Media - Broadcast

Television news channels, with foreign institutional investment, can continue to uplink from India for another three months. As per uplinking guidelines, while 26% foreign direct investment is allowed in news channels, FIIs are not allowed to pick up any stake. The channels, which are expected to benefit from the three-month extension include NDTV, CNBC, Zee News, Sab TV, Jain TV and some regional...

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...

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...

Indian broadcaster SAB said on Monday it would sell its TV channel and related assets to Sony Entertainment Television Satellite (Singapore) for $13 million, and focus on its core production facilities. Sri Adhikari Brothers Television Ltd. (SAB) will use the proceeds to upgrade studios and production and post-production facilities and set up an animation division. "There is fierce competition in...

NDTV Profit and CNBC TV 18 may have been crying themselves hoarse over alternate claims of supremacy, but the media-planners, and consequently clients, aren't greatly impressed with their high-decibel rhetoric. A Delhi-based senior media planner says, "Whatever the channels might claim, we do our own analysis and the figures dished out by the channels do not influence us to a great extent." It's...

Dainik Jagran's television venture has got a go-ahead from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The news channel has been branded as Channel 7 and the test run would start from February 21. The channel will be formally launched by the first week of March. When asked why the channel was not named after the Jagran group, Siddharth Gupta, director - Jagran TV, says, "We intend to create a...

A study commissioned by BBC World and conducted by PQR and IMRB International, has classified Indian news viewers into six broad categories. These are astute, self acclaimed intellectual, evolved, generalist, minimalists and detached. There is also a small population of Indians who get their news only from newspapers. According to the survey, the minimalists, with a low interest in news, form 32...

Ananda Bazar Patrika-controlled STAR News is set to launch a Bengali news channel in February 2005. The channel, in all likeliness, will not be called STAR Khabar. It will be the first 24-hour national news channel in Bengali. The development has been confirmed by senior executives at the ABP group. The channel will be 'national' both in terms of programming and distribution. "The programming will...

In the news business, it is often easier to make headlines than money. Prannoy Roy is unusual in that he does both. Last year he created waves in India by jumping off Rupert Murdoch's Star network where his New Delhi TV had provided 24-hour rolling news for five years. "The first line of our contract read 'editorial control remains with NDTV'. When we came to renewing it, Star wanted to run things...

New Delhi Television Ltd. (NDTV) has achieved a cash break-even in the quarter ended March 31, 2004. The turnaround in the fourth quarter took place after losses in the first three quarters. Fiscal 2003-04 was NDTV's first year of operation as a broadcaster. For the full financial year, on a consolidated basis, NDTV has reported an income of Rs 68.98 crore and a net loss of Rs 49.62 crore. The...