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  • Academy Awards

    Academy Awards are Star Movies' March blockbuster

    Apr 09, 2002

    The verdict is out.

  • [V]

    [V] to announce 'Popstars' finalists on Thursday

    Apr 09, 2002

    Channel [V] Popstars is all set to announce its first pop girl band. 

  • V] to announce 'Popstars' finalists on Thursday

    Submitted by ITV Production on Apr 09, 2002
    News Headline

    Channel [V] Popstars is all set to announce its first pop girl band.

    The names of the girls who have made it to the final five will be made public on Thursday at 8 pm on the channel. The real drama, says the channel, begins now as the finalists go through a complete transition from being girls next door to raving divas. Leading stylists, makeup artists, voice trainers, music directors, lyricists, video producers, and the record companies will work their magic to effect the transition. All this will be captured on camera live.

    Popstars travelled across Chandigarh, Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore, Mumbai and Goa auditioning and searching for the perfect five. Jury members toured the six metros making the crucial selection based on voice followed by confidence, and personality.

    Extensive tests were conducted when the semi finalists were brought to Mumbai where the girls had to prepare their compositions, make dummy tracks, go through dance training sessions, sing difficult tracks all with a hope of making it as the ultimate pop band. Thursday‘s episode will feature the jury visiting the girls at their homes to inform them if they made it or not.

    Popstars, launched amid much fanfare (Star TV CEO James Murdoch flew in for the formal announcement) late last year and has been promoted aggressively across the Star network. Novel promotional efforts like three kilometer long banners, wedding bands on the streets of metros and hoardings have marked the Popstars journey. It now remains to be seen if the band lives up to its name.

  • [V] to announce 'Popstars' finalists on Thursday

    Apr 09, 2002

    Channel [V] Popstars is all set to announce its first pop girl band.

  • Academy Awards are Star Movies' March blockbuster

    Apr 09, 2002

    The verdict is out.

  • Academy Awards are Star Movies' March blockbuster

    Submitted by ITV Production on Apr 09, 2002
    News Headline

    The verdict is out.
    The hopes and hype surrounding the Indian entry to the 74th Academy Awards ensured Star Movies a viewership for the live event unprecedented in earlier years. The channel, which has been telecasting the event for five years, says this has been the best yet.

    Not surprising. Ratings from the audience measurement agencies, just in, show that Indian viewers rose early and bright on 25 March to catch the excitement that began at 6:30 am. According to INTAM figures, Kolkata led the country‘s metros with a viewership of 4.39 (TG 4+, C&S). Bangalore followed with TVRs of 2.18. Mumbai, the seat of Bollywood, however, ran a distant third with TVRs of 1.77.

    Weekday and office hour obstacles notwithstanding, the event, preceded by a nearly month long on air and ground promotional activity, managed to bring in the moolah for Star Movies. Star had mass promoted the hitherto niche programme, using Lagaan as a peg to build the Star Movies brand.

    The ploy worked. All 30 minutes of ad time on the three and half hour live broadcast of the ceremony were sold out. Besides, four of the nine main sponsors of the live show were mass marketers like Pepsi, Parle, Asian Paints and Bajaj. Other channels like HBO and BBC World ran Hollywood specials as a run-up to the event; the benefits of which were cashed in upon by Star.

    Other cities have not fared badly either. Chennai with TVRs of 1.35 and Delhi with TVRs of 1.12 helped shore up the ratings. One million plus towns in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka too scored ratings above 1, a fair figure for such niche events, say analysts.

    Figures put out by the other rating agency, AC Nielsen‘s TAM ratings, are not as effusive though. Kolkata leads with TVRs of 2.8 (TG C&S 4+) and Mumbai follows with TVRs of 1.14. According to TAM, Oscar viewership was better among the C&S 15-44 AB category, Kolkata leading with 3.91, and Mumbai following with 2.2. While the overall TVRs for the six metros hover around 1.81, most other cities have not been able to cross the magic TVR figure of 1.


    Lagaan - the element that sparked Indian interest in the Oscars


    In the US, though, the picture‘s not so bright. The Oscars drew a 25.4 Nielsen Media Research rating on Sunday, the lowest-rated Academy Awards telecast ever, with just 41.8 million viewers, say reports. Last year?s show had the previous low record.

    Lagaan has just reversed the trend in India. Will it hold in the coming years?

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