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  • Madras HC admits PIL against minister Dayanidhi Maran

    Madras HC admits PIL against minister Dayanidhi Maran

    MUMBAI: The Madras HC has admitted a Public Interest Litigation (PIL), which accuses the Union minister of communications and information technology Dayanidhi Maran for releasing advertisements worth Rs 100 million to the family-owned Sun TV Network.

    According to a Times of India report, justices M Karpagavinayagam and A R Ramalingam on 9 March admitted a writ petition on the case that would come up for hearing before the chief justice on 13 March. The PIL, filed by J Veparasu, accuses Maran of abusing the office of the Union minister.

    Veparasu, in the PIL, has sought an HC direction for a CBI investigation into all transactions since May 2004, when Maran assumed the office as Union minister. He has also sought an interim injunction restraining Maran’s ministry from releasing any advertisement to Sun TV Group channels and publications till his PIL is disposed.

    The Chennai-headquartered Sun TV group, which has 15 television channels, four print publications and two radio channels, is owned by Maran’s elder brother Kalanithi Maran.

    The crux of the petition is that, though there are many private producers who telecast their programmes on the Sun group channels, Maran has not released even a single advertisement to their programmes. The petitioner alleges that the advertisements went exclusively to programmes telecast and produced by Kalanithi Maran.

    Maran, now under fire for committing breach of oath under Schedule III of the Constitution, has also been accused of neglecting government-owned channels when it came to advertisement support.

  • SET targets the serious viewer with ‘ACHANAK’ and ‘PAR IS DIL KO KAISE SAMJAYE’

    SET targets the serious viewer with ‘ACHANAK’ and ‘PAR IS DIL KO KAISE SAMJAYE’

    Sony has set its sights on leading prime time ratings every Friday with innovative fare. To this effect it has announced the launch of two shows aimed at having a dramatic effect on the audience.

    The first one is a weekly supernatural show with a difference. Achanak the brainchild of writer Shridhar Raghavan will air every Friday at 10:30 pm starting from 22 March. It has the tagline 37 saal baad.

    Speaking on this Director On Air Programming SET Anupama Mandloi said, ” The name grabs your imagination. This is a psychological thriller. It is like reading a novel on television. The show is built on a solid foundation a great script. It is representative of the faith the channel and the producers have in taking this genre a step further. Most importantly it is created by a team which understands this genre and where its appeal lies for the viewer”.

    The producers of the show are Pradeep Uppoor and Neo Films. They together with Sridhar have worked on Aahat and CID for the channel. Like Achanak both of them had a lot of suspense. A serial from Pradeep Uppoor and Neo Films Srikant was shown on Doordarshan and Channel 4.

    Speaking about the project Shridhar Raghavan said, ” Achanak started off a few years ago as a slightly wild outrageous notion, a set of unlinked fragments of ideas. What if you went home and your parents did not know who you were? What if you were happily married and someone from your past told you that it was nothing more than a hallucination?

    Achanak is a battle royal between good and evil. But its a long fight, a tough fight mostly a losing fight for good. Good eventually wins over evil but it gets one hell of a bloody nose before it does. Or does it?”

    Shridhar also envisioned the setting which is the town of Gahota as a twisted version autHor R.K. Narayan’s Malgudi. He sees the project as something unlike anything seen on Indian television. It is weird, bizarre and outrageous with a complex undercurrent running through it.

    In the deceptively calm town of Gahota over the past couple of months something evil has been occuring. Murders, suicides and acts of madness have been taking place. An alchoholic journalist Dipankar travels to Gahota believing that he has the explanation for why crimes are committed in the town once every thirty seven years for a period of three months. Once the turbulent period has passed people cannot recollect what happened.

    The producers built a real town in Panvel not just a TV serial set. a town square, clock tower, residential areas etc were created.

    Regarding casting decisions Shridhar said that some important members do not appear until half the episodes are completed. Also some characters have a touch of eccentricity to them like a professor whose stance shifts with each encounter. There is a hint of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde waging a war within the characters. He also revealed that one of the central protagonists will appear only in the final act. Cast members include Raj Zutshi, Faraaz Khan and Shishir Sharma.

    He pointed out the differences between Achanak and Aahat. Aahat was episodic involving a single continous story. Aahat dealt with big issues concentrating more on pace as opposed to plot. Achanak on the other hand is about small things. It is about how decption can hide underneath a sea of normality. It also deals with the thin line that separates sanity and insanity, light and dark, good and evil.

    The second new weekly show on SET is called Par Is Dil Ko Kaise Samjaye. It premiers on 29 March at 8:30pm. It deals with how the relationship between two sisters gets affected by a series of accidents brought about through sheer fate.

    A woman loses her sister and husband. For companionship and to support her sisters offspring she marries her brother in law. However later on it turns out that her sister survived the accident. Now both of them are married ot the same man. The show is directed by Imtiyaz Punjabi and stars Raj S Verma, Shweta Salve and Pooja Ghai.

  • MTV Movie Awards to be held on 3 June

    MTV Movie Awards to be held on 3 June

    MUMBAI: US broadcaster MTV has announced that the 2006 MTV Movie Awards on 3 June at the Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California.

    The 15th edition of the show will have the infamous golden popcorn up for grabs in such unusual categories as Best Kiss, Best Villain, and Best Comedic Performance along with the debut of several new awards.

    The nominees will be announced later. The nominees are chosen through a poll in the US of MTV and MTV2 viewers.

    Last year the show was hosted by actor Jimmy Fallon. Sponsors of thios year’s event are Dr Pepper, Taco Bell, Dentyne, LOreal Paris, Neutrogena, Pontiac and Starburst.

  • Discovery Channel to air six part series ‘Ten Ways’

    Discovery Channel to air six part series ‘Ten Ways’

    MUMBAI: Starting from 10 March, Discovery Channel will showcase an entertaining look at the dark side of scientific research. The channel will present the six-part series– Ten Ways, which will look in to a strange twilight zone at the margins of scientific understanding.

    The show will air every night at 10 pm. Each episode of Ten Ways, will cover a particular area of scientific research, from parapsychology to alien abduction and genetic research to nanotechnology.

    Each episode will use a mix of B-movie style drama, comedy sketches, high-end graphics and factual programming. From the frighteningly plausible to the truly outlandish, Ten Ways tackles topics that have crossed everyone’s minds but, which are rarely approached from a scientific and technical standpoint.

    Whether it’s the existence of monsters or a global apocalypse, each episode focuses on one topic and presents potential explanations or theories about that topic.

    Featuring interviews with renowned scientists as well as believers, doubters and conspirators, the following episodes of Ten Ways includes, Ten Ways to be Abducted by an Alien, Ten Ways the World Will End, Ten Ways to Meet a Monster, Ten Ways to Lift a Curse, Ten Ways to See into the Future and Ten Ways to Exorcise a Ghost.

  • Bangalore DD Kendra expects revenues to cross Rs 150 million

    Bangalore DD Kendra expects revenues to cross Rs 150 million

    BANGALORE: DD Kendra Bangalore has recorded revenues of Rs 135.4 million during the 10-month period March 2005 to January 2006.

    These are figures for the revenues generated by the DD Karnataka marketing team alone and do not include the revenues generated on a national level at Delhi for the ads beamed by the Bangalore Kendra during programs supplied by Delhi.

    Speaking to indiantelevision.com, DD officials claimed that the revenue figure for the ten-month period was very much in line with the last fiscal’s revenues of approximately Rs 150 million. The officials expressed confidence that this could be surpassed by a small percentage when the current fiscal comes to an end.

    One of the major contributors to DD Bangalore’s revenue stream is the state lottery run by the Directorate of Small Savings and Lotteries of Karnataka. The telecast of the Karnataka Lottery results fetches the regional pubcaster Rs 7.8 million annually.

    DD Bangalore’s annual expenditure is estimated to be around Rs 100 million, which includes salaries and wages and costs for running the Kendra. This makes DD Bangalore one of the few Kendras that actually have a surplus of income (probably the highest across all Kendra’s in India) over expenditure, the officials assert.

    In 2005, DD Bangalore’s achievements were recognised by the industry with the Indian Telly Awards for the Best DD Kendra.

  • CBS brings back online extension of reality show The Amazing Race

    CBS brings back online extension of reality show The Amazing Race

    MUMBAI: US broadcaster CBS has announced that it will bring back its online extension of its reality show The Amazing Race on its site.

    Finish Line: The Amazing Race Internet Talk Show hosted by former E! News Live correspondent Peggy Bunker and former racer Jon Weiss returns on CBS.com tonight 1 March. As had been reported earlier by indiantelevision.com AXN is organising a local version of the show for Asian audiences.

    From 15 March, AXN is on the lookout for participants to join the show. Ten to 12 teams will be selected to participate in the race, which will be produced for a 13-episode television series.

    Also, CBS Finish Line will highlight never before seen footage from this season’s race around the world and interviews with teams the day after they’ve been eliminated. The show will also feature interviews with racers from previous seasons who offer insight into what went wrong for the latest team. In addition, Amazing Race fans will get a sneak preview of the following week’s edition and will get the chance to call into the show and talk with their favourite teams.

  • Zee brings English fare to viewers

    Zee brings English fare to viewers

    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.

    Zee Movies has acquired around 700 titles of English films from various houses like CBS, Warner Brothers, Pearsons, Carlton, Freemantle, Diskovery and Passport International. It would telecast five new movies everyday which would then be repeated.

    HBO, which undoubtedly is among the biggest cable movie channels in the world, will enter the Indian skies soon and could be a threat to Zee Movies. It already has drawn a huge line-up of popular Hollywood movies and would begin its test runs from 15 March, 2000 and is slated to be officially launch on 22 March.

    Zee Telefilms apparently has fixed the rates for Zee Movies and Zee English at Rs 5 and Rs 4 per subscriber. HBO’s sticker price is Rs 5.45. The network is slated to price its set-top boxes at around Rs 12,500 each which is way below that of the competing HBO which will price its boxes above Rs 25,000. This is likely to work in favour of Zee Movies in Indian cable TV homes. Zee would stand at an advantage due to the strong distribution network of SitiCable.

    Zee English and Zee Movies are expected to fill in the vacant space in the Zee Telefilms’ bouquet which lacked English programming.

  • MGM Studios fires up domestic theatrical distribution unit

    MGM Studios fires up domestic theatrical distribution unit

    MUMBAI: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (MGM) announced the revitalisation of MGM’s domestic theatrical distribution business with a new strategy that calls for the release of several high profile films this year. The company named a new senior management team that will drive the growth of the distribution business and announced its 2006-2007 slate of theatrical releases.

    MGM’s theatrical distribution unit will now be overseen by MGM chief operating officer Rick Sands. He most recently served as the president and COO of DreamWorks SKG and is the former COO of Miramax Films and has built an experienced team of executives to manage MGM’s domestic distribution.

    Paramount Pictures veteran Clark Woods will serve as president, domestic theatrical distribution of MGM. In his new role, Woods, a 25-year veteran of Paramount Pictures, will supervise all aspects of theatrical distribution.

    During his tenure with Paramount Pictures, Woods was involved with and spearheaded the distribution of films such as Titanic, Braveheart, Forrest Gump, Ordinary People, Raider’s of the Lost Ark, Terms of Endearment, Beverly Hills Cop, Mission: Impossible and War of the Worlds.

    “We have an exceptional team in place to drive the growth of MGM’s domestic theatrical distribution. We expect that re-invigorating our distribution business in North America will pave the way for MGM to regain its prominence as a major force in providing new quality filmed entertainment on a global basis. As part of this strategy, we are pleased to announce an exciting slate of theatrical releases in 2006 and in the first quarter of 2007, involving many of the best actors, producers and directors in the business,” said MGM chairman and CEO Harry E Sloan.

    MGM’s next release will be Lucky Number Slevin, which is scheduled to be released on 7 April in association with The Weinstein Company..

    “We are rapidly expanding MGM’s distribution business. Going forward, through partnerships with independent production companies and studios, we plan to continually build an outstanding slate of releases. Working with these independent production companies, will enable us to focus on North American distribution as well as rights management worldwide. The future is about content and we are working to freshen and bulk up our world-class library, which will further enhance the value of the company,” said Sands.

    MGM’s films (with video rights) will be distributed in the home video marketplace by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and also be made available on the Blu-Ray format.

  • NDS ropes in Serbia Broadband as first VideGuard Express customer

    NDS ropes in Serbia Broadband as first VideGuard Express customer

    MUMBAI: NDS Group plc, a provider of technology solutions for digital pay TV, announced that Serbia Broadband has selected the NDS VideoGuard Express solution to secure premium content on their new DTH service.

    The solution includes NDS MediaHighway middleware and EPG. Serbia Broadband is Serbia’s largest cable operator.

    NDS VideoGuard Express is built on the same proven VideoGuard conditional access technology that drives some of the most successful pay-TV operations around the world. These operators rely on NDS to manage their TV services because it is the most secure solution. This gives the operator access to the best available content which attracts and retains subscribers.

    Serbia Broadband CEO Dragan Solak said, “We already have a successful cable system and we now want to offer customers who cannot receive the cable service a new satellite platform. The new satellite operation will be able to offer a great choice of content with 25 channels to start.”

    NDS vice president Europe David Nabozny commented, “We are extremely pleased to be chosen by SBB for the supply of VideoGuard Express and see this as an excellent opportunity for NDS. NDS’s strength is in our content protection, middleware and electronic program guide – we have a worldwide reputation for our large systems. We are pleased that Serbia Broadband is acknowledging that our advanced technology also works well for smaller systems.”