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  • Sabe TV's 'Office Office' to join daily brigade

    Submitted by ITV Production on Jul 20
    News Headline

    Office Office, the leading weekly sitcom from the Sabe TV stable, is all set to become a daily. According to Sri Adhikari Brothers Television Network Ltd (SABTNL) vice-chairman Markand Adhikari, nothing definite has been decided about the frequency of the show.

    "It could be three to four times a week," Adhikari says. "But the days have not been pinpointed yet." However, information from within the network indicate a tentative schedule has already been drawn up. The show is likely to be aired thrice a week Mondays through to Wednesday at 8:00 PM

    "The official material will be sent out to potential advertisers very shortly," Adhikari says. Among the sponsors who have so far been backing the show are Kodak , Cello, and Nirma.

    Adhikari says that the show is being extended because once a week shows get lost in the crowd of dailies. "We want to further develop the audience that Office Office has and make it a habit for them," he says. "Making it a daily can go a long way in furthering our aim."

    He adds that efforts are being put in took to keep the storyline strong enough to retain viewers‘ interest. "It is not a dishum dishum (lots of fighting) show," he says. "It is a show with certain production values and Eagle Video, the producers, are taking care to retain that flavour."

    Adhikari added that the move to change the show over to a daily was just one of a basket of efforts which were being worked out to strengthen the channel.

    If the show works, it will be an office coup for Sabe TV.

  • Sabe TV's 'Office Office' to join daily brigade

    Jul 20

    Office Office, the leading weekly sitcom from the Sabe TV stable, is all set to become a daily.

  • Ramayana, Mahabharata

    Zee plans new series of 'Ramayana', 'Mahabharata'

    Jul 20

    Zee TV has announced it will shortly be bringing updated versions of the superhit mythologicals - Ramayana and Mahabh

  • CNN's Q&A aims to become more hard-hitting, says host Zain Verjee

    Submitted by ITV Production on Jul 20
    News Headline

    CNN International‘s high profile interactive programme Q&A South Asia is in the middle of a positional shift. The focus is to make it harder hitting, with a stronger news focus and it appears to have found the right fit in Zain Verjee, who took over as anchor after Riz Khan quit the show in May. Verjee was in Mumbai on Wednesday, and appeared to have still to fully recover from the high octane adrenaline rush that had constituted the four days that Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf was in India for talks with Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee (Friday 13 July to Monday). She flew in from Delhi after wrapping up an extra post-summit Q&A special on Tuesday.

    Q&A Summit Specials were originally scheduled to cover the four days of the summit but a further programme was added elicit reactions on the failure of the talks. There were also two online chat sessions scheduled for Saturday and Monday, but Monday‘s session had to be abandoned because of a power breakdown at Hotel Nikko in New Delhi where a 22-strong CNN team had located their operations.

    Speaking of her role in Q&A, Verjee sees her personality as quite suited to the changes taking place on the show. Verjee says her principal input is to make the programme more controversial, with subject choices that are more politically driven. If a confrontationist attitude has a physical expression, she suits the role. Verjee happens to be an expert kick boxer and fitness freak. Asked to give some examples where she has raised hackles on her shows, Verjee says she particularly rattled Kashmiri leader Farooq Abdullah during Saturday‘s Q&A Summit Special.

    The Vajpayee-Musharraf summit was a major operational exercise for the CNN team. Hotel Nikko was converted into a studio. It took one-and-a-half days to set up the control room in one of the hotel‘s rooms, which includes panels needed for live transmission and over 1.5 tonnes of equipment was flown in, mainly from Hong Kong. Four international lines to the CNN centre in Atlanta, USA, were set up for the purpose.

    The summit was the first time that Verjee has done Q&As outside Atlanta as well as her first visit to India. Queried as to whether her having had no hands-on experience of India wasn‘t a detriment in terms of her understanding of issues, Verjee said she put a lot of effort into researching the topics she covered, but admitted that the show was a learning curve for her.

    Asked to comment on whether CNN‘s coverage of the summit was adequate, Verjee said: "We were all happy with our coverage. I hope it reflects CNN‘s commitment to South Asia. Our aim was to give a balanced perspective to a global audience."

    As for the format of the programme, Verjee said the show was segmented into three blocks of between 12 to 15 minutes each. The "A" block was the most topical segment downwards to the "C" block which tended towards softer subjects, she said. Verjee clarified that this was very fluid, depending on the news of the day.

    Queried whether there would be more episodes produced out of the subcontinent, Verjee said news events would decide that.

    Q&A South Asia airs at 10 PM Monday to Wednesdays on CNN‘s South Asia Channel which launched in June 2000. It is a half-hour interactive show and interviews leading politicians, celebrities and newsmakers.

     

     

     

  • CNN's Q&A aims to become more hard-hitting, says host Zain Verjee

    Jul 20

    CNN International's high profile interactive programme Q&A South Asia is in the middle of a positional shift.

  • BBC World readies launch of new series of 'Mastermind India 2001'

    Submitted by ITV Production on Jul 19
    News Headline

    The Siddhartha Basu-produced and presented Mastermind India, with its famous "Black Chair of Wits" that has seen contestants raring to test their knowledge since 1997 in India, begins a new series next month.

    Now into its fourth year, the new series will begin airing on BBC World from 9 August 2001 announced Alistair Brown, director of operations for BBC World at Mastermind India - Media Special on Tuesday at south Mumbai‘s Oberoi Hotel.

    The series will be aired every Thursday at 10:00 pm with three repeat telecasts on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 8:00 pm, 10:00 pm and 8:00 pm respectively.

    The 21-episode series will be shot in four historic places in India. Eight initial episodes of the series‘ preliminary round have already been shot at Metcalfe House in New Delhi. The series has received 2,700 entries from 215 cities and towns all over India - the maximum number of entries in past three years. Of them 64 have qualified.

    After the finalists are listed, the contestants have to clear a short test series. "The test series is somewhat like the UPSC public service exams and this ‘mini-UPSC‘ helps gauge the contestant‘s knowledge about the subject," says Basu. For the fourth series the qualifying test were conducted simultaneously at 21 different centres across the country.

    "Nobody can come onto the programme unprepared. If anyone comes blind then it is very unlikely that they can give a decent performance," says Basu, giving a feel about the level of seriousness that the quiz is credited with. Helping organise the enormous task of providing content is a team of 10 to 11 people, of which six work full time on the research needed for the diverse topics that are selected. "It‘s an incredible amount of work," says Basu, considering the contestants have to select a topic which has not been taken before.

    From there on, the 75-strong unit of Basu‘s Synergy Communications manoeuvres the studio equipment back and forth from the selected location. An online studio is set up on the location that, keeping with tradition, necessarily has to be a place of historical importance and connected to knowledge. On an average about Rs 3,00,000 goes into producing each episode but this too differs according to the distance travelled by the unit and the contestants.

    Basu has personally selected the signature tune of ‘Approaching Menace‘. "The music is not what the original Mastermind has but the spirit and feel is the same. I wanted something very original. The music has an accompaniment of bells and "Manjeeras" that give it an Indian feel. The score has been done by Savant Dutta who, surprisingly, is an architect by training.

    "Mastermind‘s mood is sombre, slightly menacing and confrontationist, its of a harsh interrogation but beyond what it seems on the surface we try to make it as much a fair encounter as possible," says Basu.

    "There is no mileage or percentage in tinkering with something that is sound. There is nothing that I would like to change in this format. Otherwise it would a just another game and the character of Mastermind is what it is and it is essentially that. But what changes is the location and the people," Basu says, when asked
    whether he had made any changes to the original format.

    Siddhartha Basu, producer-presenter of Mastermind India

    To celebrate the launch of the new series, a Mastermind India Media Special was organised as an initiative to let the media get a feel of what is it like to sit on the "Black Chair of Wits" and sustain the quiz, testing contestant‘s depth of knowledge in their selected topic.

    Seven participants volunteered to participate. Tom Alter, Rahul Dacunha, and Cyrus Broacha were among the celebrity participants while Sunil Nair, (Indian Express), Sandeep Bamzai, (Business India) and Sandeep Unnithan (India Today) represented the media.

    The stage was set. The ambience was dark and dramatic with ‘Approaching Menace‘ being played before the question round began.

    After following the actual format of series, it was Sandeep Unnithan of India Today - (chosen subject The Indian Navy - 1935 to 1998) and adman Rahul Dacunha (India-England Tests) who came out winners after the two rounds of quick-fire questions that lasted for two minutes each.

    The first round was a specialised round where the questions were framed on the basis of the subject chosen by the participant, while the second was pure general knowledge.

     
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