MUMBAI: TV18 and Viacom18?s venture, IndiaCast, has launched the international version of MTV India in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. With this launch, MTV India?s international distribution footprint now spans 31 countries.

MTV India will be available on Pehla branded packs across DTH, Cable, IPTV and SMATV in Bahrain, Cyprus, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Sudan and Mauritiana. MTV India will also be launching on other platforms shortly.

Featuring music and youth reality content from India in Hindi, MTV India will complement Viacom International Media Networks? (VIMN) existing MTV channel, which services the Middle East and North Africa region with Arabic and international music and entertainment content.

This is IndiaCast?s second channel in the region after Hindi GEC COLORS was launched in September 2010. The company?s team in Dubai, which currently distributes and handles advertising sales for COLORS, will be managing the distribution and sales for MTV India as well in the region.

This launch expands the offering for advertisers in the region, allowing them to reach both family and youth audiences.

IndiaCast COO Gaurav Gandhi said, "Indians are passionate about their music and Hindi Music in particular has a huge following both in India and overseas. The launch of MTV India in the Middle East & North Africa region, will give an opportunity for the South Asian and other audiences to connect with the Indian music and reality programming that they love most. MTV India is our second brand in the region and we intend to grow our presence here with more offerings from our extensive news and regional channel portfolio in the near future."

MTV India business head Aditya Swamy said, "MTV India has constantly engaged and entertained young India and now the opportunity to do so with young people in the other countries is very exciting. While we will leverage our cult franchises such as Roadies, Unplugged and Rush in these markets, we will also look at some region specific initiatives which will resonate with the local audience."

MUMBAI: Viacom18, a joint venture of Network18 Group and US-based Viacom, has suffered losses for the fourth straight quarter, dragged down by new channel launches and its motion pictures business.

The loss for the fiscal first-quarter have, however, narrowed from the trailing quarter as revenue has started flowing from these channels. The increase in its expenses during the quarter ended June 30, 2012 was on account Rs 711 million spent on its earlier-shelved Hindi movie channel (against no expenses a year ago), a 53 per cent increase in its marketing and distribution costs to Rs 1.03 billion from Rs 674 million a year earlier.

The company reported a net loss in the first quarter of 2012-13 against a small profit a year earlier, due to losses in the motion pictures and new broadcasting businesses.

Viacom18, which owns a group of entertainment channels including flagship Hindi entertainment channel Colors, posted a net loss of Rs 249 million in the first quarter against a profit of Rs 26 million a year earlier. In the fourth quarter of 2011-12, the broadcaster had reported a net loss of Rs 337 million.

The company reported operating losses of Rs 166 million from new broadcasting operations and Rs 153 million from motion pictures business. Operating profit of Rs 238 million came from Viacom18?s continuing broadcasting operations.

Viacom18 said, "Our continuing business, including new operations, grew at about 12 per cent over the corresponding quarter last year. Colors turned in another steady quarter in the Hindi GEC space in a highly competitive market environment. It continues to be the No. 2 channel during weekday prime time with 5 shows that are slot leaders in their respective slots."

The operating losses in new broadcasting operations and motion pictures business pulled down the company?s overall operating profit by 87 per cent to Rs 24 million in the first quarter from Rs 189 million a year earlier.

The discontinued HMC and The Indian Film Company businesses earned the company operating profit of Rs 105 million against a loss of Rs 28 million, primarily because of the revenue flow of Rs 911 million from the sale of a library of 500 movies to Star India in January.

Viacom18?s total operating revenues were up 44 per cent in the first quarter of 2012-13 to Rs 4.0 billion (which included revenue realised from sale of the movie library) from Rs 2.76 billion a year earlier.

Mumbai: Multi Screen Media?s family entertainment channel Sab TV is launching a new show titled ?Golmaal Hai Bhai Sab Golmaal Hai? on 13 August.

The show will air Monday to Friday at 8 pm. It will be competing with the genre leader Balika Vadhu (Colors), Iss Pyar ko Kya Nam Du (Star Plus), Rab Se Sona Ishq (Zee TV) and Byaah Hamari Bahu Ka (Sony Entertainment Television).

Produced by Optimystix, the channel attempts to show the marriage of romance with comedy.

Sab TV EVP and business head Anooj Kapoor said, "It?s a perfectly packaged family entertainer with the ethos of SAB TV, of humour, family values and a lot of entertainment. Its got familiar faces and our story line is simple and effective. The concept of a rom-com is mostly limited to films; we have tried to bring it instead to your TV sets."

Optimystix producer Vipul.D. Shah added, "We have always tried to do something new and fun. This show of ours aims to provide wholesome entertainment for the entire family. It?s a love story that only gets funnier with every episode. It has great production quality and some very fine actors and of course, a very charming story. I have a feeling the show will definitely strike a chord with its audience."

Mumbai: Colors is ending original programming in the afternoon band, a trend that has spread across the other Hindi general entertainment channels as well.

The only original show at the 1 pm slot, Na Aana Is Des Laado (one of Colors? oldest fiction properties), has its final airing on 27 July. The show is based on the issue of female foeticide.

Colors has decided to air repeats of its primetime shows during afternoons after 27 July.

Though the channel said that Laado is coming to its logical ending, the ratings tell another tale. As per TAM data (provided by Hindi GECs), the show was averaging less than 1 TVR.

Colors weekday programming head Prashaant Bhatt said, "We do not believe in stretching a story unnecessarily. We are happy with the recognition and appreciation that the show has received so far and believe that it is time to wrap up the show. Drawing curtains to this fiction show makes us proud about having created such a bold series and we promise to continue to innovate and experiment in our future programming as well."

In an attempt to beef up its afternoon programming, Colors had taken three of its fiction shows - Laagi Tujhse Lagan, Hamari Saas Leela and Laado - to the afternoon slot from 3 October last year.

Laado, which used to air Monday to Friday at 10.30 pm slot prior to that, was replaced by Bigg Boss Season 5, while Havan replaced Hamari Saas Leela at 7 pm. As per the channel?s strategy to improve weekday viewership, it took its popular show Veer Shivaji from weekend band (Friday-Saturday, 8.30 pm) to weekdays (Monday-Friday) at 8.30 pm.

Colors had also replaced Laagi Tujhse Lagan to the afternoon slot. Poor ratings, however, forced the channel to take Hamari? and Laagi? off-air in December and January respectively.

MUMBAI: Raghav Bahl is restructuring his media and entertainment companies under three operational heads as he gears up for expansion after getting Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) to indirectly invest in it.

Forming IndiaCast, a distribution company that houses content syndication as well, Bahl has got individual heads to shepherd the entertainment, news and distribution businesses that are entering a new growth phase.

Bahl‘s broad plan could be to bring the ETV regional entertainment channels under Viacom18 operational management while its news entities will be under TV18, a source familiar with the development says.

It is not clear yet if this operational structure will be allowed to transition into an equity arrangement. For this to happen, media conglomerate Viacom will have to agree to invest and induct the ETV entertainment channels into the joint venture company, Viacom18, where it holds 50 per cent stake.

"Nothing has been finalised yet. Viacom, no doubt, will be happy to have the regional GECs under Viacom18. A lot will also depend on how RIL wants the structure to evolve. But there are other issues as well," the source says.

As part of the plan to fortify its regional presence, TV18 acquired partial ownership in the broadcasting assets of Eenadu after valuing it at Rs 21 billion. With the purchase, the company has got 100 per cent stake in 5 regional news channels of ETV (where RIL has 100% interest), 50 per cent stake in 5 regional GEC channels excluding Telugu (where RIL has 100% interest) and 24.5 per cent stake in ETV Telugu channels (where RIL has 49% interest). The news channels include ETV Uttar Pradesh, ETV Madhya Pradesh, ETV Rajasthan, ETV Bihar, and ETV Urdu. The regional GECs are ETV Marathi, ETV Kannada, ETV Bangla, ETV Gujarati and ETV Oriya.

The restructuring exercise comes in the wake of these developments and the exit of Haresh Chawla who functioned as Network18 and Viacom18 Group CEO.

"The role of Chawla was too unwieldy as he had full control of all the group companies . After his exit, a restructuring was needed keeping in mind the growth plans," the source explains.

Network18 Group has a combined turnover of Rs 19.52 billion that includes 50 per cent of Viacom18 (Colors, MTV, etc), the news channels under TV18 (CNBC TV18, CNN IBN, IBN7, etc), the web properties and HomeShop18. As the company gears up to launch a Hindi movie channel (put on hold) and regional-language channels, a breakup in roles is the need of the hour.

"It wasn‘t practical for Chawla to oversee the whole of Bahl‘s empire. His operational role at Viacom18 at times was uncalled for and led to a quiet unrest," says a senior executive who has left the company on condition of anonymity.

Bahl Wednesday announced the hiring of Sudhanshu Vats, a senior executive at HUL, as the group CEO of Viacom18 Media. Under
 him will fall Colors, Comedy Central, MTV, Nick, Sonic, Vh1 and Viacom18 Motion Pictures. He has already recruited Anuj Gandhi, an industry veteran, to spearhead IndiaCast‘s growth.

Bahl‘s new structure will mean that the non-ad sales business falls under the care of Gandhi while Vats gets to groom the entertainment networks and Sai Kumar to directly nurse the news and web businesses while continuing his role as Network18 and TV18 Group CEO.

"Earlier, everybody was reporting to Chawla. Now the reality is that each of these lines of businesses need individual management and are too expanded to be operationally under one CEO," the source says.

Take IndiaCast, for example. The new distribution company, under which also resides the syndication business, is already having a turnover of Rs 4.30 billion. Bahl‘s ambition is to scale this up to the size of the biggies, particularly in a digital environment where there is going to be exponential growth in subscription revenues. Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (Zeel) reported domestic subscription of Rs 9.22 billion in FY‘12 and Rs 1.32 billion through other sales and services (syndication sales, playout & transmission services and facility usage income).

Bahl has given IndiaCast a wider playground, bringing under its umbrella content asset monetisation across geographies, platforms and mediums. The other channel distribution companies do not have such a broad canvass and content syndication falls outside their functional zones.

"Bahl believes that IndiaCast has enough leg room to grow and become a Rs 10 billion company over the next few years after digitisation of cable TV spreads," a media analyst at a broking firm says.

Vats will also have his plate full as the group expands its regional footprint and comes out with a Hindi movie channel and other entertainment products that are sure to launch in a digitised environment.

Kumar will have a tough task cut out for him as he tries to beat slow revenue growth for news channels. The web properties will 

also have to be guided to a scale that will make it comfortable for Bahl to tap the American market for raising capital through a public float.

After being rescued from a debt overhang by RIL, Bahl is laying out the new leadership structure that will provide fertile ground for new growth.

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