The battle to gain control over the cellular service market is getting hot. To face competition from MTNL‘s Dolphin and Hutchison Max, BPL Mobile has entered into a strategic alliance with MTV India, This fits like a glove as both companies try to understand and reflect the ideas, lifestyles and values of youngsters.

MTV is trying to popularise BPL Mobile‘s new service miDate. In MTV Loveline a contest is being run. During the course of the show the VJ Cyrus asks an unusual question and the person who gives the most innovative answer will get a date with a VJ.

MTV VJs will also be promoting the relationship on the ground. Details for this will be finalised soon. The cellular company plans to launch lots of new products and customer services in the near future. It recently launched miDate for its subscribers in Mumbai.

MiDate is based on the SMS platform which according to Vikram Raizada, director, marketing, MTV India, is the hot new language among the youth. According to him the aim of forming this kind of partnership with BPL Mobile is to connect with the youth. The youth of today are wired and hanging out is very important for them. Besides this they constantly want to keep in touch with each other. In the "tuning into the Indian youth part 3" survey which was conducted recently, small and latest mobile phones ranked high on the must have list.

BPL Mobile has also tied up with Midday Multimedia Ltd to offer real time news content - miNews - to BPL‘s cellular service subscribers. A print campaign has also been launched.

Currently, Grey Worldwide and McCann Erickson handle their advertising. It is nor yet clear which ad agency will be finalised after merger.

The The convergence bill may be a long way away but it was very much on the radar screen as the two-day Enter Media 2001 conference organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in Mumbai ended today.

The point was forcefully made in the penultimate as well as the last session of the conference which dealt with the print media and the regulatory environment respectively. Speakers representing the print media decried the government‘s plans to introduce a far more overarching media council to replace the existing Press Council of India. The last session dealing specifically with "governance for the media and entertainment industry" ended with a common consensus that the industry must safeguard its own interests and needed self-regulatory mechanisms put in place. It was agreed that education on the issues involved was critical and that there was a need for an arbitration body which would be able to centralise agreements under one forum.

Chairman the conference task force, Biren Ghose, CEO of UTV Interactive, summed up issues which had a realistic chance of resolution if an organised effort was initiated. These would be included in the white paper to be produced by CII in conjunction with Ernst and Young within a month. That all these issues would be addressed within a time frame of 12 months is what is being promised.

FILMS: 1) Curbing piracy and enforcement. 2) Need for corporatisation of the industry. 3) Nurturing of film professionals - first assistant directors and scriptwriters.

TELEVISION AND BROADCASTING: 1) Addressability - Crucial both on the revenue front as well as enabling proper assessments of connectivity and related issues. 2) Subscriber rates have to go up if the industry was to launch itself into the next phase of growth. 3) Current television ratings systems need to acquire greater credibility as to how representative they are of actual channel and programme penetration.

FM RADIO: 1) Privatisation should continue. 2) Licence fees too high. 3) More FDI (foreign direct investment) inflows needed. MUSIC: All round appreciation for the way the industry has organised itself to curb piracy. Attempt should be to scale up the IMI (Indian Music Industry) model across the entertainment industry.

CONTENT: Build Indian services / content across global markets.

INTERNET AND BROADBAND: 1) Bandwidth issues are best left to the government or at best big corporates. 2) How to use the Internet as a transaction currency. 3) Spread cyber cafes the way STD booths have spread across the country. 4) Work on anti-piracy models for the Net.

FINANCING: 1) Look at a model of a risk reduction formula. 2) Corporatisation 3) Limited partnerships

The battle for the No 4 slot in the general Hindi entertainment channel sweepstakes is hotting up. Sahara TV has refocused itself and is readying for an aggressive marketing and programming assault, so can Sabe TV be far behind?
A press release from the company says that its FPC is being rejigged and a bunch of new shows are being introduced come the first week of September. Popular sitcom Office-Office will air thrice a week. A fun-based programme to be produced and hosted by Ravi Behl and Naaved Jaffrey of Sony Entertainment‘s Boogie Woogie fame titled Paisa Vasool will be introduced, featuring celebrities in each episode and mounted on a lavish scale. A cop-thriller Dial 100 will be shown four days a week from Mondays to Thursdays.

A spanking new one-and-a-half hour afternoon programming band featuring women oriented programmes like a Cookery Show, a Pop Countdown, Swayam (the woman achiever), Utsav, and Drishtikon is also to be introduced.

Additionally, a popular cartoon strip for children will be shown daily from Monday to Friday in the evenings. Variety programmes such as Brahma Vishnu Mahesh, comedies like Daddy Samjha Karo and Yes Boss and dramas like Karam and Sambandh will be featured on the 9.00 pm slot.

With the introduction of fresh programming, Sabe TV‘s FPC will include a daily cartoon strip, a daily sitcom, Aflatoon at 7 pm, the fantasy Alif-Laila at 7.30 pm, comedy Office-Office at 8 pm thrice a week followed by Paisa Vasool, the daily thriller Dial 100 at 8.30 pm and varieties like mythological dramas and weekly comedies at 9 pm and the comedy Shriman Shrimati at 9.30 pm.

Sabe TV, in the release, claims that it has overtaken major players like Sony and Zee in the five major cities (excluding Mumbai) in the key western Indian state of Maharashtra. Market research agency‘s AC Nielsen‘s latest TAM data for the week ending 28 July 2001 shows that Sabe TV has generated higher Gross Rating Points (GRPs) - for the Top 25 programmes in all segments like All 15+ AB, 15 + Female AB, 15 + All ABC and 15 + Females ABC - than Sony Entertainment and Zee TV, the release states.