ITV

Tag: gets

  • Discovery docu ‘With All Deliberate Speed’ gets theatrical release

    MUMBAI: Discovery Docs, the documentary arm of Discovery Communications, has entered new terrain with its latest film With All Deliberate Speed, which it co-produced with CameraPlanet Pictures.

    With All Deliberate Speed is the first theatrical documentary release from Discovery Docs and opened in theaters in five major cities — New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston — on 14 May 14. It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York on 6 May.

    The film will have its television debut on Discovery channel in the US on 26 May. The documentary, which marks the 50th anniversary of a landmark US Supreme Court judgement on education and society, is directed by Peter Gilbert.

     
     

    The film weaves together the inspiring story of the people behind Brown v. Board of Education with a look at its complex legacy. Led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the United States Supreme Court hands down a blockbuster decision. “In the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place,” reads the opinion. “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” The highest court in the land determines that segregated public schools deny African-American students equal protection under the law. A nation is forever changed.

    “The film is as much about today as it is about yesterday,” says filmmaker Peter Gilbert. “The legacy of the Brown decision is a mixed one, and continues to enlighten, define, and complicate our society.” Gilbert sees first-hand its impact as he visits current high school students — and in some cases, finds subtle reflections of what drove a small group of teenagers to take a stand 50 years ago.
     
     

    Peter Gilbert was producer and director of photography for the award- winning and broadly popular documentary Hoop Dreams (1994). His other works include All the Rage (1999), which won Best Film at the Milan Film Festival, and Vietnam: Long Time Coming,” for which Gilbert won a National Emmy for Distinguished Network Programming and the prestigious Directors Guild of American Award for Best Directing of a Documentary.

  • Space TV gets DTH LoI

    MUMBAI: Not “in a day or two” but in a few hours is how it finally panned out. The information and broadcasting (I&B) ministry this evening handed over the long awaited letter of intent (LoI) to a representative from Tata’s Delhi office.
     

    The LoI, to be followed by a formal license, will enable Space TV, the 80:20 joint venture between Tata and Star, to commercially launch its Rs 16 billion ku band direct-to-home (DTH) service by the end of 2005, an official release stated.

    The release quoted Vikram Kaushik, CEO, Space TV as saying, “We are very excited that the clearance has been awarded. Both partners, Tata and Star, are fully committed to invest in building a high quality digital infrastructure in the country to offer a world class television viewing experience to Indian households. We believe the service will immensely enhance the choices of viewers looking for the best of pay television services in the country.”
     
     

    One clear mandate that Space TV has before it is to make its DTH service “India’s largest digital television platform, offering consumers a wide array of programming choices with interactive features and superior picture and sound quality.”

    Before it can achieve that goal, it has some catching up to do first. The Subhash Chandra-promoted Dish TV has had a clear head start as the first player to enter the segment in October 2003 while pubcaster Prasar Bharati, launched its free-to-air platform ‘DD Direct+’ in December 2004.

    Contacted by Indiantelevision.com, a senior executive of Dish TV, which is 20 per cent owned by Zee Telefilms, welcomed the LoI issued to Space TV, saying, “Competition will benefit the consumer at the end of the day.”

    With the entry of Space TV and Sun DirectTV (Sun Group’s proposed DTH platform), there will be a total of four players in the Indian DTH arena. Currently Dish TV claims to have about 200,000 subscribers while Prasar Bharati boasts of over two million subscribers.

    Speaking of Sun DirectTV, while it can be assumed that it too got the LoI, indiantelevision.com was unable to get an official confirmation on this from Kalanidhi Maran’s network at the time of filing this report.

    The handing over of the LoIs follows the confirmation by newly appointed information and Broadcasting secretary S K Arora earlier in the day that his ministry would be issuing “in a day or two” letters of intent relating to the DTH licence of Space TV and Sun DirectTV. The scrutiny “process is complete” as all queries have been satisfactorily answered by the applicants, Arora had said during a media briefing in the afternoon.

    AIADMK MP MOVES COURT AGAINST DTH LoI TO SUN TV

    The Press Trust of India has reported that an AIADMK member of Parliament today moved the Madras High Court to restrain the Centre from processing Sun TV’s DTH application citing the “Competitive Act 2002.

    When the PIL by PG Narayanan, AIADMK leader in the Rajya Sabha, came up for hearing, a division bench comprising Justice Prabha Sridevan and Justice C Nagappan directed the Union ministries of company affairs, home, communications and information technology and Sun TV to file counter affidavits in response to the petition by 24 May, PTI has reported.

     

  • Dilli One gets government nod for uplink

    MUMBAI: The Ramesh Sharma-promoted Moving Picture Company India Ltd (MPCL) has received approval for uplinking its Delhi centric channel from the ministry of information & broadcasting.
     

    Promoter Ramesh Sharma confirmed the development today, but said, “This would be a wrong time to start a channel and we would like to wait for a `trigger’ to happen in the TV industry, which we feel should come through with Star’s proposed channel.”

    The company has finalised Dilli One as the name of the channel, which would target the audience in the National Capital Territory of Delhi. The channel would have a mix of Hindi and Punjabi language programming.

    MPCL is a boutique company, which produces programmes such as Current Bollywood on Max and Popkorn on Zoom, the glamour and lifestyle TV channel owned by Bennett Coleman group, publishers of Times of India.

    Pointing out that the uplinking permission could have come through earlier, Sharma said that the company is now targeting a festive season launch for Dilli One. This means it is unlikely to see the light of the day before the last quarter of 2005.
     
     

    Dilli One would be positioned as an interactive infotainment channel. “Though we would be having a certain percentage of news & current affairs based programming, it would be wrong to say that the channel would be a news channel,” Sharma added.

    MPCL’s studio and post-production facility is based in Noida, on the outskirts of Delhi, from where the digital free to air channel will be uplinked to Thaicom-3.

    Sharma said now that the government has given the green light, the task of setting up a team for Dilli One will commence.

    At present, Delhi’s NCR is being catered by Total TV, started by a businessman close to Haryana politicians. Another channel in the pipeline is one that would come from the Sahara stable and is going under the project name of D1.

    Meanwhile, MPCL is scouting around for a strategic partner to invest in the company, the financial details of which where not forthcoming.

  • Dining in India now gets the Hollywood touch

    NEW DELHI: Better late than never. Planet Hollywood, promoted by stars like Bruce Willis and film actor-turned-politician Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1992, has plans to dazzle India with a chain of branded restaurants.

    Initial plan is to invest up to $ 15 million in five restaurants by 2010 with the first one slated to come up in Mumbai next year adjacent to a 400-room hotel property.

    In line with its philosophy of starry dining and experience, Planet Hollywood not only plans to bring in some Hollywood stars as part of promotional blitz, but also wants to rope in Indian stars like former Miss Universe and Bollywood actress Sushmita Sen for endorsement.

    For the Indian foray, Planet Hollywood has signed a master franchisee agreement with the US-based Arch Millennium Corp, which is promoted by Indian-origin businessmen.

    “We plan to open one restaurant each in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Goa and Hyderabad,” Arch Millennium president and CEO Siddharth Mobar was quoted by Press Trust of India (PTI) as saying today.
    As per the company’s plans, guests in Planet Hollywood India restaurant will be able to see what’s happening in other restaurant locations such as New York, Las Vegas, Orlando, London and Paris.

    “We would be bringing in big stars like Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone in India as part of our promotional activities, while also trying to get other ones like Paris Hilton and Justin Timberlake (a teen heart-throb who was a boyfriend of Britney Spears and is the current squeeze of Cameroon Diaz),” Mobar was quoted by the news agency as saying.

    The company, which has many of the dishes named on Hollywood stars, plans to add the local Indian flavor by roping in some of Bollywood’s stars in the coming time. Some of the unique dishes which will be on offer include ‘Chicken Crunch’ based on Indecent Proposal star Demi Moore’s recipe and ‘Banana Strudle’, which is based on a recipe of Schwarzenegger’s mother.

    “We will also be displaying and selling Hollywood movie merchandise,” Mobar said, adding that this contributed about 10 per cent to revenue of each restaurant worldwide.

    Each Planet Hollywood restaurant houses memorabilia from movies, old and new. The interior decor reflects various movie genre, including action, horror and Sci-Fi and the audio-visual system plays the latest movie trailers, clips, music videos and celebrity visits.

    Planet Hollywood founder and chairman Robert Earl was quoted as saying there was a huge potential in the Indian market for their brand. “This franchisee agreement will bring the excitement of Hollywood and combine it with the power of Bollywood in a very special way,” he said in a statement.

    Overall, there are 28 Planet Hollywood restaurants in locations like the US, Paris, London, Dubai, Hong Kong and Beijing.