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In a significant
development, the Indian Music Industry (IMI), the association of
which most Indian music majors are members, is likel to take its
promos off three Zee network channels from January 13. This was
confirmed by senior officials from the music industry. Officials
at IMI as well as the Zee Network were unavailable for comment.
The promos are
primarily aired on Zee TV, Zee Music and Zee Cinema. "We have
not managed to reach a consensus with Zee over the issue of advertisement
rates and may have have to stop airing promos on these channels,"
said an industry official. The IMI, at this stage, comprises prominent
Indian music companies such as Saregama, Sony Music, Universal,
Magnasound, Venus and BMG Crescendo.
The promos
being aired by the music companies comprise largely new album releases.
Sources have indicated that this is the first time that the IMI
has decided to withdraw promos from a network. "While there
have been issues in the past relating to advertisement rates, this
is the first time that such a decision has been taken," they
added.
Interestingly,
a large percentage of the IMI spend is across the Zee network and
this decision may therefore have larger implications for the three
Zee channels. The officials explained that the IMI was in negotiations
with almost every television channel on ad rates, in the wake of
the turbulent phase that the Indian music industry was going through.
Tamil
pay channel!
Chennai-based
Diksaat Transworld Ltd will shortly launch ‘Win TV’ -
a 24-hour Tamil channel that promises sweeping laughter among weeping
channels. The satellite TV channel devoted exclusively to humour
will be test launched on January 13 and will begin commercial telecast
from January 27. It is the first Tamil channel to go pay and perhaps
the first in the country to do so from day one.
The channel
is currently doing all the programming in-house and plans to outsource
content after six months, by when it expects to establish the image
it wants to project. It so far has around 700 hours of programming,
which is enough to sustain the channel for 13 weeks, said T Dhevanathan,
chairman and managing director of Win TV. From April 14, 2002, the
channel plans to premiere a new Tamil film every Sunday, he told
a media gathering in Chennai. The channel is currently in the process
of entering into an agreement for this with the Tamil film producers’
council, he said.
The new films
will be mainly a mixture of small and medium-budget films. The channel
is also looking at financing such films and is not averse to considering
big budget films too. Started with an initial fund of Rs 18 crore,
the TV company expects to break-even in a year’s time. It has
so far spent Rs 8 crore and expects the rest to last 10 to 12 months.
The company is building its own studio with state-of-the-art infrastructure
at an investment of Rs 3.5 crore. It is expected to be ready by
April. For the time being it has leased a studio to produce its
programmes.
The TV channel
is planning to charge Rs 10 per household as subscription fee. It
is tying-up with 30 distributors across the state and other areas
where Tamil channels have viewership. Each of these distributors
will bring in 60 cable operators into their network.
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