Lakshmi Venkat has joined United Television as a creative director telefilms.

Venkat, who took up office on 1 October, is responsible for developing new shows and monitoring shows done by her, managing her in house teams as well as external talent on her shows. Apart from being responsible for quality control and high TRPs for her shows, she will also be look after client relationships with the channels, ensuring schedules are fixed and maintained as per client requirements.

UTV?s TV content division consists of multiple creative directors who are responsible for the creative as well as qualitative content of their respective divisions. The other creative directors at UTV are Zarina Mehta, Ramesh Balakrishnan and Neeraj Naik.

Venkat comes to UTV from Zee TV, where she worked first as programming head and before being reassigned in March 2000 to create a new international channel called "Chakra" for the Zee Network.

Prior to Zee, Venkat has worked as general manager, programming and business development for In-House Productions, Mumbai. Before that she was with the IndusInd group, initially on their cable channel project and later as channel chief of In-Mumbai.

She also had a brief stint as vice-president of Shogun Films, before getting back to freelance production with various assignments: supervising producer for a chat show on Home TV; city producer for the election specials on national broadcaster Doordarshan; as well as consultant on concept and design of a daily breakfast show.

Hardly had the dust settled on the bombshell that programming head Rekha Nigam was leaving Sony Entertainment Television, its head office in Mumbai‘s Andheri suburb had to be evacuated after the police said they had received information that there was a bomb in the premises.

All the staffers were asked to go home and those who didn‘t were seen milling outside the premises. The staff cleared out at around 3:30 pm and the police arrived an hour later.

The dog squad was also pressed into service looking at the "gravity" of the situation and arrived at the site in "double-quick time" at 6:45 pm, just three-and-a-quarter hours after the order to evacuate the buildings. At the time of posting this report, the police were still searching the buildings.

Business channel CNBC India is keenly pushing its ‘Managing India‘ brand forward. ‘Managing India‘ is a half-hour program that showcases company leaders and people whose hands are on the pulse of corporate India.
It was in July in Mumbai that it conducted the first of its events under the brand which brought CEO‘s of companies and corporate bigwigs together to thrash out issues affecting the corporate and business world.

Now the next event oin the series will be held in Delhi on 9 October and will be sponsored by technology majors Sun Microsystems and Azim Premji‘s Wipro.

According to Sunil Nair, marketing manager CNBC India, since the event is in Delhi it will have a political flavour with discussions centering on the state of the economy. Politicians from different parties as well as crucial decision-makers from major companies will be present. They will all get a chance to present their viewpoint. The focal point of the meet is to discuss the state of affairs of India Inc. and offer suggestions as to how the economy and industry can move forward at a time of recession and global uncertainty. The business leaders will also offer their advice as to what shape government policies should take.

The Delhi event will be shown on the channel on 19 October with hour-long repeats on the 20th and 21st.

Reponding to reports that CNBC India is looking to tie up with regional news channels, Nair said that they were looking at states like Gujarat which are business oriented but that nothing concrete had come through as yet.

As far as content is concerned the channel is focussing on the evening band called ‘Executive Suite‘. It features incisive business analyses, data on the stock markets from here as well as America, discussions with corporate executives on the days events as well as how well their companies are performing. There is also a program called ‘Digital Evolution‘ which analyses how companies are using the latest technology to expand their business and gain competitive edge.

From next month the kid‘s channel Nickelodeon, which claims to be available in more than 300 million homes in 149 countries (but is almost invisible in India), will begin a new programme initiative called Snick House Underground. It will feature concerts of singers who have become icons among the new generation and will be shown on Fridays at 7 p.m. and Sundays at 6 p.m.
Teenage singer Mandy Moore will kick things off on the 2 November. Fans will get a glimpse of what went on behind the scenes of one of her concerts held last summer. She shares interesting insights about her working relationships with the crew and band. We will also get to see how she prepared for her cover shoot on Seventeen magazine where she was accompanied by a few lucky kids.

Next up on 9 November is Aaron Carter. At just 14 years of age he is already a recognisable name in the field of Pop music. He will be performing in a studio concert. Fans will also be treated to a display of his favourite hobby ‘dirt bike adventures‘. Then A Teens will perform on the 16th. This band is an ABBA clone. Their debut album ‘The ABBA Generation‘ has sold 3 million copies Worldwide no doubt fuelled by reports that the legendary Swedish band of the 1970‘s will no longer perform live.

Finally the group responsible for letting the dogs out Baha Men will be showcased on the 23rd. The concert of theirs that will be shown was recorded last year at Nickelodeon‘s studios. Besides singing they also play with fans in the most outrageous games and dares.