The World Cup is heating up and how. Soccer may be getting more eyeballs as the race to the World Cup gets hotter, but cricket continues to rule the average Indian heart. That is the message the ratings give.

Viewership for the World Cup in the week ended 8 June shot up considerably in the metros, according to TAM. Reports say the Argentina versus England match recorded a rating of 3.3 as compared to the previous week‘s high of 1.45 TVR. Football however, is yet to get into the Top 100 - something that the India-West Indies one dayer did without so much as raising a sweat with a TVR of 6.31 on 2 June. The match helped ESPN climb into the top 100 shows in C&S homes at number 13, according to TAM.

In some places though soccer has done well for itself on the fledgling Ten Sports. For the first match between France and Senegal, Kolkata garnered TVRs of over 20 in the SEC A,B,C males 15-44 category. The second day‘s matches have also done relatively well, but only in select metros like Kolkata and Cochin (where it got ratings of 32.5 and 20.4 in SEC A and B 15 + males). Mumbai and Delhi have caught up only in the second week, and the nine metro average hovered below a TVR of 5 in the first week, if TAM figures are to be believed.

ESPN also points to the nine city average on the opening day of the World Cup when the match drew a peak TVR of just above two, while the third ODI between India and the Windies on 29 May drew a peak TVR over nine.

The Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA) will sponsor the 2002 International Emmy Awards regional voting in Hong Kong, which takes place on 13 July.
CASBAA member companies invited to sit on the judging panel include I-Cable, China Entertainment Television, STAR Group, TVBI, Celestial Pictures Asia and Columbia Tristar Asia Pacific.

The Hong Kong regional voting is being hosted by CASBAA-member company Media Financial Services (MFS) and is supported by CASBAA member Bloomberg Television.

Bloomberg is supplying the venue for the Hong Kong round of judging, while Michael Spiessbach, chairman of MFS, will act as host and organiser of the event, says an official release. The International Emmys are organised by the New York-based International Council of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the 2002 awards will be held in November at the United Nations headquarters in New York City.

Tektronix, the video test, measurement, and monitoring solutions company, will partner with the Academy of Broadcasting Science (ABS) to establish a national digital broadcasting research and development laboratory for China‘s broadcast industry.
ABS is a part of the Chinese State Administration of Radio, Film, and TV (SARFT). According to an official release, the acceleration of TV digitisation, the maturation of video technology and the demands for China‘s television system to be upgraded has led the Chinese government to recognise the need to establish a digital TV testing lab that can accelerate the digitisation of the country‘s television industry.

Tektronix claims its award-winning solutions fulfill ABS‘ requirements to test and monitor a variety of signal formats. Tektronix‘ equipment will provide reliable evidence whether the country‘s consumers are receiving good digital video quality, whether the video is being broadcast in standard - or in high-definition.

The Institute of Standardization and Planning, a department within ABS, will use the new Tektronix WFM700M multi-format waveform monitors, MTG300 MPEG-2 generators, VM700T video measurement sets, MTS300 MPEG test systems, and TG2000 signal generation platforms in the lab. The equipment will be used to test specific characteristics of digital TV modulation and transmission, provide performance testing of digital TV decoders and set-top boxes, subjectively evaluate picture quality, and analyze the structure of the video signal.

Tektronix solutions will also be used in conformance testing, software evaluation, and will provide built-in system testing of digital TV products. The award-winning WFM700M is a measurement-quality multi-format waveform monitor that provides for the evaluation of the digital transport layer and digital analysis capabilities important in design, installation, and maintenance of 270MB and 1.485 GB component digital systems, says the release.

The TG2000 is a programmable, multi-format test signal generation platform that provides reference-quality test signals in both the analog and digital domain. It is used to generate standardised test signals for installation, timing and sync, maintenance, and design evaluation applications. The MTS300 MPEG test system, based on Emmy(R) award-winning technology, provides comprehensive analysis of MPEG-2 transport streams, while the MTG300 MPEG generator is a flexible, cost-effective source of MPEG-2 transport streams for design evaluation and conformance testing of compressed digital video products.

Established 44 years ago, ABS has completed many big projects such as the definition of black-and-white TV, color TV, frequency modulation broadcasting module and the building of preliminary broadcasting system in China.