NEW DELHI: A Parliamentary Committee has criticised the Information and Broadcasting Ministry for not doing adequate preparatory work before embarking upon schemes to increase the capacity of Doordarshan?s free-to-air direct-to-home platform DD Direct Plus.

Doordarshan?s DTH platform at present has capacity of 59 Standard Definition (SD) TV channels. A plan scheme for upgradation of Doordarshan?s DTH Platform to 97 TV channels was approved by the Government in August 2010.

Prasar Bharati Board later approved further expansion of Doordarshan?s DTH platform to 150 TV channels. An additional satellite transponder was required for upgradation of DTH platform.

During the examination of the Demands for Grants 2011-12 on measures being taken by Prasar Bharati to generate revenue, the Ministry had stated that it was proposed to move towards the use of tools provided by IT to enable automation of various functions so as to bring down the manpower requirement.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee for Information Technology ?are concerned to see that though AIR had proposed ?E- Governance by implementing ERP system? in XI Plan for effective management of the vast infrastructure but it could not be approved and this scheme has now been proposed as a fresh scheme in XII plan at a cost of Rs 700 million.?

The Committee is not convinced with the reasons cited by the Ministry that though comments were sought from the Planning Commission, no comments were received. Later, the Planning Commission had opined that the requirements of Doordarshan may also be included in the SFC proposal.

Accordingly, requirements of Doordarshan were obtained. The total requirements of All India Radio and Doordarshan could not be met within the allocated amount of Rs 280 million during the 11th plan. Therefore, this scheme could not be put up for approval and it was decided to take it up as a fresh scheme in 12th Plan.

The Committee noted that once the scheme has been conceptualised, the reasons for under performance are untenable.

Taking a serious note of the way the Ministry has dealt with this issue, the Committee desires that the Ministry should take up the projects on priority basis and expedite approval from the Planning Commission and all corrective action may be taken so as to utilise the outlay effectively in the Twelfth Plan.

MUMBAI: Softline Creations has debuted in the television space with the launch of its first 24-hour satellite Hindi movie channel Cinema TV, a genre that is grappling with rising acquisition cost of movies and cut throat competition among the top three players.

A free-to-air channel, Cinema TV is currently available on three DTH platforms - Reliance Big TV, Videocon D2H, and Airtel Digital TV. To extend its reach in non-C&S markets, the channel is exploring partnership with DD Direct plus.

Headed by Hitesh Sabharwal, the channel has roped in Raju Shrivastav as brand ambassador. The channel is being promoted through digital, print, and outdoor ads besides running cross-channel promos.

"We have a library of 800 movies comprising across genres like drama, action, comedy, thriller and classic," says Sabharwal, who has earlier worked with Zee TV, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Times Group and Astro Group.

Some of the movies that the broadcaster will air include Don, Rang De Basanti, Murder, Tangewala, Quickgun Murugun, Humse Badhkar Kaun, Wardat, and Sanam Hum Aapke Hain. A large chunk of the library comprises yesteryear classical movies.

So how will Cinema TV tackle competition? "We have defined the prime time in the evening at 7.45 pm; we have also introduced kind of an appointment viewing for our viewers. Movie channels can be differentiated through presentation of content and the kind of programming that is offered in between movies," says Sabharwal.

The brand tagline is derived from "Har cheez ka sahi waqt hota hai". "This will relate to the the fact that every movie has an appropriate time to watch. Through our channel, we aim to bring the family together by catering to the tastes of each member through several genres of movies," he says.

The channel is following a distribution strategy that will move up from lower towns. "Our distribution strategy is different from other channels as we are starting from Tier V cities and then moving on to Tier I cities," avers Sabharwal.

The fight in the movie space, however, won?t be easy as it is dominated by biggies like Max, Star Gold and Zee Cinema.

MUMBAI: Zee Entertainment Enteprises Ltd (Zeel) expects its advertising revenue to improve this fiscal despite trends of a softening due to market share gains of its channels, including flagship channel Zee TV.

The Subhash Chandra-promoted company forecasts industry to grow at 8-10 per cent due to a weakness in overall ad spends while its own progress this fiscal would be faster. Since there is an uptick in ratings, this should get reflected in more ad revenues this year.

Zeel?s ad revenues in FY?12 degrew 6.8 per cent to Rs 15.84 billion compared to Rs 17.01 billion a year ago.

The company?s subscription revenue will continue to see strong growth, aided by Media Pro, the joint venture channel distribution company between Zee-Turner and Star Den. Zeel is looking at subscription income growth in the mid-tweens without factoring in digitisation in the four metros of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai.

After the formation of Media Pro, most of the distribution deals with cable TV operators and DTH service providers will come up for renewal this year.

Domestic subscription for FY?12 was Rs 9.22 billion, up 28.4 per cent up from Rs Rs 7.18 billion a year ago.This is, however, not comparable because Q4 FY?12 numbers include an amount of Rs 506 million representing 50 per cent share of net revenues of MediaPro when consolidated under joint venture accounting. This amount of Rs 506 million considered in this quarter pertains to nine month period from July 2011 to March 2012.

Zeel is planning to launch a new Arabic language channel so that it can tap advertising revenues in that market. It already runs Zee Aflam in the Middle East.

The company has got landing rights in China. It will continue to follow a localisation of content strategy in many geographies across the world so that it can monetise ad revenues. Earlier, Zeel had a subscription revenue model in international markets.

Zee TV plans to increase its original hours of programming to 35 hours within six months, even if the ad market doesn?t improve. The content and marketing costs will, thus, continue to show an upward trend.

Zeel sees an opportunity to ramp up investments in Tamil Nadu after Sun Group has lost its stranglehold with the Jayalalithaa-government floating the state-owned Arasu Cable. The company plans to relaunch its Tamil channel, Zee Tamizh.

Zeel does not plan to launch a second Hindi movie channel, like rival Star has done. After a period of lull, the company was aggressive in movie acquisitions in FY?12. As there are not many current year new releases available for purchase, it will continue to invest in acquiring future movie projects.

NEW DELHI : Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni today said that self-regulation by the electronic media has to be given a chance as this was a surer way of improving things than forcing regulations on the television or radio channels.

Soni said the progress of action against channels may appear slow, but the government had offending channels to go off air for short periods even as she added that she would not like to cancel the licence of any channel, though the Ministry had the power to do so.

She was responding to Press Council of India Chairman Justice Markanday Katju who said he had seen the self-regulation of TV channels working effectively and 90 per cent of the software on television channels was entertainment and just ten per cent dealt with crucial issues facing the nation.

She was giving her inaugural address at the 9th Annual Summit on Entertainment and Growth organised by ASSOCHAM, Focus 2012 on ?Digitization for Inclusive Growth?, where Justice Katju delivered the keynote address. Several awardees of the National Film Awards were felicitated by Film Federation of India President Vinod K Lamba. Two documents ? ?Digitizing Indian Broadcasting? by ASSOCHAM and Centre for Media Studies, and ?Digital Transformation in entertainment and media? by ASSOCHAM and PwC ? were also released.

She admitted that in the desire for growth, it was unfortunate that some provisions of the Cable TV Networks (Regulation) Act had been overlooked by the media, but she said that self-regulation could help to correct this malaise.

Soni also justified digitisation of cable addressable systems and the sunset dates as she said any delay will only help the direct-to-home operators. She said that it would also bring in transparency and get over the dependence of channels on television rating points (TRPs) which were based on studies in less than 10,000 TV households. Cable operators must not lose sight of the fact that DTH was growing at the rate of around one million households per month.

She said that the government had had exhaustive consultations with stakeholders on all issues including the carriage fee, and the main aim of the new regulations had been to benefit the consumer.

She said the biggest benefit of digitisation would be that the viewer would be able to choose channels of his or her choice out of 900 channels on offer.

Referring to the National Film Awards given yesterday which showed a resurgence of regional cinema, she announced that all award-winning films would be shown on Doordarshan.

Answering another point made by Justice Katju, she said that while the malaise of paid news existed it was difficult to detect.

Earlier, Justice Katju was unsparing in his criticism of the media which he said worked only as a commercial enterprise which had blocked progress and had no care of the consequences on the people. He said the media had lost a sense of propriety and was diverting from the real issues.

He was categorical that self-regulation would not work and it was necessary to bring in a regulatory body which was statutory but not headed by anyone in the government. Stressing that he was a great votary of freedom of the media, he said he wanted regulation, and not control.

He said freedom of the press was like a knife which could be used to help or stab the people. At a time when 90 per cent of even the educated believed in casteism and superstition, it was very wrong for TV channels to propagate this through various serials, commercial advertisements, and the presence of so-called sages.

"Astrology is pure nonsense, but gets high TRPs and so media stoops to this low level," he added.

While Article 19(1)(a) is always referred to whenever the channels feel their freedom is being trampled upon, they forget the mention of promotion of scientific temper in the Fundamental Duties listed in Article 51.

He said cricket had become the opium of the masses in a country which saw an average of 47 farmer suicides a day and 47 per cent of the children were under-nourished.

Lamba said in his address called for a consultative committee of the film industry and the Ministry so that thorny subjects could be ironed out.

He said though the issue of service tax had been ironed out to an extent by the government, there were many other problems afflicting the film industry. He wanted the centre and states to help the growth of regional cinema.

He said the present losses because of piracy amount to around Rs 4.3 billion, but he was confident this would come down with newer technologies coming in.