BBC World, which turned 10 in India in October 2001, turned digital today. The news service will continue the analog feed on the PAS 10 satellite till 31 March 2002. The channel has additionally started beaming off the Telkom 1 satellite for audiences in southeast Asia.
BBC‘s digitisation effort is not restricted to India but will extend across the full footprint of PAS-10 satellite‘s BBC World South Asia feed, BBC officials who visited the country last month said. This will cover Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Middle East, Bhutan and Bangladesh. BBC is received as a 24 hour service in 11 million homes in India.

Another channel which was slated to encrypt today is the one that irks India‘s information and broadcasting minister Sushma Swaraj - Fashion Television or FTV. The channel had promised to encrypt on 1 November but later deferred it by one month. Although Modi Entertainment Network officials had earlier claimed that 60 per cent of the seeding operations concerning distribution of set top boxes had been completed, there is no official word from MEN on whether the operations are completed for the 1 December deadline.

FTV claims a viewer base of 23 million, which it insists will stay post -encryption as well. Sources had said earlier that MEN would be bundling FTV along with Hallmark and DD Sports, the two other channels it currently distributes along with French music channel MCM. FTV had earlier been beaming off the Asiasat 2 satellite.

A few MSOs have already switched off FTV. 7 Star Network, which operates in Mumbai‘s northern suburbs, has already stopped transmitting the channel. FTV had been knocked off TV screens in Kolkata by RPG Netcom, a leading signal provider in the city in November, following the announcement of the switch to a pay channel.

Among other Asian channels which have shifted to the Indonesian satellite Telkom 1 from 1 December are CNBC Asia, Bloomberg TV Asia and Fashion TV.

The Indian television business witnessed its second awards ceremony for this year yesterday - The Hero Honda-Indian Television Academy Awards. (Indiantelevision Dot Com Pvt Ltd, which runs indiantelevision.com and is in no way connected with the Indian Television Academy, actually organised the first set of television awards on 6 July 2001 this year - The Indian Telly Awards 2001.)

The Hero Honda-ITA awards ceremony held at the Renaissance Hotel & Convention Canter, Powai, Mumbai was attended by the leading lights of the television and film industry. (Estimates put the attendance figure at about 1,000-1,500). Among the film stars who attended the show were Madhuri Dixit, Raveena Tandon, Sanjay Dutt, David Dhawan and Subhash Ghai. Among the TV stars who attended were Siddharth Kak, Renuka Shahane, Tabssum, Saakshi Tanwar, Ram Kapoor and Gautami Gadgil.

Information & Broadcasting minister Sushma Swaraj, member of Parliament Shatrughan Sinha, Prasar Bharati CEO Anil Baijal were among the government representatives who turned up.

The awards were split up into 44 categories: 12 popular, 24 jury awards, and eight technical awards. The show started with the technical awards. The winners:

It was followed by the Jury Awards. The winners are as below:

The Popular Awards were won by the following:

The other notable awards given away were the milestones awards which sought to honour serials of yesteryear.

The show, which began nearly two hours later than the scheduled 7:30 pm, began with a Russian ballet. Veteran actor Kabir Bedi was the first of the show‘s several anchors, who hosted the seven segments of the awards. Archana Puran Singh and Parmeet Sethi, Mandira Bedi, Niki Aneja and Rohit Roy, Ranjeet and Sandhya Mridul, Shekhar Suman, Aly Khan (who also hosted The Indian Telly 2001 Awards in July 2001) were the other sub-anchors roped in to host the other segments.

Take offs on the TRP ratings, Doordarshan‘s programming and spoofs on TV talk shows peppered the show, in between segments. Current hit Adnan Sami stole the show with his brilliant vocals and lightning fingers.