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In House Productions
Pvt Ltd, which specialises in mega game shows in Hindi, best knows
as the popele behind Shekhar Suman’s stellar show Movers &
Shakers is acquiring a 60 per cent stake in air-time marketing company
New Age Entertainment, to make an entry into the southern region.
The company is also acquiring a 49 per cent stake in Manipal Entertainment
Network Ltd, in a bid to start supply of television software to
Kannada channels.
According to
industry sources, ETC Networks was close to acquiring a stake in
New Age Entertainment and had made advances of Rs one crore. But
the deal fell through, primarily after the venture to market the
game show, ‘Koteeswaran’, incurred losses. In House Productions,
through the acquisition, will have access to the Sun TV network,
where New Age Entertainment has a contract to market air-time across
the language channels. New Age Entertainment markets 22 hours of
air time for KTV, the Tamil movie-driven channel from Sun network.
The company also provides four hours of programming per week to
Sun TV, for which it sources content from Saregama and does the
marketing itself. With In House Productions getting into production
of Telugu software, New Age will do the marketing of air-time for
such content. The company is also in talks with TMG to market air-time
for the Bangalore-based technology channel.
Meri
Baat for kids
Most of the
time what is offered to children by way of programming is cartoons.
There is a dearth of producers who can make entertaining programmes
for kids. Doordarshan’s newly launched channel DD Bharti is
trying to rectify this with its talk show for children Meri Baat.
The first episode talked about parent-child relationship where teenagers
were quick to point out that it’s high time parents gave them
more space. The channel has planned to allow the children to take
over the content of the show eventually. The school kids who were
present in the studio for the shooting of the show talked about
their preferences and what they expect from channels like DD. ‘We
don’t want to watch just Gyan Darshan type programmes. We need
more entertainment,” said Indranil.
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