ITV

Tag: ABP Majha

  • ABP Majha’s 7 wonders of Maharashtra

    ABP Majha’s 7 wonders of Maharashtra

    MUMBAI: It was late in the evening. The anchors Ashwin Bapat and Prajakta Dharmadhikari (those familiar with them will know them as ABP Majha news professionals) were ready in their Indian attire on stage which had an old world ambience, of times gone past, with magnificent golden heritage pillars bedecking it.

    In the audience were chief guest, Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar and tourism minister Chhagan Bhujbal.

    The occasion: Marathi news channel ABP Majha’s evening get together to unveil a programming initiative ‘7 wonders of Maharahtra’ as decided by a jury and ABP Majha viewers.

    Ajit Pawar and Rajiv Khandekar in conversation

    The locations in Maharashtra which made it to the list: The Ajanta Caves, Lonar Crater, Raigad Fort, Kas Plateau , Daulatabad Fort, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus and Global Pagoda.

    Supported by Maharashtra Tourism, the initiative saw almost 2.2 million votes pouring in from TV viewers. And the prominent jury panel included big names like Asiatic Society’s president Aroon Tikekar, conservation architect Vikas Dilawari, MTDC (Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation) MD Dr. Jagdish Patil, film actress and author Nishigandha Wad, heritage conservation committee chairman V Ranganathan, ABP Majha chief editor Rajiv Khandekar and archaeologist Arvind Jamkhedkar.

    Speaking about the selection process jury member, archaeologist Jamkhedkar said, “60 locations were chosen by channel and out of that we had selected 14 locations for the audiences to vote upon. In my personal opinion, I feel that these kind of shows will certainly boost the Maharashtra tourism.”

    “ABP Majha realises the rich heritage and culture of the state of Maharashtra. ‘7 Wonders of Maharashtra’ is a step forward to reinforce the belief of every Maharashtrian in their heritage. The state has a lot of wonders, but the ones who will make it to the list of top 7 wonders will be decided by a stringent process of selection by the eminent jury and citizens voting.”Added media content & communication services (MCCS) CEO Ashok Venkatramani, “The marketing team came up with the idea of this event. We are trying to do something different from other channels. Our idea has always been to link with the society in a better manner.”

    Ajit Pawar, Chhagan Bhujbal and Rajiv Khandekar

    “We have seen our share of viewing rising during events because ‘Majha is a Raja’, added MCCS chief revenue officer & COO Avinash Pandey.”

    ABP Majha chief editor Rajiv Khandekar says a lot went into coming up with the 7 Wonders of Maharashtra concept. “We selected 350 places across the state and then we spoke to the experts from the districts and asked people, which place they would want to add in this list? Every day we were telecasting about the nominated places. Promos were constantly on air and we also telecast a thirty minutes special show. We have carried news capsules in our bulletin also.”

    From (L-R) Rajiv Khandekar, Dr. Jagdish Patil, Chhagan Bhujbal, Avinash Pandey and Ashok Venkatramani.

    The Marathi news channel already produces events like Majha Sanman Puruskar, Bappa Majha and Majha Maharashtra 20-20.

  • Stage set for News TV Summit and NT Awards on 25 March

    Stage set for News TV Summit and NT Awards on 25 March

    MUMBAI: A large part of the Indian news television fraternity is expected to be huddled in New Delhi’s Taj Palace Hotel come 25 March. The occasion: the sixth Indiantelevision.com News Television Summit which is expected to commence at 11 am and which will be followed by Indiantelevision.com’s NT Awards in the evening.

     

    “Getting out of the Squeeze – Learning to live in a digitised India” is the theme of this year’s summit. A keynote opening address by Ministry of Information & Broadcasting Secretary Uday Kumar Varma has been lined up and will be followed by three panel discussions covering the business and regulatory framework in a digitising India, innovative use of technology in the news broadcast space and the emerging trends in prime time news and the importance of TV news anchors.

     

    The News Television Summit 2013 is endorsed by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting and is supported by ABP News and ABP Majha. The NT Awards are presented by LR Active Oil while Saakshi TV, TV9, CNBC TV18, CNBC Awaaz, and Aaj Tak have also pitched in as partners.

     

    “The news TV industry has been grappling with an uber-competitive environment with limited revenue streams in almost every language segment,” says Indiantelevision.com Group CEO and Editor-in-Chief Anil Wanvari. “DAS and DTH can potentially help specific segments of the news TV industry generate new revenue streams in terms of subscription and premium niche news channels in the medium to long term. Of course the transition will throw up its own challenges.”

        
    Amongst those slated to attend and speak include: MIB Joint-Secretary Supriya Sahu, ABP News India CEO Ashok Venkatramani, BAG Media Network chairperson Anuradha Prasad, DEN CEO S.N. Sharma, Puthiya Thalaimurai TV news director S. Srinivasan, Legal expert Anish Dayal, India TV advisor Paritosh Joshi, Castle Media Director Vynsley Fernandes, Ericsson content and media head Supriyo Mookherjee, Quantel Q-Tube expert Chrisophe Messe, NDTV CTO Dinesh Singh, Cellcast Asia founder & CEO Pankaj Thakar, BBC Global News COO India Preet Dhupar, NDTV Group Editor Barkha Dutt, CNN-IBN host and veteran newscaster and analyst Karan Thapar, Bloomberg India Editor Vivek Law, Headlines Today Managing Editor Rahul Kanwal, DD’s Sanjeev Srivastava and finally India News Editor-in-Chief Deepak Chaurasia.

     

    The conference is to be followed by Indiantelevision.com’s The NT Awards, which received more than 1,000 entries for 43 categories from 45 TV news channels operating in English, Hindi, Telugu and Marathi. More than 110 jury members from news TV practitioners to print and magazine journalists to costume designers to marketers to agency professionals to former police officials to entrepreneurs helped judge the entries over two weeks of judging in Mumbai, Hyderabad and Delhi. Ernst & Young had the responsibility of being the official tabulator of the jury results.

     

    Information & Broadcasting minister Manish Tewari has consented to be the chief guest for The NT Awards. CEOs of media companies and TV channels, Editors, Reporters, Technicians, Celebrities and Sportsmen are expected to attend the function, which is being anchored by TV anchor and political satirist Cyrus Broacha and TV actor Kavita Kaushik.

     

    The print partners include Cable Quest, Satellite@Internet India, and Aavishkar Dish Antenna while Tellychakkar.com and Radioandmusic.com are online partners. The event has been executed and produced by Indiantelevision.com’s ITV 2.0 Productions.

  • TV9’s Mumbai-centric Hindi news channel to convert into Marathi

    TV9’s Mumbai-centric Hindi news channel to convert into Marathi

    MUMBAI: Associated Broadcasting Company Limited (ABCL), which runs a clutch of regional channels, is converting its Mumbai-centric Hindi news channel into full-fledged Marathi.

    The decision to make TV9 Maharashtra a local regional-language news channel comes in the wake of losses from the city-specific Hindi news channel. “We are changing it into Marathi as it is the only loss-making channel in our entire bouquet. Earlier being in Hindi, we were not attracting any state government advertisements. Going local would also mean that we get more connected with people outside Mumbai,” said ABCL vice president operations KVN Murthy.

    The channel’s operational loses are estimated at close to Rs 300 million a year, according to market estimates. TV9 officials, however, declined to comment on the extent of these losses.

    TV9 Maharashtra has begun the process of transitioning into a full-fledged Marathi news channel as part of its strategy to go local. The news bulletin and the other prime-time shows have already made the shift to Marathi with the exception of the Entertainment bulletin which will eventually go Marathi.

    TV9 Maharashtra head Srinivas Reddy said that 90 per cent of the content is in Marathi while only 10 per cent is in Hindi. “We haven’t decided any date on when we want to become a Marathi channel completely. But that is the way we are moving.”

    ABCL had made its expansion into the Hindi language with the launch of TV9 Mumbai in 2009 focussed on local news. However, TV9 Mumbai was last year rebranded as TV9 Maharashtra to widen the viewership base. But language turned out to be a major impediment since Marathi is the most widely spoken language in Maharashtra.

    “Marathi is the language of the common people in Maharashtra. We thus decided to become a Marathi news channel,” Reddy said, talking about the shift to Marathi language.

    TV9 Maharashtra, which will have to compete with established players like Zee 24 Taas, ABP Majha (earlier Star Majha) IBN Lokmat and ETV Marathi, is betting on local content to drive viewership.

    “If you look at other Marathi news channels, they are covering more of other news rather than news of local relevance. We will be focusing only on local news. In fact, TV9 Maharashtra will have 90 per cent of local content and maybe 10 per cent of other content like sports,” he averred.

    TV9 Maharashtra has around 100 part-time and full-time journalists across Maharashtra and around 15 anchors. While most of the team is in place, the channel will hire new employees for its output division.

    The Marathi news broadcaster also has offices in different cities of Maharashtra including Nagpur, Nashik and Pune.

    So will there be a sizeable retrenchment because of this makeover exercise? “We are not sacking anybody. In fact, a lot of our employees were already Marathi speaking and we are also training existing employees in our output division in addition to hiring new people for output division.”

    However, Indiantelevision.com has been made to understand that the broadcaster has already told certain employees to look out for a new job as part of its resturcutring excercise.

    In addition to TV9 Maharashtra, ABCL runs four regional news channels including TV9 Karnataka (Kannada), TV9 Gujarat (Gujarati), Indiavision (Malayalam), Kolkata TV (Bengali), besides an English news channel News9. It also has a niche channel in Telugu devoted to Entertainment and News called TV1.

  • MCCS appoints Gautam Sharma as national sales head

    MUMBAI: Media Content and Communications Services India (MCCS), which runs ABP News, ABP Majha and ABP Ananda, has appointed Gautam Sharma as its national sales head.

    In his new role, Sharma will be responsible for driving revenues of all the three channels.

    Sharma joins MCCS from India TV where he was working as SVP – Sales. He spent over a year at India TV and was responsible for heading all India revenue of India TV which included airtime sales revenue, events and special properties.

    This is Sharma‘s second stint with MCCS. He earlier worked with the company for four years (December 2006- November 2010) as assistant vice president.

    Prior to joining MCCS in 2006, he had also worked with TV Today, Star India and Planman Media.