After five years with ESPN Star Sports, Simon Yu, ESPN STAR Sports‘ senior vice-president, affiliate sales, will be moving on to take on new and different challenges in his career.

In a mutual agreement with the company, Yu will not be renewing his contract come 30 June.

Yu joined ESPN Asia in 1993 before the company‘s joint venture with Star TV in 1996. Yu is one of three people who started the distribution of ESPN in Asia. After the joint venture of ESPN and Star Sports, Yu continued to oversee the distribution sales of both channel brands and syndication in Asia.

Turner International India has made it clear that it has no plans to pick up a stake in any Indian channel at this point in time.

Anshuman Mishra, managing director of Turner International India, made the assertion while responding to queries about rumours doing the rounds that his company was considering picking up a stake in the Hindi entertainment channel SABe TV promoted by the Adhikari brothers.

"We have no plans for investment in any channel in India," he emphatically stated on the sidelines of the ‘Eureka 2001‘ awards ceremony held in Mumbai yesterday. The function was organised by the Entrepreneurship Cell of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mumbai, in association with CNN and Avendus.

Zee Telefilms Ltd (ZTL) has hired another CEO, adding to the clutch of chiefs who run the company. This time it is advertising agency Rediffusion DY&R president Sandeep Goyal who is going to be at the helm of its broadcasting operations.

Sandeep Goyal: From advertising to broadcasting

"We are happy that we have found in Sandeep the right mix of creativity and commercial acumen," says Zee TV chairman Subhash Chandra. "Despite him being young - just 38 years- Sandeep will be able to build on the strengths of the Zee Network which he is inheriting. He will be able to build stronger bonds with stakeholders (media buyers, viewers and the society) by providing them the infotainment they are looking for. We welcome him on the team."

Sandeep Goyal Picture courtesy Business Standard

CNN is to begin broadcasting eight of its news and feature programmes in Korean for the first time as part of the global news networks distribution agreement with CSTV.

These programmes will be subtitled in Korean for cable audiences in South Korea starting today, a CNN release states.

The programmes airing in Korean will initially include ‘Larry King Live‘, ‘BizAsia‘, ‘World Beat‘, ‘CNNhotspots‘, ‘CNNdotCOM‘, ‘ebizasia‘, ‘Science and Technology Week‘, and ‘Business Unusual‘. Yernho Kim, CEO and Chairman of CSTV says: "We are very excited to be able to offer localised versions of CNN‘s world quality news and other programmes to Korean audiences. In future, we will continue to expand our localised services to deliver a wider range of CNN‘s programmes to a greater audience."

CSTV Korea (Cable and Satellite TV Korea) signed agreements with Turner International Asia Pacific Inc. (a subsidiary of AOL Time Warner) for exclusive distribution of CNN International to cable system operators in Korea in November 2000. This was a landmark agreement as it meant CNN was the first international news channel to be officially distributed in South Korea.