality Wall‘s.

And parents need not worry either because at 90%, Indian Kids have a much higher aspiration for achieving good grades and getting admission in a reputed college/university as against only 66% of kids from rest of the region.

The Internet usage among the kids in India, even though low compared to the rest of the region, has gone up considerably. Only 1% of Indian kids use Internet and they use it mostly for checking exam results and playing games.

If anything the only problem with this survey could be that the sample size could be a bit less considering the fact that only 7700 kids were surveyed in the whole of Asia Pacific region

The Zee Network is to launch Channel Zed - a 24 hour educational channel - next month. This was announced today by Zee Interactive Learning Systems (Zils) chief Uma Ganesh. Channel Zed will have six hours of original educational programming and will be synchronised with www. zeelearn.com, a portal on education, which was flagged of by Zee group chairman Subhash Chandra. The whole learning concept is part of a multimedia effort that Zee Network is to gradually roll out in the coming months. It includes: television, interactive television, learning centres, E-Zee points (cyber cafes offering cheap access), Video, and publishing.
The Internet learning portal, www.zeelearn.com, has channels targeted at students, youth, women, senior citizens and the corporate executive. Each of the channels has comprehensive news, information, career guidance, interactivity, and educational tools to help each of these segments equip themselves better to learn.

Chandra says some Rs 600 million has already been invested in the multimedia learning project. "We expect the investment to finally touch Rs 1,000 million. We at the Zee Network consider education as an important part of the new economy."

Zee Telefilms‘ is set to enter the English movies and English general entertainment segment with its two channels Zee Movies and Zee English which are slated for launch on 15 March, 2000. Both the channels are to be encrypted and will be beamed from AsiaSat-3. "Television for the dot com generation" is the slugline for the two channels. The channels are expected to cater the Category "A" audience and claim to have a huge library of popular movies and other software. Zee English which is the general entertainment channel claims to have rights of popular serials like "Friends" and "The Benny Hill Show". The channel boasts to have the last four year programming of the most popular serial in the US "Friends" while competing channel Star World has only the earlier three years of the popular sitcom.

After Star TV Executive Chairman Gareth Chang‘s recent resignation, and NewsCorp Arthur Anderson officials have visited India twice to asses the value of Star TV, NewsCorp Chairman Rupert Murdoch plans a five day India visit starting 10th March. His wife Wendy Deng and son James, NewsCorp‘s Vice President of Music and New Media will accompany him.

The trip is expected to kick off with a two days in Bangalore, where he expects to kickstart NewsCorp‘s joint venture with Pramod Mittal‘s Ispat Group company eVentures. eVentures has already invested in two portals recently. Net Access, a Delhi based e-business service provider, where eVentures has invested about US$ 1.75 million acquiring a 26 equity.

The joint venture has also acquired 100 percent equity in netpligrims.com, a web based placement service provider. Besides eVentures deals, Star TV plans 10 to 20 percent in popular portals. The net plans to extend synergies between broadcasting and the Internet, "to increase our access to content and tap the traffic which comes on various sites on the Internet," said News television India Ltd.‘s CEO Peter Mukerjea in a newspaper interview. The strategy is via the mergers and acquisitions route, and plans are to for multi-point distribution including the Internet and mobile communications.

Besides, Murdoch will visit Bombay "to meet his office people" as a spokesman puts it. Also appointments are being arranged with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, State Minister for Information and Broadcasting Arun Jaitley, Minister for Information technology Pramod Mahajan and Opposition leader Sonia Gandhi.

Murdoch‘s visit, the first since June 1996 when he met Deve Gowda gains significance. The importance of India in it‘s Asian strategy is apparent. NewsCorp has doubled it‘s content related investment in India over the next five years. An additional US$ 20 million this year has for it‘s Indian operation. Murdoch will seeks a first hand view impression on the Broadcast bill including DTH and other regulatory issues, besides it‘s proposed Internet /mobile investments in India.