ITV

Tag: commences

  • After Mumbai, Fame rebranding to Inox commences in Bengaluru

    After Mumbai, Fame rebranding to Inox commences in Bengaluru

    BENGALURU: After commencing rebranding of Fame screens in Mumbai to Inox, it is the garden city’s turn now. Of the 73 multiplexes and 284 screens across 40 cities that Inox boasts of, 25 multiplexes with 94 screens belonged to Fame India.

    Inox has launched an extensive marketing campaign across print, outdoor, radio and digital activations across cities which have multiplexes under the Fame brand name. The campaign is being handled by Lintas.

    Speaking on the brand change at one of the Inox theatre’s in Garuda Mall in Bengaluru, Inox Leisure Limited (Inox) CEO Alok Tandon said, “In a country where movies are a way of life, we are grossly under-screened. Inox has been on a steady expansion mode through organic as well as inorganic growth on its journey to its current leadership position. Our goal is to maintain our leadership position by continuing our sustained momentum of growth. As we announce the brand change from Fame to Inox, we will continue to provide the best movie going offering to our guests and emphasise on our tagline ‘Live the movie’ experience as the complete Inox experience.”

    “All Fame mutliplexes are now 100 per cent 2K digital and 3D enabled,” he added.
    “We expect to complete the Fame rebranding to Inox across all the screens acquired by us over the next one to one and a half months. To begin with the brand change will be experienced by guests in Mumbai and Bengaluru followed by Kolkata and the remaining cities in a phased manner,” revealed Tandon to indiantelevsion.com.

    Tandon expounded that despite producing about 1,000 movies a year, India had only 10 screens per 10 lakh people as compared to European countries which have 35 screens per 10 lakh people and the US which has 125 screens per 10 lakh people.

    As mentioned earlier, besides plans to expand into cities like Greater Noida, Gurgaon, Jalgaon, Madurai, Jamnagar and Manipal as also increase the existing number of multiplexes in places like Lucknow, Raipur and Surat., Tandon explained that Inox is open to acquisition route for expanding its screens.

     

     

  • DAS Phase II commences as analogue TV switched off

    DAS Phase II commences as analogue TV switched off

    NEW DELHI: The second phase of Digital Addressable System (DAS) in India marched on even as the month of March 2013 came to and end as envisioned by the Information & Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry. Analogue television signals in 36 cities all over India were clipped even as stay orders were imposed by high courts in Ahmedabad and Bengaluru.

    However, I&B Ministry sources told Indiantelevision.com that the level of digitisation achieved as on 30 March was 70 per cent in phase II towns, and admitted there was a likelihood of viewers facing blank TV screens in some places.

    The sources said that these problems primarily existed in Srinagar which has just 4,300 set top boxes (STBs) installed. The situation in Coimbatore and Vishakapatnam was more serious with almost zero STB deployment on 20 March.

    They also added that the estimates had been made based on information received from multi-system operators (MSOs) and making a provision of 20 per cent for multiple TVs in households and TVs in offices/showrooms.

    While the seeding of STBs and switch-off of analogue was being overseen by nodal officers in all the cities, the sources said teams would be dispatched to all these cities in the coming days to study the impact and ensure implementation. They insisted that there were ample digital STBs available.

    However, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav in a letter to I&B Minister Manish Tewari over the weekend requested for an extension of six months in the seven cities in the state that were to switch over to digital addressable system from today: Agra, Allahabad, Ghaziabad, Kanpur, Lucknow, Meerut, and Varanasi.

    While the Gujarat High Court in Ahmedabad stayed the introduction of DAS till 9 April in Ahmedabad, the Karnataka High Court issued the stay till 1 April in Bengaluru. The Karnataka High Court will hear cases relating to both Bengaluru and Mysore on 1 April.

    Ministry sources confirmed that both High Courts had issued notices to the Union government and the I&B Ministry.

    In both case, the petitioners Cable Operators Association of Gujarat through its president Pramod Pandya andKarnataka Cable TV Operators Association president V S Patrick Raju, have said there is confusion about availability of STBs and MSOs are also helpless. Raju has also raised the issue of who owns the STB that is installed at the home of a subscriber – the customer or the LCO.

    For the second phase, the 38 specific cities and towns in fourteen states and one union territory which have been listed in the notification are – Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune, Surat, Kanpur, Jaipur, Lucknow, Nagpur, Patna, Indore, Bhopal, Thane, Ludhiana, Agra, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Nashik, Vadodara, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Rajkot, Meerut, Kalyan-Dombivali, Varanasi, Amritsar, Navi Mumbai, Aurangabad, Solapur, Allahabad, Jabalpur, Srinagar, Visakhapatnam, Ranchi, Howrah, Chandigarh, Coimbatore, Mysore and Jodhpur.

    A high-level Monitoring Committee has also been set up to oversee the digitisation process in the entire country, which is expected to be achieved by the end of next year.

    In order to facilitate digitization, the Ministry has already issued provisional registration to 30 Independent MSOs to operate in Phase II cities. This would enable these MSOs to operate in their respective cities to provide digital cable TV services.

    The Ministry has set up a Task Force exclusively for Phase II cities to oversee and monitor the digitization process. A public awareness Committee has also been constituted in the Ministry for spearheading awareness campaign and all TV channels ran a scroll informing consumers about the deadline for cable TV digitization, as well as an animated commercial.

    All India Radio has also started broadcasting radio jingles on its national and regional networks to get the DAS message across. Several other initiatives like an SMS campaign, video spots and prints are on the anvil. The state governments/UTs have already nominated nodal officers in 38 cities of Phase II. The Ministry had recently conducted a workshop for them.

    Workshops have been held at some places to take stock of preparedness in Phase II cities and sensitize local MSOs, cable operators and other stakeholders.

    The Ministry had set up a Control Room during Phase I, which has continued to function to address the queries of consumers, cable operators and others. The Control Room which also has a toll free number has been receiving a number of calls from consumers of Phase II cities.