Broadcast Worldwide, which runs the Tara group of regional language channels, has denied reports that it had defaulted on payments to Thaicom, the satellite beaming the channel over India.

A report published on Friday had said that Broadcast Worldwide had six months dues outstanding.

There has been no default, Sonali Shroff, vice-president, corporate communications Broadcast International, said on Saturday. "Payments are made on a mutually agreed schedule. In fact, it is Thaicom‘s policy to discontinue service to any channel in arrears of more than a month," Shroff said.

In a bid to strengthen its programming content, HFCL-Nine Broadcasting India Ltd. has appointed Padmashree PS as director-programming for Nine Gold.

Padmashree will be responsible for conceptualizing new programming and running the current shows of Nine Gold on DD Metro.

Padmashree comes to Nine Gold after stints in Zee and Sony TV. She will be working in consort with creative consultant Anuradha Tandon and CEO Ravina Raj Kohli in developing new programmes for Nine Gold.

The government has failed to clearly set forth guidelines on direct-to-home (DTH) transmission and till that is in place we will not be committing ourselves, Dr JK Jain, president, Jain TV, said on the sidelines of a rather stormy press conference in Mumbai on Wednesday.

Dr Jain was peppered with questions on his ongoing war of words with the Prime Minister‘s Office over his being called an agent of Pakistan‘s intelligence agency ISI in an intelligence report.

Speaking on the current state of affairs of his operations following his falling out with the government, Dr Jain exuded confidence that he would pull through. The fundamentals of his operations were quite strong, he said.

Queried on how the channel‘s revenues would be affected keeping in mind that the government was not advertising on his channel, Dr jain said there were no ads in the first place so the question of loss of revenues on that score was irrelevant.

Queried on what were his plans vis-a-vis his channel, he said Jain TV was just one of his interests. He wanted to get into the internet business and was very keen to develop e-commerce activities he said. Towards that end Jain was going ahead with its broadband plans and was already providing feeds to a number of clients, he said.

Regarding plans for DTH broadcast, he said he was still awaiting clear governemnt guidelines. When his attention was drawn to the fact that Star Television had announced it was going ahead with DTH operations, he retorted that Star had announced the same thing three years ago but nothing came of it finally.

The government had not even formatted application forms as yet so there was no point in going ahead with DTH plans at this stage, he said. He, however, added that Jain would be interested in DTH broadcast if and when the government was really ready to go ahead with it. It has accepted any applications as of now, he stated.

On the earth station front his plans were on track, Dr Jain said. twelve acres of land had been acquired in Noida outside New Delhi and a teleport was already functioning there he said.

On the political front, Dr Jain is up against the government of the day but he remains optimistic as far as the future of his media expansion plans go.

As part of its expansion of programming and new media initiatives,Turner Broadcasting System Asia Pacific, Inc. (TBS) is restructuring its regional advertising sales operations.

This new move involves creating separate sales forces for the entertainment and news divisions to build on the strength of its international brands - CNN, Cartoon Network, and Turner Classic Movies - across multiple platforms.

Jennifer Fletcher has been promoted to senior vice-president, advertising sales for Turner Entertainment Networks Asia Inc. (TENA). Reporting to Dave Dickman, who relocated to London in January, and Steve Marcopoto, President and Managing Director of TBS, Fletcher will look after advertising sales for Cartoon Network, TCM, HBO South Asia and the company‘s new CETV venture in China. Fletcher was previously vice-president for TBS advertising sales.

Mark Whitehead, Vice President, News Network, Asia Pacific is relocating from Singapore to Hong Kong and expands his responsibilities to manage CNN‘s sales operations in Hong Kong, South East Asia and Korea.

Monty Ghai takes on the new role of Director, Global Client Solutions, Asia Pacific. As TBS‘s first Director for Global Client Solutions in Asia, Ghai will be responsible for working with advertisers to build marketing partnerships which leverage the corporate capabilities of Turner and other Time Warner properties to build new revenue streams.