News

Delhi-based newspaper Pioneer is all set to launch two more editions from Cochin and Bhubaneswar. The Cochin edition will be launched on May 4, while Bhubaneswar edition will take off later in the month on May 20. Confirming this development, Durbar Ganguly, executive vice-president, Pioneer says, "As these markets have low English reading population, we are starting off with a print run of 25,000...

Reporters Without Borders today called on President Hamid Karzai to take a clear and definitive public stance in support of cable television and diversity in the broadcast media in response to a new wave of pressure from conservatives, especially the Ulema Council led by supreme court president Fazl Hadi Shinwari, for a ban on "anti-Islamic" TV stations. The press freedom organization said it...

An uplinking and downlinking policy for television channels and electronic news agencies is expected within a month, according to sources in the government. The information and broadcasting ministry has sent the draft guidelines to other ministries including communications, law, finance and home for their comments. The guidelines, after incorporating the inputs of other ministries, will be...

Red Blogs, which AOL unveiled Tuesday, allows teenagers and parents to select the level of privacy they want for their online diaries; a private blog can be kept locked. A semiprivate blog is locked to all but those who are invited to read it. And a public blog allows access to anybody on the Net. However, blogs of younger teenagers, those between 13 and 15, will be locked from general public...

From the BBC News: Is podcasting the dotcom revolution of the new millennium? Many, like former MTV veejay Adam Curry, seem to think so. He and his partner Ron Bloom have created PodShow, a venture that allows virtually anyone to create, distribute and market their podcasts online. This goal of this growing phenomenon, according to Curry, "is to create a network that, in aggregatiwill have enough...

After serving India TV with a showcause notice for the sting operation on MPs, the Information and Broadcasting Ministry has revoked the licence of CineWorld, an encrypted channel based in Mumbai. The channel has been prohibited from transmitting/re-transmitting programmes for 30 days after it aired some ‘‘obscene’’ movies. The Ministry, which is in the process of setting up a quasi-legal...

News channel India TV, whose sting operations on Bollywood personalities set off a controversy, on Sunday said such programmes would be its "mainstay in future". Asked whether the channel will be engaged in sting operations in future as well, India TV Editor-in-Chief Rajat Sharma said, "Investigative journalism as well as interactive TV will be our forte." He told the agency that the channel's...

Olivier Fleurot, CEO of the Financial Times Group which has a stake in Business Standard said that FT would operate in the English Business Reporting space responding to queries about opportunities of growth in Indian Vernacular media. Fleurot was on his first visit to India after FT’s investment in Business Standard and was at an industry gathering hosted by CII. Fleurot also launched a FT...

Ananda Vikatan has emerged as the largest-selling Tamil weekly. The average circulation of the weekly now stands at 4,30,534 copies for the period July-December 2004, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation. This represents a 22 per cent growth over the previous half-year period. Founded and nurtured by the legendary S.S. Vasan, Ananda Vikatan displaces Kumudam as the largest-selling Tamil...

Its Bollywood sting may have grabbed all the headlines but it’s India TV’s purported sneak shots of three former MPs and a sitting Member that has prompted the government to serve a show-cause notice on the channel. The notice, served two days ago, seeks an explanation from the channel for airing the programme Bhaiya Bhole, which was found to be offensive and obscene, said officials of the...