On the back of what has been a tremendously successful year for the Jeetendra Kapoor family-promoted Balaji Telefilms, the production house is expanding into new genres and time bands.
Among the more high-profile offerings that the Balaji stable is readying is a 39-part weekend series that is going on air within the next two months on "one of the top satellite channels," CEO and managing director Shobha Kapoor said today, at an analysts‘ meeting in south Mumbai outlining the company‘s plans.

Slated to run as a one-hour show on Friday‘s, Saturday‘s and Sunday‘s, Kapoor said it would be a high-cost production that would run for a total of 13 weeks. Another show that was launching in the weekend slot was a kid‘s serial that would air on Sundays loosely modelled on a Superman like character, Kapoor said.

Rajesh Pavithran, vice-president - marketing, who gave a run down of the company‘s plans said the company was increasingly focussed on increasing the number of commissioned programmes that it produced and was now restricting its programmes in the sponsored category to work it did for the southern language Sun Network.

A point that was made during the briefing was that Balaji‘s top three shows on Star Plus contributed 30 per cent of the company‘s revenues. Pavithran also stressed that there was a big enough spread in the company‘s programming base that no show contributed more than 15 per cent of revenues. One can assume that Hindi entertainment television‘s top soap Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (KSBKBT) would be contributing the 15 per cent. Jeetendra Kapoor said that KSBKBT‘s current sale price to Star was Rs 1,000,000 per episode. The numbers are revealing when one considers that when KSBKBT launched it was sold to Star at Rs 125,000 per episode. Average production cost per episode however, has only gone up 10 per cent, Jeetendra Kapoor said. Now that‘s called tight cost control.

The Indian government would ideally like to keep the price of the basic tier of free-to-air (FTA) channels, once the conditional access system (CAS) is implemented, below Rs. 100. This is in contrast to the figures that have been touted in the industry that ranges between Rs 125 and Rs 150.Ideally we are looking at pricing the basic tier of FTA channels at around Rs 90," a senior information and broadcasting ministry official told indiantelevision.com.

However, the government official also added that if, after a meeting with cable operators, slated to take place soon, the operators say they would be comfortable with Rs 100 we‘d "come to a compromise as the government is quite flexible about the whole idea. "

The official also added that "the government is not looking at controlling channels - specially the FTA channels. "

Explaining the rationale behind the clause in the Cable TV (Networks) Regulation Amendment Bill, 2002 passed by Lok Sabha (Lower House of Parliament), which empowers the government to decide on the FTA package, the official explained that if a certain area in a city is dominated by for example South Indians, then having Punjabi or Bengali channels as part of the FTA basic tier in the area would not be feasible.

Still, media analysts insist that certain clauses in the Bill, yet to be okayed by the Rajya Sabha (Upper House), are aimed at giving government a control over what Indian cable and satellite subscribers can watch or not.

A report, about to be released by analyst Kagan Media Appraisals shows that hard drive-enabled set-top boxes and the personalised services they make possible will give the cable industry increased revenue streams, greater customer retention (reduced churn), and lower infrastructure costs thanks to a more efficient use of limited bandwidth.
Titled "The Future of Local Data Storage in Set-top Boxes", the report deduces that putting hard drives in cable TV set-top boxes will turn into a money-maker for cable operators. "Cable Multiple System Operators (MSOs) that include PVR services will be among the early winners in the emerging video-on-demand and subscription video-on-demand markets. Other near-term possibilities range from audio services to enhanced advertising to gaming. Music is a killer application for adding revenue. Music service bundling opportunities alone can increase annual revenues by more than $100 per subscriber," the report notes. Says Kagan World Media senior analyst Ian Olgeirson, "The introduction of local storage connected to a two-way multimedia distribution network creates broad opportunities to add numerous services and the accompanying subscription fees."

The new services will reduce customer churn, enticing consumers to stay with their cable service provider, the report says. Kagan report states that Personal Video Recorder (PVR) technology will pay for itself in reduced VOD infrastructure costs. "PVRs can provide a valuable complement to the deployment of VOD, and help limit strain on the system‘s capacity," says Kagan chief content officer Larry Gerbrandt.

"Customers will increasingly store personal content such as photographs, home video and music collections on the hard drive in their cable set-top box - so they‘ll have a greater personal interest in the device itself. This can further reduce churn," says Gerbrandt.