MUMBAI: National Geographic is beefing up its prime hour of nine pm - Nat Geo Max - with specials targeted at the thinking viewer.

The Space Week that commences today, will start with Destination Space that will give viewers an insider‘s view of the next space race - as astronauts, scientists and entrepreneurs share their vision of the future. Similar one hour specials are lined up for the rest of the week - Solar Blast on Tuesday, Asteroids - Deadly Impact on Wednesday, Cold & Space and Star Wounds on Thursday and Cosmic Fireball on Friday.

Says Nat Geo senior VP, content and communication Dilshad Master: "Nat Geo Max is our prime hour wherein we give high value high-interest, award winning shows to our viewers. Being a Prime time slot, each show is a great example in both entertainment and information. This is a something which few channels can claim to have."

Nat Geo Max, the channel‘s prime hour programming block that started in April this year, plays the best of the channel‘s programming where all programmes playing on the slot are are thematically linked.

MUMBAI: Jeevan TV the fifth Malayalam news channel, will begin telecasting 20 hours a day from Thursday.
The channel, promoted by the Catholic Church of Kerala, was formally launched on 14 July and is being run from a studio and uplinking centre located in Kerala‘s commercial capital, Kochi.

The fifth entrant in a market which already has regional Doordarshan apart from Asianet, Surya and Kairali, Jeevan claims it will offer programmes that entertain while stressing the importance of moral values. Although the target of the channel is the family, soap operas will be conspicous by their absence. News and education shows will dominate the channel‘s programming. The channel will serve as a forum for issue based discussions on topics otherwise considered taboo, say reports.

Jeevan TV managing director P C Cyriac has been quoted by the Economic Times as saying that the channel would not accept surrogate advertisements of liquor. The channel will be telecast through the APR-1 satellite and will have a footprint which covers India, South East Asia, Australia, Middle East and Central Europe.

MUMBAI: German media giant Bertelsmann‘s chief executive Thomas Middelhoff was forced to step down yesterday due to a fierce dispute over his strategy. 
report from Reuters states that Germany‘s privately-owned media giant would replace Middelhoff with its media services head Gunter Thielen. Middelhoff‘s attempts to modernise and take the secretive newspaper and book publisher public in an attempt to challenge fellow media conglomerates AOL Time Warner and Disney faced stiff opposition from Bertelsmann‘s old guard. The report indicates that differences regarding the future direction of the company between Middelhoff and the company‘s chief shareholders were mounting.

NEW DELHI: In what is termed a bid to strengthen its marketing efforts, national broadcaster Doordarshan has brought in former Zee Telefilms CEO Vijay Jindal to head its newly constituted marketing advisory committee.
The committee will be headquartered in New Delhi and will have Jindal as chairman, with Sunit Duggal, Jagdeep Bakshi, Murad Ali Baig, Roda Mehta, Satish Mehta as the other marketing / advertising experts on the committee. The Doordarshan deputy director general (commercial) and deputy director-general (audience research) will also be on the committee with DD‘s director (commercial) as the convener of the committee.

The committee is supposed to make recommendations to the director-general on various issues and policies relating to marketing of Doordarshan and its positioning in the competitive broadcasting field The committee will meet from time to time and give suggestions on evolving an effective marketing strategy for Doordarshan. It will also evolve a framework for positioning of DD Channels as a brand and advise on effective advertising and publicity campaigns, a Prasar Bharati release states.

In recent years, Doordarshan has been placing enormous importance on marketing of its programmes. It has already set up marketing divisions in Mumbai (2000), Chennai (2001) and Bangalore (2002). These units market programmes produced, owned or acquired by Doordarshan. Nearly a third of the programmes on the National Network and half of the programmes on the regional service are produced in house by the Doordarshan Kendras. Plans are afoot to open marketing offices in Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Thiruvananthapuram also in the near future.

DD has already set up a creative advisory committee under the chairmanship of Alyque Padamsee.