Discovery Communications will bring to the Indian subcontinent two more channels next year, including the popular ‘Discovery Health‘ and another channel which will be a toss between its history channel called ‘Civilisation‘, ‘Discovery Kids‘ and ‘Discovery Travel & Adventure‘. All these blocs are currently aired on the main channel.
Discovery health would include some India specific programming including Yoga and Ayurveda in keeping with the channel‘s policy of focussing on local programming.

Discovery has however decided to continue as a stand-alone platform rather than join one of the larger broadcasting bouquets such as Zee, Sony, CNBC or Nickelodeon. National Geographic which is being included in the Star TV bouquet is cutting into Discovery‘s revenues due to attractive packages offered by Star TV. Discovery markets itself for Rs 5 per subscriber while National Geographic markets itself for Rs 2 per subscriber.

Doordarshan‘s marketing seems to be working with more and more Indians opting to stay in India and watch the Olympics on Doordarshan than spend a little more than a lakh to go to Sydney.

However analysts watching Doordarshan‘s marketing of the Games have compared it with ESPNs and Star Sports glitzy advertisements on their bouquet of channels and have criticised Doordarshan for not doing so on its wide network of channels. DD is expecting to rake in Rs 200 million in ad revenue.

Pritish Nandy Communications has received the broadcast management rights for the three DD channels and is claiming that its revenues will soar from Rs 140 million in ‘99-00 to Rs 500 million this year. The fact that no one expects Indians to win any medals and Indians obsession with cricket have not helped either.

To add icing to the cake, DD will be flying a 21 member team to Sydney to customise the feed for India and provide special graphics. Analysts however feel that DD would have been better off sticking to the live feed in the form of six channels which it will get from the Sydney Games authorities.

All this talk does however make one feel that the Olympic athletes are not going to be the only ones to perform gymnastics this Olympics. Indian viewers may well have to do some head stands to get a load of the action, knowing DD‘s tendency to mess up even when the going is simple and good.

Sun Television Network, the regional leader in South India will soon launch its version of ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati‘ called ‘Kodeeswaran‘ in Tamil in October.The show will be hosted by popular Tamil film actor Sarat Kumar who will don the southern shoes of Amitabh Bachchan. The master brain behind this Tamil game show is ace quiz master Derek O‘Brien of the Bournvita Quiz fame.

Except for the one crore prize money everything will be different. The time slots for this programme will be from 9 to 10 pm on Saturdays and Sundays, the concept will be regionalised to suit the southern audiences and will target the Tamil speaking which is estimated to be one-third of India‘s population. Sun TV is banking on the fact that the Hindi money spinner was not very popular with the southern folk because of its Hindi content. The show is expected to further complicate things for Zee‘s 10 crore show to be launched in October.

News TV India Ltd, the Indian arm of Rupert Murdoch-owned Star TV, is all set to acquire a 25% stake in Rajan Raheja-owned cable network, Hathway Cable & Datacom Private Ltd.
A formal announcement to this effect is expected to be made by Star officials next week.

With this deal, Star TV would have its long standing need of owning a cable distribution network, completed. With its rival channel Zee Telefilms owning its own cable network, Siti Cable, Star felt the serious need to strengthen its distribution platform.

Hathway is one of the leading MSO (multi system operator) in India with a substantial share of consumers in the cable distribution business. The other leading MSO‘s in the country are Siti Cable, owned Zee Telefilms, and Hinduja, owned IN CableNet.

Having gained access to the cable distribution network, Star can also go ahead with its convergence plans and other plans for the Internet sector. It has already set up a new media division to look into broadband, convergence and other Internet related services in the country.

Looks like Doordarshan is determined to improve the quality of its programmes, at least those in the prime time slot. After awarding the daily prime time slot of 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. to Kerry Packers Nine Broadcasting, it has now put its popular music show, Rangoli, on the auction blocks.

The show is aired every Sunday between 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. Doordarshan has invited bids from qualified producers/companies for production and marketing of the show for a period of one year starting 17 September 2000.

The interested parties are required to have experience of producing at least 100 hours of TV programmes and also must have telecast rights for minimum of 500 songs from ‘U‘ certified Hindi feature films.