Vijay Mallya, whose team Royal Challengers will take on Shah Rukh Khan's Kolkata Knight Riders in the inaugural match in Bangalore, has already got busy counting the cash.
The consortium of Sony Entertainment Television and World Sports Group, which paid BCCI $60 million (Rs 240 crore) as the telecast rights fee for the first season of the Twenty 20 league has already recovered its money. Sony-WSG will together earn around Rs 380 crore (Rs 3.8 billion) worldwide from the league. Sony is confident of selling 11,800 seconds across 59 matches, at a premium. Vodafone, Godrej, Hyundai, Coca-Cola & Max New York and StanChart has already booked spots.
Star India is close to forming a joint venture with Kerala-based television broadcaster Asianet to launch a bouquet of regional channels. The deal comes after the failure of Star's joint venture with Ekta Kapur-controlled Balaji Telefilms to operate regional channels last April to get off the ground. Sources at Star said the broadcaster will hold a majority stake in the joint venture.
Dish TV and Tata Sky, the country's two direct-to-home (DTH) companies, are expected to post losses in excess of Rs 1,400 crore for 2007-08 in their quest to expand the market by offering set-top boxes at subsidised rates. The companies have over five million subscriber homes across the country collectively.
The Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF), the apex body of broadcasters, and Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI), a body that represents over 70 per cent of the television advertisers have decided to tigten their rules. All advertisers will now have to make payments within 60 days of airing the television commercials, failing which there will be a financial penalty and a possible boycott on all television networks. This 2-year agreement is valid till March 2010.
This has been agreed between the Indian Broadcasting Foundation, an apex body of broadcasters, and the Advertising Agencies Association of India, which represents over 70 per cent of TV advertisers in India and has over 120 members represented by leading advertising agencies and broadcasters.
With hundreds of theatre screens coming up across India in 2009, Texas Instruments (TI) - a leading semiconductor technology company - is eyeing the Indian cinema market with its digital light processing (DLP) technology. TI has patented the DLP technology. In DLP projectors, the image is created by small mirrors laid out in a matrix on a semiconductor chip known as a Digital Micromirror Device (DMD).
With less than a month to go for the two mega television shows - Kya Aap Paanchvi Pass Se Tez Hai of Star Plus and the BCCI-promoted Indian Premier League on Sony - companies have lined up in right earnest for sponsorship deals with the broadcasters. Star Plus has signed on a string of advertisers for the Shah Rukh Khan-anchored show. These include confectionery brand Halls, Pidilite Industries, Havells India, L'Oreal India, Tata Sky, Parle Products etc
This means that if Star TV's bouquet of 14 channels is priced at Rs 88 in non-CAS areas (70 million cable TV homes), it can charge only Rs 44 or less from existing DTH operators like Tata Sky, Dish TV and new entrants like Big TV, Bharti and Sun Direct. But all broadcasters are charging more from DTH companies than from non-CAS cable homes.
Discovery Networks India Executive Vice-President and MD Deepak Shourie said that the DTH platform has been able to quickly penetrate cable homes by reaching out to 5 million subscribers within a couple of years. Discovery Communications globally offers channels such as Discovery Health, Military Channel, TLC, Science Channel, Investigation Discovery among others. The group might bring in one of these channels for the DTH platform, sources indicated.
The process may begin as early as November this year if the cable industry's plan, submitted to the ministry of information and broadcasting, is accepted. CAS has been implemented only in parts of these three cities. As the technology enables consumers to choose channels, the expansion will bring down the average monthly cable bill of about 7.2 million consumers in the non-CAS areas in these cities by almost half to Rs 150-Rs 200.
Trai has announced that it may fix prices of pay channels on the direct-to-home (DTH) platform in line with the Rs 5 per channel cap on conditional access system (CAS) services in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. This move will lower the fees but hit the income of broadcasters from DTH companies. However, new DTH entrants will benefit from the move as their cost of content will decrease. For the 2 existing DTH companies, Dish TV & Tata Sky, the current rates are likely to continue.
According to sources in the Bureau of Indian Standards, the onus of providing the transcoders will be on new DTH players. The BIS has also been asked to submit a detailed report on interoperability of DTH set-top boxes to the I &B ministry. The set-top boxes being used to receive services from the existing players, Dish TV and Tata Sky, are not compatible with the new-technology services that will be provided by DTH firms.
Sony's Set Max - the host broadcaster of the Indian Premier League (IPL) has its eyes on the ad revenues that the Twenty20 format cricket tournament is likely to produce. The 7 pm-10 pm TV slot attracts ad revenue worth over Rs 2,000 cr between various entertainment channels. On Set Max, the advertisers will have about 35 hours of advertising spots for the first IPL tournament with fixed on-air sponsors. Set Max has three associate sponsors in Nokia, Hero Honda and Coca Cola.
As the CAS technology gives the consumers a choice in watching television channels with assured quality of service and affordable pricing, a nationwide CAS roll-out will bring down the average monthly cable bills of the consumers by almost half to about Rs 150-Rs 200.
To rationalise the entertainment tax levied on the direct-to-home (DTH) companies and the cable operators by the state governments and also to encourage the cable industry to switch to the use of advanced optical fibre cable instead of the copper wire cables, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has set up two sub-committees.
With the addition of 2 lakh subscribers every month, private direct-to-home (DTH) service operators Dish TV and Tata Sky may cross Rs 650 crore (Rs 6.5 billion) in revenues for financial year 2007-08, a three-fold increase from 2006-07. The revenues of private DTH operators may cross the Rs 1,000-crore (Rs 10 billion) mark in 2008-09 with a total subscriber-base of 8 million. Private DTH operators have to pay 10% of their revenues as the licence fees to operate the services.
WorldSpace was first launched in Bangalore and therefore, is headquartered in New Delhi. Hence, the awareness levels and adoption is highest in this market and other southern markets. Metro markets like Delhi and Mumbai have also shown a high level of traction. Going forward, eastern and central India presents an opportunity for WorldSpace. WorldSpace does not manufacture its own radio sets. They are manufactured by contract manufacturers.
Star Plus has signed up telecom major Airtel as the presenting sponsor for the Shah Rukh Khan-anchored Kya Aap Panchvi Pass Se Tez Hai. According to sources, the deal has been struck at Rs 40 crore. The Airtel deal follows on the heels of its competitor Vodafone signing up as the presenting sponsor for the Indian Premier League on Sony TV.
Bollywood is yet to catch up with Hollywood when it comes to gaining profits from film websites.
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