The Zee Network is to launch Channel Zed - a 24 hour educational channel - next month. This was announced today by Zee Interactive Learning Systems (Zils) chief Uma Ganesh. Channel Zed will have six hours of original educational programming and will be synchronised with www. zeelearn.com, a portal on education, which was flagged of by Zee group chairman Subhash Chandra. The whole learning concept is part of a multimedia effort that Zee Network is to gradually roll out in the coming months. It includes: television, interactive television, learning centres, E-Zee points (cyber cafes offering cheap access), Video, and publishing.
The Internet learning portal, www.zeelearn.com, has channels targeted at students, youth, women, senior citizens and the corporate executive. Each of the channels has comprehensive news, information, career guidance, interactivity, and educational tools to help each of these segments equip themselves better to learn.

Chandra says some Rs 600 million has already been invested in the multimedia learning project. "We expect the investment to finally touch Rs 1,000 million. We at the Zee Network consider education as an important part of the new economy."

Zee Telefilms‘ is set to enter the English movies and English general entertainment segment with its two channels Zee Movies and Zee English which are slated for launch on 15 March, 2000. Both the channels are to be encrypted and will be beamed from AsiaSat-3. "Television for the dot com generation" is the slugline for the two channels. The channels are expected to cater the Category "A" audience and claim to have a huge library of popular movies and other software. Zee English which is the general entertainment channel claims to have rights of popular serials like "Friends" and "The Benny Hill Show". The channel boasts to have the last four year programming of the most popular serial in the US "Friends" while competing channel Star World has only the earlier three years of the popular sitcom.

After Star TV Executive Chairman Gareth Chang‘s recent resignation, and NewsCorp Arthur Anderson officials have visited India twice to asses the value of Star TV, NewsCorp Chairman Rupert Murdoch plans a five day India visit starting 10th March. His wife Wendy Deng and son James, NewsCorp‘s Vice President of Music and New Media will accompany him.

The trip is expected to kick off with a two days in Bangalore, where he expects to kickstart NewsCorp‘s joint venture with Pramod Mittal‘s Ispat Group company eVentures. eVentures has already invested in two portals recently. Net Access, a Delhi based e-business service provider, where eVentures has invested about US$ 1.75 million acquiring a 26 equity.

The joint venture has also acquired 100 percent equity in netpligrims.com, a web based placement service provider. Besides eVentures deals, Star TV plans 10 to 20 percent in popular portals. The net plans to extend synergies between broadcasting and the Internet, "to increase our access to content and tap the traffic which comes on various sites on the Internet," said News television India Ltd.‘s CEO Peter Mukerjea in a newspaper interview. The strategy is via the mergers and acquisitions route, and plans are to for multi-point distribution including the Internet and mobile communications.

Besides, Murdoch will visit Bombay "to meet his office people" as a spokesman puts it. Also appointments are being arranged with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, State Minister for Information and Broadcasting Arun Jaitley, Minister for Information technology Pramod Mahajan and Opposition leader Sonia Gandhi.

Murdoch‘s visit, the first since June 1996 when he met Deve Gowda gains significance. The importance of India in it‘s Asian strategy is apparent. NewsCorp has doubled it‘s content related investment in India over the next five years. An additional US$ 20 million this year has for it‘s Indian operation. Murdoch will seeks a first hand view impression on the Broadcast bill including DTH and other regulatory issues, besides it‘s proposed Internet /mobile investments in India.

Sony Entertainment Television (SET) has denied that Calcutta-based cable TV operator RPG Netcom has switched off AXN, a channel it distributes in India, a claim the MSO had made a couple of days ago. RPG had claimed that it had pulled the plug on AXN because SET was asking it to pay higher subscription fees to continue re-transmitting the service to its sub-operators. SET COO Rajesh Pant says this is untrue and that it was actually Sony, which had switched off the cable operator‘s signal and not the other way around. Says Pant: "There isn‘t even a price hike for AXN. What we are asking them to do is pay us for a higher subscriber base than they have been doing so up to now. We are asking for higher subscriber counts. We had given them some notice but they were not interested so we switched them off."
He however is quick to add. "We are not in a fighting situation with them as of now. I expect the entire situation to get resolved very amicably across the table. Give it time."

Pant says the channel is doing fine having achieved a penetration of 2.5 million subscribers. "The actual figure is actually 11-12 million because cable ops actually declare only 20-30 per cent of their subscriber base. We are reasonably happy with out collections from the cable TV trade. I am sure cable operators and consumers see value in the service, hence we are asking them to give us fees for a larger number of subscribers."

It‘s show time folks. Doordarshan has called for bids from television producers for three time slots on DD- Metro (DD-2): 7:55 am, 5:25 pm, and 6:55 pm. The time slots are of five minutes duration each and involve the creation of film trailer based shows. Producers can pick up the application forms between 6 and 13 March (11 am to 1 pm) from the respective Metro stations.Bids are to be submitted between 13 and 15 March between 11 am and 2 pm along with an earnest money deposit of Rs 50,000 and a non-refundable processing fee of Rs 5,000. The bids will be opened on 15 March at 3:30 pm. DD officials have fixed the minimum guarantee at Rs 50,000 per weekday.