Balaji Telefilms is poised to rake in a turnover of close to Rs 1000 million at the end of the current financial year, having worked up the family soap into a luxuriant lather in the last few years.
The seven-year-old production house, which specialises in hooking the middle class, middle-aged Indian woman to the small screen, is now eyeing youth and the entire family. Balaji plans to enter the arena of weekend programming shortly, directing house-bound families to even more soaps. According to Sanjay Dosi, CEO of Balaji, the production house is not likely to deviate from its tried and tested formula of the tear-jerking family drama, which has reaped rich harvests for the company owned by the family of former film star Jeetendra Kapoor.

Balaji Telefilms Limited (BTL) is currently riding high on the wave of its successes, with talks doing the rounds of the industry that following the examples of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi and Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii on Star Plus, the company would be hiking the rates for Kkusum, being aired on Sony. Relentlessly continuing the superstition of the success of the K factor, Balaji has recently put two serials, Kavyanjali and Kutumbam Oru Kodu on Vijay TV, enthralling southern audiences. On Star Plus, meanwhile, the soap Kasautii Zindagi Kay, touted as a musical love story, is poised to go on air from 29 October.

Although Dosi insists that Balaji maintains a good mix of thrillers as well as ‘character-based‘ and ‘family-based‘ serials, he avers that the family soap remains a favourite with Indians across the country, an assumption that forms the basis for yet another daily afternoon soap, Kal, which goes on air on Sony in November.

The TRP ratings scandal, the association with cornered bull stock-broker Ketan Parekh and the aborted alliance with channel Nine Gold notwithstanding, Balaji continues to do well on the stock exchange, making it the only media company which has had a successful year after launching its IPO in November 2000.

The secret of its domination may have been the single-minded pursuit of success by creative director Ekta Kapoor, its healthy mix of sponsored and commissioned programmes or its judicious use of several channels, rather than reliance of just a few. But the finger on the audience‘s pulse has ensured that Balaji‘s reach increased from six channels at the start of 2000-01 to ten towards the close, covering Doordarshan, DD Metro, Star Plus, Sony, Zee, Gemini, Udaya, SABe and Metro Gold. This needless to say, resulting in increased programming hours - from 616.5 hours in 1999-2000 to 1457 hours in 2000-01.

Turnover, consequently, has been jumping by leaps and bounds. From a turnover of RS 200.9 million in 1999-2000, it posted revenues of RS 489 million in the last financial year. And at a time where everyone seems to be revising their growth targets, Dosi doesn‘t rule out a growth rate of 100 per cent this year.

When regional language channels Prabhat (Marathi) and Suprabhat (Kannada) shut down transmission recently no one was surprised. That it was facing severe financial problems was well known and the owner admitting that there was no place for so many channels in the regional market only confirmed what was an open secret in the industry.
Now that the official seal has been put on the two regional language channels the spotlight has turned to another regional channel bouquet - Broadcast Worldwide, which runs four regional channels under the brand name Tara.

For the last six months, one regularly has heard the buzz of a complete sellout. But in spite of this the management, led by promoter (and former Star TV head honcho) R. Basu, has managed to stay alive and ticking. Director business development Pradipto Sircar is quite categorical that Broadcast Worldwide is not shutting down any time soon. "I have also been hearing these rumours for quite a long time. Yes there have been problems in the last six months. But when the market itself is going down then everyone is facing the same conditions," says Sircar.

And what of the reports that the Delhi and Ahmedabad offices have been closed down and that employees have not been given salaries for the last few months? "All our offices are functioning well," Sircar says. "We have rationalised the size of our staff. There was no problem as far as salaries are concerned. Yes, there were some problems in case of payments to production people. Most of them were on contract. But now we have resolved it."

On the programming front, he rejects the contention that there is nothing on the channels except reruns. "We are going for new programming. And the deal with Vicco Laboratories (reportedly called off) is very much on," he says. "We are showing programmes from their library," Sirkar says. The Vicco library has close to 17 Marathi serials, most of which were aired on national broadcaster DD a few years back.

But the real clincher appears to be reports from internal sources that Mauritius-based Crombie International Ltd, which Basu had said in May was pumping in $ 800,000 in exchange for 72,500 equity shares of Broadcast Worldwide, never made good on the payment

When asked what happened to the Crombie investment Sircar says the company has already invested close to the full $800,000. "It was part of an old agreed amount that they have invested," he says. Queried as to how the funds had been allocated, he says that the amount will be used for core function of programming and marketing. "Looking at the market conditions we have to strictly follow the return on investment criteria as returns have depleted to a great extent." He admitted that there was increasing competition from the other regional channels, which made things difficult.

ESPN Star Sports (ESS) has finalised a broadcast sponsorship deal for the world‘s most popular football league, the English Premier League.

The one year sponsorship agreement will see Toshiba and Carlsberg Asia Ltd, the other sponsors, enjoying regional association with the 2001/2002 EPL season through a combination of multi-level integrated benefits. This includes on-air entitlements around all ‘live‘ matches and repeats on ESPN and STAR Sports, as well as marketing and on-line benefits.

ESS managing director Rik Dovey has termed the sponsorship agreement with Toshiba and Carlsberg as a fitting partnership, acknowledging "their already strong involvement with football globally." ESPN STAR Sports is a 50:50 joint venture between two of the world‘s leading cable and satellite broadcasters, ESPN Inc. and STAR TV.

"The popularity of the English Premier League is now at an all-time high, watched by over 165 million people across Asia. Sponsors have been quick to see the benefit of associating with the League, and we are thrilled to be able to provide them with a way to leverage its potential", he said.

Toshiba‘s sponsorship also extends to Goals! - a presentation of the week‘s best plays drawn from the Premier, Spanish, Italian and Champions leagues.

The drama and excitement of the EPL season began on 18 August, 2001, covered live by ESS‘ two channels, ESPN and STAR Sports. Football fans across Asia will be able to watch 165 ‘live‘ games and over 1000 hours of EPL programming. There is also a line-up of support news programming throughout the week, including pre- and post-game analyses, predictions and information, a first for English Premier League coverage in Asia. Beyond the coverage on air, there are a series of interactive activities on a newly designed espnstar.com.