Starts 3rd October

Vanita Keswani

Madison Media Sigma

Poulomi Roy

Joy Personal Care

Hema Malik

IPG Mediabrands

Anita Kotwani

Dentsu Media

Archana Aggarwal

Ex-Airtel

Anjali Madan

Mondelez India

Anupriya Acharya

Publicis Groupe

Suhasini Haidar

The Hindu

Sheran Mehra

Tata Digital

Rathi Gangappa

Starcom India

Mayanti Langer Binny

Sports Prensented

Swati Rathi

Godrej Appliances

Anisha Iyer

OMD India

  • Aaj Tak CEO is Media Person of 2001

    Aaj Tak, the 24-hour news channel, is r

  • TV 18 Board authorised to issue shares on preferential basis

    Television Eighteen India Ltd, co-promoter of CNBC India along with CNBC Asia, at its extraordinary board meeting tod

  • Aaj Tak CEO is Media Person of 2001

    Submitted by ITV Production on Jan 02

    Aaj Tak, the 24-hour news channel, is reaping the rewards of the hard work put in the year gone by. Helped along by events that pushed news channels to the forefront, Aaj Tak claimed a 156 per cent increase in its viewership post 11 September.

    As the year drew to a close, CEO G Krishnan bagged the Media Person of the Year Award for the year 2001 at the Media meet Award ceremony. Media Meet, the association of advertisers and media professionals, conferred the award upon him during its 7th Awards ceremony, held at Mumbai on 28 December.

    Aaj Tak completed a year of operations on 31 December and claims to be the leading news channel with a channel-share of 53 per cent and a connectivity of more than 24 million households.

    The same function saw the Media Planner of the Year 2001 award going to Jeffrey Crasto of Euro-RSCG Advertising.

  • Consumer society frowns upon agitating Mumbai cable ops

    The faceoff between ESPN-Star Sports and Mumbai's cable TV trade continues as cable operators are adamant that they w

  • Zee counting on ideators to get it back on track

    Submitted by ITV Production on Jan 02

    Zee Telefilms, which has seen its position in the channel stakes further eroded in recent times and is currently wallowing in the No. 3 position, is pumping in some fresh ideas to get it back on course.

    Zee has announced the appointment of Vinta Nanda as director - ideation of the Zee Network. She started working on the job yesterday.

    Subhash Chandra, Sandeep Goyal and company are no doubt hoping that Vinta Nanda can turn the fortunes of the broadcasting major around. The network desperately needs new innovative strategies as well as out of the box thinking to get over the fiasco of last year when the big bang launch of 24 shows on 27 August fell on its face.

    At indiantelevision.com‘s scriptwriters workshop Qalam 2001 held last month, Vinta Nanda spoke of the degeneration of content in television soaps and programmes. According to her social commitment need not necessarily mean making documentaries, but being sensitive to viewers‘ tastes and thinking about the impact of their writing on people who tune in.

    At Zee, she along with her team of 5-6 ‘ideators‘ will work to develop new concepts, formats and on experimentation with new thought processes on Zee‘s channels. Amrish Sethi, ex-creative director of MTV, will join Vinta‘s team later this month.

    She had these remarks to make about the new post: "This is a great opportunity for me. It is also a very wide canvas. My brief is to think different, break the mould and create products that will catch the pulse of the viewer, build genres and fiction that entertain as well as engage emotionally. I am happy to be joining Zee!"

    Her resume includes writing as well as directing ‘Tara‘ a tele-serial of the early 90‘s. She has over two dozen tele-serials, tens of documentaries and six telefilms to her credit over the last 15 years. In the past she has written serials for both Zee and its rival Star like Sansaar, Rishtey, Star Bestseller, X-Zone. She has also concerned herself with making documentaries and short films on social issues like maternal and child health, drinking water, environmental and gender bias for UNICEF, UNFPA, VHAI, and BBC.

    Currently she is the president of Project Smita Society, an NGO started by her to utilise the power of television and films in India to bring about social change in areas like maternal and child healthcare. She is also a Director of Tracinema, a leading software producer for television.

  • BBC bows to border tension, puts off 'Commando' premiere

    Submitted by ITV Production on Jan 02

    BBC has indefinitely postponed the telecast of its innovative reality show Commando, which was to debut on the channel in the first week of January.
    The channel apparently feels the show is not in sync with the current tense atmosphere in the country, with war clouds looming low over the Indo-Pak border. Media reports quoting BBC World commissioning editor (Regions) Narendhra Morar say that the change in programming is in light of the current situation. "BBC World feels it inappropriate to telecast Commando at this point of time," he has been quoted as saying. The show was to have given viewers a unique access to the Indian army, although some details of the training have been deleted due to security reasons.

    Commando was conceived as a fly on the wall 13-part docudrama, covering the six-week commando-training course at the Commando Training School in Belgaum, Karnataka, considered one of the toughest in the world. Commando was pitched to be much more real than programmes like Survivor and Temptation Island, which are more like game shows where a bunch of people are placed in a certain peculiar situation.

    Morar had earlier described Commando as an "observatory series" where one can see junior officers trying their best to clear the grueling course so as to gain the coveted title of commando. The commando-training programme, spanning from 11 September to 20 October 2001, had been captured by the camera without any interference into the training.


    The documentary follows the experiences of two pairs of officers - Captain Sanjay Singh Routela with his ‘buddy‘ Rajith Unni and Lieutenant Dilip Jha with his buddy Lt Vivek Maudgil, who were among the 60 Army officers who took the course. Of the two protagonists, 24-year-old Capt Routela hails from a family of Army officers; he is a fourth-generation Army officer and has the distinction of having fought in the Kargil conflict in 1999. Twenty-three-year-old Lt Jha on the other hand is posted at a forward base on the Indo-Pak border.

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