The attack on Manhattan‘s World Trade Centre Tower I and II and the Pentagon was timed to get maximum viewing audiences globally. 9 am in New York means it was about 6 am on the west coast, late night in Australia, early evening in India and late evening in south east Asia.

The ESPN School Quiz 2001 kicked off in Mumbai last Thursday at the Shanmukhananda Hall in central Mumbai with over 3,000 schoolchildren from 150 schools in and around the city participating for a chance to get onto the national level competition which will go on air later this year.

This year, ESPN is targeting 23 centres to hold on-ground events across India. ESPN will be holding on-ground mega-events at six centers, namely Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Calcutta and Hyderabad. The on-ground school quiz events will be hosted by Charu Sharma. In addition written tests will be held across 17 centers to cover a much wider geographical spread.

Hosted by popular presenter Harsha Bhogle, the ESPN School Quiz 2001 will invite 108 schools from all over India to participate in the on-air quiz programme. These schools will be selected from over 1000 schools which are expected to participate in the ‘qualifying on-ground sports quiz events.

The ‘All India‘ winners of the ESPN School Quiz 2001 will receive, in total Rs 850,000, which will be spent for developing sports facilities at their school. Manu Sawhney, managing director of ESPN Software India, said whatever money was won would have to be spent by the school for sports development. ESPN would also look into the implementation of the prize money through follow-up visits to the school, Sawhney said. The individual team members along with their teacher will get a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be flown to a major international sporting event of their choice - European Cup finals, Wimbledon, Formula 1, Cricket or NBA - that is featured on ESPN, a company release says.

The show has five main sponsors with Milo as the presenting sponsor and Nike as the on ground sponsor. Camlin and Hero Cycles are the associate sponsors of the quiz.

Sawhney said the event was really growing at a fast clip and would have 23 centres up from 16 last year.

Aditya Sharma and Ishan Wagaskar representing the Rajhans Vidyalaya in the western suburbs of Andheri emerged winners in the first on-ground event of the sports quiz. Others schools which qualified for the national on-air quiz include St Mary‘s High School, Mazgaon, Bombay Scottish School, Campion High School, Modern English School, Chembur, and Chembur English High School.

Manu Sawhney, Managing Director of ESPN Software India Ltd. said: ‘We at ESPN STAR Sports are committed to promoting sporting excellence in India and ‘ESPN School Quiz 2001‘ further exemplifies our efforts in this direction. The national sports quiz provides a platform for the participants to represent their school in this forum, and bring pride and glory to their institution. ESPN is known for building brand equity with their viewers, and through this quiz we take a step further to strengthen this relationship.‘

Apart from the winner‘s Grand prize of RS 500,000, other prizes on offer are:
* RS 200,000 per team for national semi final winners.
* RS 100,000 per team for zonal final winners.
* RS 50,000 per team for Zonal semi final winners
* ESPN Milo gift pack for all first round winners.

All participants will get ESPN certificates of excellence, School Quiz Olympiad badges and T-shirts. This year, the sports quiz will be extended on the espnstar.com website and viewers can participate in the on-line version of the sports quiz at their convenience, the release says.

‘Sports Quiz offers an opportunity for our younger audiences to experience the sports brands on-ground, on-line, on-air and off-air. It also offers a phenomenal opportunity for our sponsors and advertisers to target the millions of school children around the country,‘ said Sawhney.

mpetition which will go on air later this year.

Zed Career Academy, which is a division of Zee Interactive Learning Systems, will offer the ‘Genius‘ software course in conjunction with Sterling Infotech and Carnegie Technology Education. CTE is a wholly owned subsidiary of Carnegie Mellon University which is one of the top five Universities in America. Students will cover the course through a combination of learning through the Internet as well as classroom education. These centres will take advantage of the VSAT network. Students can go to the Zed Career Academy centres and access the course when they want to.

Genius has ten modules and they will lead to two levels of certification, which are Certificate in Computer Programming and Certificate in Software Systems Development. The aim is to develop the students fundamentals in software engineering. It also equips them with various software tools and develops their skills in areas like system level programming.

Speaking on this Dilip Mahapatra the COO of ZILS said,‘The Mckinsey Report projects the need for IT professionals in India to the tune of 2.2 million by the year 2008. It is to meet this need of hi-tech professionals in India that the company has launched such a high-end online course.‘