ITV

Category: GECs

  • Reliance Communications’ Falcon Cable System becomes operational

    MUMBAI: Reliance Communications owned Falcon Undersea Cable System has started its operational from today unleashing international bandwidth between India, Middle East and Europe.

    The Flag Telecom Global Network would be the world’s largest undersea cable system covering 65,000 route kms, with the launch of Falcon. The current bandwidth on India-Europe route is controlled by VSNL and Bharti.

    “Falcon will have an equally powerful impact on the economic front, driving higher levels of trade, commerce and global integration,” Reliance ADA chairman Anil Ambani said.

    The vision at Reliance ADA group is to ‘give millions of ordinary people across the world the means to realize their dreams, the power to shape their destiny, the chance to fulfill their true and diverse potential,” Ambani added.

    The Flag Global Network bridges the distance between 35 diverse developed and developing economies, connecting the global economic hubs in USA, UK, Germany, France, Middle East, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, China and Japan to name a few.

    The Company’s Flag is the first global network of this scale to provide integrated connectivity on one seamless network to the three highest growing regions; India, Middle East and China; in terms of international bandwidth demand.

  • Zee Studio follows ‘The Path to 9/11’ with five hour miniseries

    MUMBAI: To acknowledge the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 events Zee Studio will air the five hour miniseries The Path to 9/11 on 10 September from 9-12 pm and on 11 September from 9-11 pm. In the US the show will air on ABC on the same days.

    The miniseries is based on the 9/11 commission report.
    The report documents the trail from the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 to 9/11 in 2001. The miniseries has been shot in Toronto, New York, Washington and Morocco.

    The show takes viewers inside the world of the FBI, CIA, White House and into the world of the likes of Dick Cheney, CIA director George Tenet played by Dan Lauria, Condeleeza Rice, Madeleine Albright. Also playing an important role is veteran actor Harvey Keitel as FBI agent John O ‘ Neill who spent years chasing Bin Laden.

    The miniseries starts on 11 September 2001 showing teams of hijackers boarding four American airliners.
    Using mobile phones they keep in touch with each other for a progress update prior to the hijacking. The miniseries then goes back to 1993. On a similarly ordinary day, New York was shocked by a deadly bombing at the World Trade Center. The miniseries reveals the fact that the bombing could have been stopped. Unfortunately the authorities did not take seriously the warning of an informant Emad Salem.

    “They did not think you’ll were clever enough to do something like this” he is told by CIA analyst Patricia Carver played by Amy Madigan. In fact Salem was dropped by the agency after asking for $500 a week only to be reinstated after the bombing. Madigan’s character keeps asking her bosses to take stronger action against terrorism. America was very complacent regardless of whether the Republicans or the democrats were in power. In that and other respects the miniseries tries to be fair.

    Later on it also shows how the Clinton administration messed up capturing Bin Laden and not just once. For instance later on in the miniseries when the CIA surrounds Bin Laden’s house in Afghanistan they are unable to get authorisation to capture him for fear of a political repercussion should civilians get harmed. Political decorum it would seem is an ally of terrorism. Another strong point is that a lot of the sequences like the bombing have visual panache. The viewer gets disoriented at such moments as he/she should be.

    It is also unfortunate that there seemed to be perhaps too much awareness of jurisdiction which could prevent initiative. For instance when two NYPD officers take evidence from the World Trade center site in 1993 as they feel that it will damaged by rubble they are fired by their superior as it is then FBI’s case. Also the democrats apparently put up a wall that prevented the agencies from sharing information with each other. How is one supposed to tackle a threat if the left hand does not know what the right one is doing?

    A big plus is that the miniseries also focusses for a little bit at least on the terrorists. That way the viewer is able to see two sides of a coin. In fact the terrorists view the 1993 bombing as a failure. The aim at that time was to bring down the twin towers which was what they managed to do in 2001. In a telling scene in a nightclub they brag about how what they are doing will force America to change its policies. One member talks about having invented a small bomb that can be pieced together on a plane and then detonated using a Casio watch.

    Actor Nabile Elouahbi registers strongly as Ramzi Yousef who masterminded the 1993 bombing. Sometime later he had tested a small bomb on a plane that killed a passenger and nearly brought the plane down.

    In Manila there is a fire at his lab and the efforts of an alert policewoman lead to the discovery of his laptop, which show that he had planned to take terror to another level by using a dozen airliners in the US. He also planned to assasinate Clinton when he visied philipines by using a truck. The American officials look on in disbelief when they learn of this. It seems incompreghensible that anyone would have the audacity to plan such a complex attack.

    Yousef is eventually brought down in Pakistan after managing to evade the Philippines authorities and by doing that Keitel’s character is put on Bin Laden’ trail. Yousef was in fact told that Bin Laden was a wealthy man who could provide finance.

    It is to the credit of actors like Elouahbi that the depiction of terrorists is not one dimentional. The show also earns points for being as realistic as possible. This writer saw the first hour of the show and it should be more intriguing and complex as it goes along. It should be well worth watching for those who want to know not just about how 9/11 happened but also why and the circumstances around it.

     

  • CII workshop seeks to address copyright issues in the Indian entertainment sector

    MUMBAI: The Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) will orgabnise the second edition of its legal workshop series Technology, Value Adds & The Law on 13 September 2006.

    The aim is to address copyright issues in the Indian entertainment sector. The workshop will focus on copyright issues with respect to new technologies and value add services (Vas).
    At the workshop the CII-Lawquest legal paper Copyrights & Emerging Technologies will be released.
    There will also be a panel discussion. Today technology is evolving at great speed with it increasing the importance of electronic and digital media. At the same time, the innovators cannot foresee all its future uses, which calls for urgent attention of copyright owners towards electronic and digital rights issues.

    The session will be moderated by Tata Teleservices VP Vas Pankaj Sethi. The speakers are Star senior VP – interactive services Viren Popli, Hutchison Essar VP vas SP Narayanan, ,
    UTV VP international Ashoka Holla and Raj Tilak who is a consultant
     

     

  • OpenTV previews its vision for the future at IBC 2006

    MUMBAI: OpenTV, which provides enabling technologies for advanced digital television services, will showcase its latest technologies under the banner of “television is changing … open it up!” at the IBC show in Amsterdam.

    The event takes place from 8-12 September 2006.

    The theme, grounded by the premise that today’s television viewers are demanding greater choice, flexibility, and access, encompasses the entire range of OpenTV’s products on display. By ‘opening up’ the technologies that serve as a foundation for set-top boxes and digital television, OpenTV says that it is taking a leadership position by enabling the adoption of flexible business models and compelling viewer experiences in the television industry.

    OpenTV chairman and CEO James A. (Jim) Chiddix says, “Today, the central technologies for building and maintaining social networks around the world are the phone and the internet.

    “OpenTV believes that TV is next, and that the way to survive in this changing world is to embrace explore, and enable that change. When we say we are ‘opening up’ television, we are extending our tradition of pioneering middleware and related solutions to new content sources, new navigation models, new forms of television advertising, and new experiences in participation with television.”

    Featured products at IBC will include solutions for advanced digital
    television; advanced advertising; and participation television.
    — OpenTV Vision: Supporting its theme for IBC, OpenTV will debut a supermodal, zoomable user interface (ZUI) that fundamentally changes the way viewers navigate and make viewing choices from the massive amounts of available content, by providing navigation tools that create relevance and match interests.

    — Advanced Digital Television:– OpenTV will showcase a number of live HDTV services from OpenTV customers as well as a wide array of HD set-top boxes from ADB, Pace, Philips, Scientific Atlanta, and Thomson.

    — OpenTV will demonstrate the power of its popular Core2/PVR2
    set-top software through the demonstration of a HD guide
    developed by Nagravision. The guide features key elements such
    as time-shifting, scheduling, and series linking, as well as
    push VOD.

    — OpenTV will demonstrate IPTV, highlighting a solution for
    hybrid IPTV deployments by cable and satellite operators.

    — OpenTV Core2/PVR2 supports multiple application execution
    environments including HTML and Flash(R). OpenTV will showcase
    its Flash solution, based on the award-winning MachBlue(TM)
    from Bluestreak Network, supporting rapid authoring of enhanced
    programming using standard Adobe(R) Flash authoring tools.
    OpenTV will also demonstrate its industry -leading HTML
    solution with home networking applications.

    — OpenTV has also integrated technologies with ICTV(TM) and will
    be demonstrating a personalized mosaic that delivers
    alternative navigation and Internet-type programming and
    advertising capabilities to OpenTV-enabled set-top boxes.

    As far as advanced advertising:solutions are concerned the company will conduct demonstrations that will feature an end-to-end production system for enhanced advertising that engages audiences by enabling compelling, interactive advertising applications to be created, validated, scheduled, and launched more quickly and less
    expensively.

    — Also shown will be OpenTV’s advertising sales and inventory
    management solutions with a demonstration of OpenTV’s ad
    decision engine for dynamic insertion of targetted ads.

  • Branded ‘Big’, ADAG’s FM venture targets 12 October launch

    MUMBAI: The Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) is entering the final stages of preparation for its “Big” bang entry into the FM radio field.

    The Ambani brothers are known for doing everything on a big scale and it is certainly no different in this case as younger brother Anil’s ADAG gets set to launch its 92.7 FM stations across India. It is only fitting, therefore, that ADAG is launching ahead of the Diwali festive season under the brand name Big Radio.

    According to sources, the group is targeting 12 October for the launch of its radio station in cities where the common infrastructure network exists. This includes Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Jaipur and Surat.

    Big Radio is expected to be on air in Mumbai first, with a fast-paced rollout in the other cities where the common infrastructure exists. The teams for the radio stations are already in place with radio jockeys and other engineers hired and ready.

    Big Radio will be facing a phalanx of established players when it launches services in Mumbai. The group will have to compete with players such as the Times Group’s Radio Mirchi, Radio City, Red FM and Radio One (Formerly was known as Go FM), who have been in this game for over five years.

    One advantage Big Radio will be looking to leverage upon is the massive mobile phone user subscriber base that sister concern and telecom major Reliance Infocomm provides. Big Radio will be introducing a lot of interactive features with the specific aim of building a community of cell users hooked in to the station, industry sources have told Indiantelevision.com.

    Another “Big” advantage ADAG is banking on is that it has the ultimate brand icon in the “Big B” Amitabh Bachchan endorsing the station. If ever there was a case of the brand and the ambassador fitting to a T, it is this.

    ADAG originally secured its FM licence through Adlabs Films Ltd (AFL) in which it has a controlling stake. But post the demerger of the radio business, the company has transferred its FM operating units to Reliance Unicom Ltd.

    Big Radio will manage 45 FM stations. The frequencies were bought out for approximately Rs 1.60 billion. Initially, the company had bagged the licence for 57 frequencies but had to surrender the licence for 13 cities as per the norms, which do not allow one single company to hold more than 15 per cent of the total allotted frequencies.

  • Kerala to have Rs 1.5 bn ‘Cochin Media City’

    MUMBAI: God’s own country Kerala seems to be on an overdrive when it comes to media initiatives. The state, which already is home to about 13 television channels, will soon have a group of entrepreneurs entering the virgin space of converged media solutions.

    Christened Cochin Media City or CMC, the Rs 1.5 billion project revolves around the basic idea of tapping the immense commercial potential in television and allied services under one roof.
    CMC will kick off in the first half of September 2006 with its first project, a media school. According to CMC VP marketing B. Pratap Chandar, the media school project will be followed by a commercial teleport initiative.

    “CMC’s media school would focus on media education, advance research in media studies and critical thinking. We want to make it a premium training ground for those aspiring for a career in electronic media, in particular, and the media in general. Our second project, which is a teleport facility, will launch in 2007”, says Chandar, while revealing a bunch of media initiatives that CMC aspires to come up with in due course.
    What are the initiatives that CMC is looking for? In short, the following:

    # Technical consultancy services to electronic media.

    # Content Production and management.

    # Production and post-production facilities for the entertainment media.

    # Television channel and FM radio station.

    # Digital cinema project.

    # IT-enabled services, which in India is booming.

    # Media marketing, research & information services.

    # Publishing.

    “The basic idea to bring the entire media activity under one umbrella comes from the emergence of various channels in the slow growth visual media market. Today, there is a proliferation of TV channels in the Malayalam TV industry. By the middle of 2007, Kerala will have the unique distinction of having 20 regional (Malayalam) TV channels addressing a population of 33 million Keralites and a TV advertisement market of Rs 2.4 billion (with an expected annual growth rate of 15 to 20 per cent),” adds Chandar.

    CMC’s board of directors comprises popular Malayalam actor Suresh Gopi, noted film director Shaji Kailas and cinematographer Rajeev Ravi.

    The corporate affairs of the company will be managed by a team of professionals lead by former Kerala director-general of police Rajagopalan Nair in the capacity of managing director. Former chairman of Malabar Cements K Ramakrishnan has been roped in as the corporate advisor.

    By setting up its base in Kochi, CMC attempts to utilise coastal town’s technological advantages.

    “The city offers 15 GBPS bandwidth support at India’s lowest cost, ‘SEA-ME-WE-3’ and ‘SAFE’ submarine cable connectivity and VSNL’s primary international gateway connectivity, plus Reliance, Bharti, VSNL and (government-controlled) BSNL’s fibre optic backbone connectivity,” says Chandar.

    Kochi is also rated as the second best IT enabled services destination in Nasscom’s survey, with operational costs less than 50 per cent when compared to other major cities.

    The full-fledged project will be based at the Hi-Tech Park of Kinfra at Kalamassery and permission for land has been sought.
     

  • HBO, Star Movies start to feel blackout pinch

    MUMBAI: It has been two weeks since English film channels HBO and Star Movies have been off air in Mumbai. While the Hindi film channels have returned with the undertaking not to air ‘A’ rated films, the problem with the above mentioned two channels is that they do not have enough films rated U and U/A to put on air for 24 hours.
    In Mumbai, Hathway and InCable, which control 55 per cent of the cable homes in Mumbai, have not resumed telecast of these two channels. Even some other areas of Mumbai that have other service providers are not getting them. The first problem is that a significant percentage of the viewership for English movie channels (around 15 per cent) each week, comes from Mumbai.

    The second difficulty is that the channels have to get their films cleared by the Censor Board. A Star official says that the channel is in the process of submitting the films. He was non committal when asked as to when the channel was expected to be back on air.
    HBO too, has a significant backlog to be cleared. While attempts to contact HBO proved unsuccessful, a Zee Turner official says that it is looking to help HBO in the process. The repercussions of the blackout are already starting to show however.

    On the ad revenue front, information available with Indiantelevision.com indicates that agencies will ask for some kind of compensation if the problem is not resolved soon. The amount of course will depend on the delay in getting the channels back on the air.

    On the distribution front though, the Zee Turner official says that the cable fraternity has been cooperative and understanding of the situation. Of course subscribers in Mumbai will continue to pay for HBO. So there is no loss there in the absence of addressability.

    The longer this drags on the better it is for the likes of Zee Studio and Pix. While the ratings are not yet out they would have benefitted to some extent as some viewers who would normally watch HBO and Star Movies tune in to them.

    What is interesting though is that Zee spokesperson Ashish Kaul says that the blackout is too restrictive to be a reason for the channel to do anything drastic like push forward its planned marketing campaign. “Had it been a nationwide blackout, the situation would have been different. While more people in Mumbai will tune in to us we need to push ourselves more for them to stay with the channel once HBO and Star Movies come back on. We will be launching new properties and a campaign in around three weeks time. If the blackout is still on (which looks likely) then we will certainly see more visibility.

    “However we recognise that the blackout is temporary and to get viewership in the long term we need to create better visibility for ourselves. It is important that our brand position of being a channel for the movie connoisseur be clear.”

    Another beneficiary from the blackout would be DVD libraries. A spokesperson from a library says that more English movie DVDs are being rented on the weekends. The blackout does not affect rentals the weekdays as people in any case do not have the time, he says. On weekends though the number of English film DVDs being rented is up by around 15 per cent over the past couple of weeks.

  • Adlabs likely to pick up stake in a TV production house

    MUMBAI: Adlabs Films Ltd is in talks with a television content production company to acquire a controlling stake. If the deal sails through, Adlabs will be able to make an entry into TV production.

    “We are in negotiations not for a total buyout but a majority stake,” says Adlabs Films chairman and managing director Manmohan Shetty.

    He, however, did not disclose the name of the company. “All that I can say is that it is not a listed company and produces 3-4 shows with a good balance sheet,” says Shetty.

    Though Adlabs has been funding a few TV content companies, it has never directly been engaged in the business. One among the companies it has financed is Pankaj Parashar’s Mazaa Films, the creator of the popular TV serial Karam Chand.

    “We have been funding some TV content production companies for some specific programmes, even in the past. We have acted like debt providers. We have, however, not been very aggressive. Even now we would not like to focus on TV content in a more aggressive manner, either on our own or as co-productions,” says Shetty.

    The TV content business will function as a division of Adlabs. “At present all activities of TV content are functioning as a division of Adlabs. We will see how it grows,” says Shetty.

    Adlabs, meanwhile, has put on the backburner its plans to enter the home video segment. The talks for acquiring stake in Mumbai-based Excel Home Videos have been called off. “The deal didn’t happen. We will enter the home video segment on our own once the distribution network is in place. The project is now relegated to the backburner,” says Shetty.

    Will Adlabs take the acquisition route like Inox to ramp up its multiplex business? “We are aggressively expanding exhibition screens on our own,” says Shetty.

     

  • Kelly Clarkson, James Blunt triumph at MTV Video Music Awards

    MUMBAI: Singers Kelly Clarkson and James Blunt triumphed at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards which took place a few nights ago in New York. Blunt won for the video You’re Beautiful while Clarkson won for the video Because of You. Best Group Video went The All-American Rejects’ Move Along.

    Jay-Z welcomed the VMAs back to New York City. The night opened with Justin Timberlake’s performing SexyBack. The show’s host Jack Black, dressed as the bad Moonman and Elvis, followed with a comical rock performance featuring Tenacious D band mate Kyle Glass.

    For the first time viewers were able to vote on all general
    awards categories. Panic! at the Disco nabbed Best Video of the Year for I Write Sins Not Tragedies. Avenged Sevenfold won Best New Artist Video for their music video Bat Country. Beyonce took home a Moon Man for Best R&B Video for her music video Check on It.

    While the VMAs aired live on MTV, MTV.com streamed VMA Live: Backstage Uncensored. This was a simultaneous view of the action behind the scenes and backstage that viewers have never gotten to see. Fans followed talent such as Ludacris, OK Go, and T.I. as they traveled from dressing rooms to the stage for their performances. In addition to the television and broadband experiences, MTV Mobile offered updates and recaps
    of the VMAs across all wireless carriers. The VMAs were also celebrated across all of MTV’s platforms including MTV2, mtvU, MHD, MTV World, and Urge.

    Stand up artiste Sarah Silverman took good natured jabs at everyone from Lance Bass to socialite Paris Hilton. Silverman had the audience laughing while she left celebrities guessing who was going to be her next target of sarcasm.

    In a self-deprecating taped moment, Britney Spears and Kevin Federline earned some laughs when they announced the winner for Best R&B Video. The tone turned more serious when Queen Latifah introduced former US Vice President Al Gore to the stage. In the spirit of An Inconvenient Truth Gore brought a message of urgent importance concerning the world community to the VMA audience.

    He projected the plight of the environment onto the actual walls of the theater. To highlight that caring about the environment is the new norm, MTV unveiled new Break the Addiction PSAs during the MTV Video Music Awards. The spots’ approach is that if you’re not actively combating global warming every day, you’re behind the times.

  • Animal Planet’s ‘Crocodile Hunter’ Steve Irwin killed while filming documentary

    MUMBAI: One of television’s popular personalities Steve Irwin has passed away. Irwin who is well known to viewers of Animal Planet for Crocodile Hunter died after he was wounded by a stingray barb to his heart. He was filming a sequence on Batt Reef in Australia for his daughter’s new TV series.

    Media reports state that a helicopter rushed paramedics to nearby Low Isles where Irwin was taken for treatment, but he was dead before they arrived. A stingray’s barb is said to be as dangerous as a rifle bayonet.

    He is only the third person in Australia to die from being stabbed by a stingray. Irwin became famious on television for placing himself in precarious situations with animals like snakes and crocodiles. His fascination for animals stemmed from the fact that he grew up near crocodiles, trapping and removing them from populated areas and releasing them in his parent’s park.