ITV

Tag: delegation

  • Strong Indian delegation at Mipcom

    MUMBAI: The television marketplace Mipcom kicks off on Monday 17 October 2005 in Cannes France. Around 100 delegates from India representing 38 companies will take part.

    The number of companies participating though could reach 45 by the time the event starts.

    Two Indian firms will have stalls there – Sony and Weg India. Star India, which used to have a stall, will now be a part of Fortune Star’s exhibition space.

    Speaking to Indiantelevision.com on what Sony expects from the event, Kaushal Modi, AVP licensing & telephony, says, “We are taking two shows Kaisa Yeh Pyaar Hai and Yeh Meri Life Hai to Mipcom for the purpose of syndication and formatting.” Sony will be offering customised solutions for the two shows which will tweaked to suit different regions. This is what telenovela companies from South America like RCTV successfully do each year.

    On the film front Sony will be taking pushing two key properties that it has the rights to – Mughal E-Azham and Mangal Pandey – The Rising. Among the 1,000 or so movies in its library, Sony also has films from the Yash Raj catalogue, a notable recent offering being Hum Tum.

    Zee will have a seven member team present. A company spokesperson says, “We will be looking to explore every aspect of the group’s media business at Mipcom. It will include content creation, publishing, syndication, distribution, satellite, cable and multiplexes. Speaking about convergence, we want to explore the event to get the best out of the latest developments in areas such as digitalisation, triple play, the advent of 3g and IPTV.

    “Regarding format acquisition, we have meetings lined up with all prominent format owners. We are looking to grab some formats this time. Then we have other usual suspects including syndication. We are looking ahead to use this platform to market our formats, shows and all kinds of other content. Zee’s good form abroad as a broadcaster has also boosted our morale.”

    For Zee, business development manager Gagan Goel will be looking at strategic business opportunities. One area he will look at is VOD solutions for Zee’s Dish TV DTH platform. Deblina Chakrabarty, acquisitions – English channels, will be looking to purchase content for Zee Studio and Zee Cafe.

    T-Series will be sending a four-member team not just to sell its home videos to the international community but also to buy home videos that it feels will fare well in the Indian market.

    Animation will be pushed: The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) will also be visible. It will host a Ficci Networking Luncheon Session on Tuesday 18 October 2005 at Hotel Carlton.

    It will be an informal session for business networking. The lunch will be attended by representatives from international studios that have partnered/outsourced or are potential partners to the Indian animation industry .

    Ficci’s Sumeet Gupta says that the aim is to project and promote the Indian animation industry. “Depending upon response and industry feedback, we might scale it up and explore other possibilities as well.”

    Offering his view on Mipcom, Gupta points out that the event is one of the biggest animation and TV markets globally. One can meet almost each and every one from the industry. A presence at Mipcom affords Ficci the chance to make the overseas studios interested in working with their Indian counterparts. In addition Ficci is also looking to use Mipcom as a platform to promote the Frames convention that it organises every year in Mumbai.

    Meanwhile, the Mumbai-based Graphiti Multimedia is looking to take Mipcom by storm with its original liveaction cum animation series J Bole to Jadoo which is co-produced by Nickelodeon Asia.

    Graphiti director and COO Munjal Shroff is excited as this is the first time he will be attending Mipcom. Speaking to our sister concern Animation Xpress, Shroff said, “This year in addition to our other IPs we also have J Bole to Jadoo, which was one of the first 3D live action animation shows to be made in India, and is also amongst the top rated shows on Nickelodeon.”

    This year at Mipcom, Graphiti will be looking for syndication (with broadcasters) and distribution (home video) for J Bole Toh Jadoo. Besides, the studio also has three other IPs which it shall pitch at the market, including Tree House Set, Action Hero BC and Krish, Trish and Balti Boy. It will also market its animation skills to studios looking to outsource work.

    “Outsourcing is now a big part of our business with clients such as Disney. We’ve just completed a series of idents and bumpers for Disney’s Peek character. 3D & Flash are our core skills,” remarked Munjal.

  • Pradeep Guha heads INS delegation in Pakistan

    MUMBAI: A 30-member delegation of the Indian Newspaper Society (INS) is in Pakistan now on a four-day goodwill mission. The delegation is led by Zee Telefilms Ltd (ZTL) CEO Pradeep Guha, who is also the president of the INS.
     

     
    The team met Pakistan prime minister Shaukat Aziz in Islamabad on 22 June. The delegation attended receptions organized by Punjab Provincial Governer Khalid Maqbool, Chief Minister Pervez Elahi, Pakistan Information & Broadcasting minister Shaykh Rashid and Indian High Commissioner Shivshankar Menon.
     
     
    INS will hold its 500th meeting in Lahore, where it is hosted by South Asia Free Media Association (Safma).
     
     
    Apart from Guha, the INS delegates also include N Murali, Mammen Mathew, Jacob Mathew, Gulab Kothari, Ramasubbaiyer Lakshmipathy, Vishwa Bandhu Gupta, Idupuganty Venkat, Nalluri Madhurika, Jyoti Prakash Khan and Atul Maheshwari.

  • Delhi cable ops get mixed response from politicos on CAS petition

    Delhi cable ops get mixed response from politicos on CAS petition

    NEW DELHI: The cable fraternity today went before the politicians to make a spirited case for implementing the conditional access system . They were snubbed at one place, while at another assurances were given that CAS would get implemented.
     

    A delegation of cable operators from Delhi — the city where the cable fraternity is most active amongst the four metros —- was rebuffed this morning by Madan Lal Khurana, former chief minister of Delhi and a senior member of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which leads the coalition government in India, when told that CAS would be consumer-friendly.

    According to Roop Sharma of Cable Operators Federation of India and Vikky Choudhry of the National Cable & Telecom Association, despite representations to the contrary from the cable operators of his so-called constituency in Delhi, Khurana was adamant that CAS would not end up being pro-consumer.

    Sharma said that “Khurana was speaking the language of the broadcasters , which was sad.”

    The delegation of cable ops had gone to meet Khurana, a vehement critic of CAS, to impress upon him that CAS is good and the issue should not be politicised. However, Khurana, as Choudhry pointed out, kept on insisting that in an election year CAS may turn out to be like the onion issue, which reportedly was the cause of BJP losing power to the Congress in the state of Delhi.

    However, a short distance away from the meeting with Khurana, the cable operators delegation found succour when former information and broadcasting minister Sushma Swaraj who assured them that CAS would become a reality —something that even God cannot say with certainty in the highly politicised
    atmosphere, as the joke goes in Delhi.

    Meanwhile, in the memorandum to Khurana, both COFI and NCTA have expressed their “disappointment” over the politician’s “indifferent attitude to the problems of the cable operators and implementation of CAS in the cable TV industry.”

    ” We understand from your statements as given in various newspapers, that your main concern with regard to CAS is whether the interest of the consumers will be safeguarded. We wish to assure you that we share the same concern. CAS is a universally accepted and implemented methodology for administering pay TV channel revenues all over the world and even in under-developed countries like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. It is evident that you have not been correctly informed about the complete implications of CAS. We wish you to know the system well before attempting to down rate it,” the memorandum said.

    Taking a pot shot at the broadcasters, something that has become the norm of the day since CAS was introduced in the Indian lexicon, the memorandum to Khurana further said, “The broadcasters are afraid of CAS as it would mean a dip in their revenues, subscription particularly, of their not so popular channels. So in order to delay and prevent the implementation of CAS and by defying government regulations, they are resorting to bundling and tiering of channels at much lower rates, not giving a fair opportunity to the subscribers to choose what they desire.”

    Making a case for bringing in legislation to rein in the pay channels, the memo stated that the pay channels are earning through subscriptions as well as through advertisements. “In order to give good value for money, the pay channels should be made to restrict their ad-breaks to a total of 0.3% of every 1440 minutes of programming,” the memo stated, adding that a price regulatory body needs to be established under the Cable Television Network Act 1995 to put a ceiling on the rates declared and to control any future price hikes by the broadcasters.

    But the problem here is that a certain section of politicians are refusing to listen to the cable fraternity and are campaigning against CAS, the same way as a certain set of politicians had earlier refused to see the broadcasters viewpoint and had heralded that CAS is the best thing to happen to Indian television.

     

  • French animation delegation to visit India this week

    NEW DELHI: A delegation of top level representatives of the French animation industry will be in Mumbai and in Bangalore from 14 to 17 March 2003 to meet members of the Animation Producers Association of India (APAI) and to visit studios.
    The event is organised by APAI members, the Embassy of France in India, TVFI (TV France International) and SPFA (Syndicat des producteurs de films d’animation/ the French Animation Producers Association) in France. It is held under the aegis of the Rendez-vous with France on the occasion of the FICCI FRAMES convention on the business of entertainment.
    This marks the first time that such a meeting is being held in India between the two countries. The French delegation consists Millimages CEO Roch Lener, SPFA and TVFI board member Giovanna Milano, CNC (National Center for Cinematography) head of animation Valérie Bourgoin.
    They will be accompanied by Ecran Total (France) journalist Christophe Bottéon and representatives of the French embassy.
    A few animation series are already been co-produced by studios from India and France. Many French animation series have been acquired by Indian television channels. A strong will does exist on both sides to foster such cooperation in the field of animation, says a note issued by the embassy.