MUMBAI: Mahesh Samat has a distant look in his eye as he speaks. "TV content has been commoditised in India," he says. "It is positioned like Hindi cinema was in the seventies and eighties where a certain class of viewers simply did not go to the cinema. Then came multiplexes and content, which drew back viewers to the theatres. I am hopeful of bringing about a shift in the kinds of content and narratives that television viewers get on their screen."

The former head of Walt Disney India has cobbled together a group of investors among which figures Anand Mahindra (in his personal capacity) to fund a company Epic Television Networks Pvt Ltd which is setting up a new channel. It plans to tap into the new digitising cable TV ecosystem and DTH and take advantage of the opportunities that these are offering.

Called Epic TV it is a bringing to fruition of a passion for history that Samat has had ever since he can remember. "I am fascinated with our rich historical past and numerous fictionalised stories can be told over the various eras," he says. "And this is what we are hoping to put forth in our programming."

Samat has brought in former YRF TV head Ravina Kohli as development head, apart from senior programmer Aparna Pandey to work on content and packaging, Kohli and Samat have been meeting with TV producers on various programme proposals. "We will have three hours of fresh programming every day," says Samat. "Our shows will be different from what India has been watching."

Amongst the shows being developed is one based on a novel by Indu Sundaresan called The Twentieth Wife which tracks a young widow named Mehrunissa, daughter of Persian refugees and wife of an Afghan commander, who goes on to become the empress of the Mughal Empire under the name of Nur Jahan by getting married to emperor Jehangir.

He is loathe to reveal any financial investments, adding that his business model is a flexible one. "We are working with various alternative scenarios. We expect the channel to be on air by August. We will examine our progress by December and plan further from there. Our focus currently is on putting everything together."

Samat says his company will work very closely with partners and not have a traditional organisational structure like other private satellite channels have. "We are in a new era of digitisation. We want to bring about a paradigm shift," he professes.

Spoken like a true pioneer.

MUMBAI: Sundance Institute has inducted new members Anand Mahindra, Sean Bailey and Jacki Zehner as members of the Institute‘s Board of Trustees.

Under the guidance of President and founder Robert Redford, in close collaboration with executive director Keri Putnam, the 23-person Board will be responsible for the governance of Sundance Institute and works to actively advance creative and financial support for artists developing original stories for the screen and stage.

Wally Weisman continues to be the chairman of the Board. "We welcome these new members of our Board. We are proud of the organisation‘s standing as an internationally recognised nonprofit arts organisation, and we are extremely optimistic about the stability of the Institute and its recent growth to include several new initiatives that are connecting artists with audiences around the world," observed Weisman.

In addition to the three newly inducted members those who recently joined the Board are Sheila C Johnson, James R Swartz and Stanley Tucci along with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Lynn Nottage and Heather Rae as Artist Trustees.

Artist trustees are participants from Institutes including the Sundance Film Festival, Artistic Labs and direct granting, who share with the Board their perspectives and act as liaisons to other institute alumni.

Sundance Institute is a global non-profit organisation founded by Robert Redford in 1981. Through its artistic development programs for directors, screenwriters, producers, composers and playwrights, the Institute seeks to discover and support independent film and theatre artists from the United States and around the world, and to introduce audiences to their new work.

The Institute has nurtured films like Born into Brothels, Trouble the Water, Son of Babylon, Amreeka, An Inconvenient Truth, Spring Awakening, I Am My Own Wife, Light in the Piazza and Angels in America.