Divinity, unlike human frailty is more consistent at producing tangible results, at least for television production houses.

Ask Creative Eye. The production house that has an assembly line of mythologicals in its stable, has posted an 83 per cent increase in its net sales for the quarter just ended over the previous quarter. While the company‘s income from operations does not compare favourably with figures of the same period last year (Q3 2001 stands at Rs 61.1 million as against Q3 2000 net sales of Rs 157.9 million), the revenues are better than those in Q2 2001 which stood at Rs 33 million. The company claims that net profit after tax is up by 156 per cent over the previous quarter; the figure of Rs 9.2 million is however, much lower than Rs 14.5 million reported for the same quarter last year.

The better performance of the quarter can probably be attributed to the production house‘s lessening dependence on Doordarshan and its perceptible shift to the satellite channels. The company, that came out with an IPO in late 2000, posted net sales of Rs 33.4 million in the second quarter of 2000.

After its second quarter results, company officials had said that Creative Eye would spend Rs 30 million to upgrade and add to the additional facilities of its existing studios. Plans are in the pipeline to invest Rs 20 million to set up another studio.

The cost of software has gone up from Rs 28.4 million to Rs 38.2 million over the previous quarter, but the figures are nowhere close to the Rs 135.1 million incurred on software in Q3 2000.

The company currently has Shree Ganesh on Sony, Jap Tap Vratt on Star, Om Namo Naaraayan on Sahara, Jai Santoshi Ma on Zee, Om Namah Shivay (Tamil) on Star Vijay and Jaane Anjaane on DD1. It has also been commissioned to make Nav Graha Shakkti for the still-to-be-launched Mak TV and Kya Beti Paraya Dhan Hai for ETV Hindi.

The company has announced that it has already utilised Rs 110 million of the Rs 252.2 million raised during the IPO and has invested the balance in fixed deposits with nationalised banks.

It‘s all about getting the combinations spot on. In these times of rising tensions between broadcasters and cable operators, networks are offering various combinations of the channels they have on offer to ensure that their channels get carriage.
It‘s all about getting the combinations spot on. In these times of rising tensions between broadcasters and cable operators, networks are offering various combinations of the channels they have on offer to ensure that their channels get carriage.

NDS Group, a News Corporation company, has announced that China Network Systems (CNS), Taiwan‘s leading cable TV service provider, has selected NDS to provide systems integration consulting and the end-to-end digital broadcasting solutions to power their digital cable TV network upgrade. NDS claims to be the leading provider of conditional access systems and interactive applications for digital TV. CNS is a joint venture between the Star Group which claims to be Asia‘s leading multi-platform content and service provider, and Koos Group which claims to be Taiwan‘s leading business conglomerate.
CNS will commence the digital upgrade of cable networks in the second quarter of 2002, with services delivered to more than one million viewers within three years.

An official release states that Taiwan‘s cable market has the highest penetration of any pay-TV market in the Asia Pacific region. There are nearly five million cable TV subscribers in Taiwan, representing 80 per cent of TV households. CNS claims to be the leading cable TV service provider in Taiwan, with access to more than one million analog cable TV viewers currently.

With a reach of more than one million viewers, the CNS planned digital rollout will be the first wide-scale deployment of digital interactive TV technology in the Asia Pacific.