Zee Telefilms, the Subhash Chandra promoted media company, on Tuesday announced that it has bagged the regulatory approvals for launching its sports channel.
Subhash Chandra, chairman and managing director, said at the company's 22nd annual general meeting that the broadcaster has begun testing signals with the uplink licence that it has recently received from the Trai. The channel will be officially launched on October 2.
Chandra said that Zee-MGM, the company's Hollywood movie channel joint venture, has come to an end around three months even before the global acquisition of MGM by Sony.
"We see this as an opportunity to forge new relationships with different studios instead of being restricted to one movie content company," he added.
Chandra looked un-fazed by the imbroglio over the four-year cricket telecast right. "The issue that the company was inexperienced of telecasting series was demolished. We have full confidence in the Supreme Court," he said. The legal expenses, which were estimated to be around Rs 23 lakh (Rs 2.3 million), might go up to Rs 1.5 crore (Rs 15 million) if the legal battle continued, he said.
"Unlike foreign channels that have taken money out of the country from cricket, we are committed to promote different sports," he said while addressing the shareholders at the AGM.
Chandra highlighted that the company had realised most objectives that it had laid down in the last year's AGM. The objectives included structural changes for better distribution, an integrated team with decision making capacity, improving the quality of products and offerings aided by technology, capital expenditure on DTH.
During the year, the company had announced new programming initiative that include five channels -- Smile TV, MX -- a channel for English action movies -- Action Cinema for Hindi movies, Premiere Cinema and Classic Cinema.
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