The Playwin buzz is catching on.

The Essel group promoted online lottery fever is spreading through Mumbai city, if the success of its print campaign in today‘s newspapers is any indication. Eveninger Mid Day, which carried coupons allowing free tickets, had two extra print runs to cater to the overwhelming demand, according to local vendors.

The "trial-inducing sampling" as Playwin Infrawest CEO Sanjay Das terms it, has obviously clicked. Similar coupons were printed in most dailies in the country today, including The Times of India, all Marathi, Tamil, Bengali, Hindi newspapers (in Punjab and Haryana). The ploy to ensure that the new concept catches on is working - the number of Playwin tickets sold is anywhere between 600,000 and 1 million daily, says Das. While Das says that all segments of society have been lured by Playwin‘s novel concept of live, credible and transparent lottery, industry sources say it is in the ‘not-so-premium‘ areas that ticket sales have really sky-rocketed.

Needless to say, the lottery is ensuring viewership for sister channel Zee TV as well. Zee‘s new show celebrity talk show Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hai, which has been receiving good reviews, has an added attraction in that the weekly Super Lotto results are aired on the show.

Das says that while only 30 to 37 persons got five of the six numbers right during the live draws, ensuring prize money of upto Rs 20 million; a total of Rs 50 million will be given away this Thursday. The money will be divided among the number of five digit number winners equally, thus giving an impetus to lottery buyers to gamble even more.

Word of mouth publicity, banners at strategic places in metros and extensive advertising across the Zee network are all part of the multi- media strategy that has been put into place to promote Playwin. According to reports, the company has invested nearly Rs 3000 million on machines manufactured by International Lottery and Totalizator Systems of the US and has a nearly Rs 350 million ad budget.

But it seems a small price to pay. Accounting major PriceWaterhouse Coopers estimates that the turnover of Indian online lottery will be nearly Rs 200 billion at the end of the first year and Rs 1,000 billion by the end of the fifth. Zee, it seems, has truely hit its jackpot.

For the first time in the country a census of Cable TV Households is being conducted by the Delhi-based Centre for Media Studies (CMS). The first report of CMS C&S (cable & satellite) census is expected in the first week of May. This census establishes actual number of cable connections and actual availability of channels.

The census of Cable TV households will help streamline cable television operations in the country as an industry. The report acquires added relevance in the context of recent proliferation of pay channels, a CMS release says.

Even more, once the census report is available the present subscription rates, both at household and cable operator levels, are likely to be rationalised and fixed more transparently.

A presentation of the initial report of CMS census will be made mid-May 2002 to all stakeholders - operators, channels, advertisers and agencies and IRD manufacturers. This report could also be used to validate the figures on subscribing households.

This census will also help bring out more reliably the penetration of television channels among households and help reach the currently "unreached" households. The CMS census of C&S households will hopefully remove some of the friction between Cable TV operators and channels.

"Cable TV operators in India deserve all-out praise for their initiatives and enterpreneurship. In fact, without their adventurous role, India would not have been where it is today in terms of growth and spread of television," said Naveen Surapaneni, project director of CMS Census operations, while announcing the census recently.

CMS is a pioneer in India in media research in the country including Cable TV. CMS researchers were involved in the early years in developing methodologies for NRS, TV Viewership ratings in India. CMS had earlier conducted studies on Cable TV operations as a part of it larger study on communication infrastructure in the country.

The CMS census of Cable TV households aims to serve the television industry in same way as the ABC report for the circulation of newspapers.