Simi Garewal is coming back with the popular celebrity chat show - Rendezvous on February 12th. And its first guest will be ever so popular John Abraham!

Although Simi will sport a new look along with the new set (added a dash of gold) which has been personally designed by her, the theme and the essence of the show will remain just same. Simi Garewal said, “We are not setting out to be different just for the sake of it. This is the fifth season of Rendezvous, so I think we have grown. The guests are different and their stories are different. But, the essence of Rendezvous, the personal feel, will still be there.”

The show aims to provide an insight, hitherto unknown, into the lives of men and women who have captured the imagination of the public. Simi will ask questions about their career, personal life and lots of other things and the guest will answer them. (more…)

A generation awakens” is the controversial film Rang De Basanti’s tag line and the film’s stars chose a novel way to promote the film by interacting with students at a south Delhi college.

Actor Aamir Khan, who has maintained a stoic silence through the making of the film, was happy to interact with students.

Rang De Basanti is a celebration of courage. The film tracks the lives of five college students who take on the establishment.

Its cast includes Madhavan, Kunal Kapoor, Soha Ali Khan and Alice Patteen and for each of the stars, the making of the film was special.

“India is a young country. We are a growing economy and history has shown that the future lies in the hands of the youth and this is what the movie says,” says Madhavan.

“The movie says take a decision, get your hands dirty and change the country if you have too,” adds Rakyesh Mehra, Filmmaker.

Rang De Basanti finally releases on January 26 after clearances from the Defence Ministry and Animal Welfare Board.

The cast and crew, already on a whirlwind tour to promote the film, are leaving no stone unturned to make sure the film gets off to a flying start.

STAR MOVIES, India’s No. 1 English movie channel, presents an exciting line-up of the best films created by India’s Favourite Hollywood Director - Manoj Night Shyamalan. From January 23 - 26, 2006, the channel will air ‘The Sixth Sense’; ‘Unbreakable’; ‘Signs’ and the exclusive premiere of his latest blockbuster, ‘The Village’ on Republic Day. Don’t miss the Manoj Night Shyamalan movie marathon, every night at 9p.m. only on Star Movies!

In a short span, Shyamalan has scored it big in Hollywood with his supernatural thrillers. Born in Pondicherry and raised in Philadelphia, hallmarks of Shyamalan’s films include unexpected plot twists, realistic treatment of horror or science fiction themes, camera shots taken at unique angles and a cameo appearance by Shyamalan himself in each film. His movies are also noted for their sharp screenplay, effective background score, and film editing.

Monday, January 23, 2006 @ 9 p.m.
THE SIXTH SENSE
Starring: Bruce Willis, Haley Joel Osment, Toni Collette, Olivia Williams
Child psychiatrist Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) is confronted one night by his former patient Vincent Gray who he failed to help. After Vincent shoots Crowe in the stomach and kills himself, Crowe can’t stop thinking about it. A few months later he is hired to help a troubled boy named Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment), who has many of the same problems Vincent had. Crowe sees a chance to redeem himself, but doubts his ability to reach the boy, particularly when Cole claims to see ghosts who don’t know they’re dead. Nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director. (M. Night Shyamalan).

Tuesday, January 24, 2006 @ 9 p.m.
UNBREAKABLE
Starring: Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, Robin Wright Penn
This suspense thriller unfolds as the audience is introduced to David Dunn (Bruce Willis). Not only is he the sole survivor of a horrific train-crash that killed 131 people, he doesn’t have a scratch on him. Elijah Prince (Samuel L Jackson) plays an obscure character who approaches Dunn with a seemingly far fetched theory behind it all rocketing off an enticing thriller with a Sci-Fi twist

Wednesday, January 25, 2006 @ 9 p. m.
SIGNS
Starring: Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin, M. Night Shyamalan
After the death of his wife in a freak accident, Reverend Graham Hess (Mel Gibson) questions his faith and even leaves the church. Six months later, he discovers a gigantic crop circle in his yard. Similar events happen all over the world. Graham’s children think it’s aliens, his brother thinks it’s pranksters, and Graham doesn’t know what to think. However, as more and more strange events occur, he realizes something big is coming, and it’s probably not going to be friendly.

Thursday, January 26, 2006 @ 9p.m.
THE VILLAGE
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt
In a quiet, isolated village in old Pennsylvania, there lies a pact between the people of the village and the creatures that reside in the surrounding woods: the townspeople do not enter the woods, and the creatures do not enter the village. The pact stays true for many years, but when Lucius Hunt seeks medical supplies from the towns beyond the wood, the pact is challenged. Animal carcasses, devoid of fur, begin to appear around the village, causing the council of elders to fear for the safety of the village, the pact, and so much

DID YOU KNOW?
Shyamalan attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. It was here that he made up his middle name, Night.
A ‘documentary’ about his life aired on the Sci-Fi Channel claimed that Shyamalan was legally dead for nearly a half hour while drowned in a frozen pond in a childhood accident, and that upon being rescued he has had experiences of communicating with spirits. The Sci-Fi Channel also claimed that Shyamalan had grown angry when he had discovered that the documentary would reveal certain personal secrets and had therefore withdrawn from participating. The Sci-Fi Channel later admitted that both the documentary itself and Shyamalan’s objections to it were part of a hoax, perpetrated with Shyamalan’s participation.
With the exception of his first film Praying with Anger (1992) which was filmed in Chennai, all of Shyamalan’s movies have been filmed either in Philadelphia or elsewhere in the state of Pennsylvania.

STAR is a leading media and entertainment company in Asia. STAR broadcasts over 50 television services in eight languages to more than 300 million viewers across 53 Asian countries. STAR channels cover all genres including general entertainment (Star Plus, Xing Kong, Star Chinese Channel, Star One, Star Utsav, Star World, Vijay, Phoenix Chinese), sports (ESPN, Star Sports), movies (Star Chinese Movies, Star Gold, Star Movies), music (Channel [V]), and news and current affairs (Star News, Star Ananda, Phoenix InfoNews Channel). STAR controls over 20,000 hours of Indian and Chinese programming and also owns the world’s largest contemporary Chinese film library, with more than 600 titles, featuring superstars including Jackie Chan, Chow Yun Fat and Bruce Lee. In partnership with leading companies in Asia, STAR businesses extend to filmed entertainment, television production, cable systems and wireless and digital services. STAR is a wholly owned subsidiary of News Corporation. www.startv.com.

Internet, mobile, broadband, IPTV, VoIP, 3G. It’s all happening in India as far as new emerging technologies are concerned. And the core driver and differentiator for all these will be content that will be instrumental in ensuring the success or failure of these services. That was the moot point that was reiterated through the first day of the Digital Summit held by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI).

The summit was kicked off today in Mumbai and the speakers dwelled on various emerging technologies, its impact in the Indian market and the various challenges that players associated with these technologies will face in the not to distant future.

IAMAI chairman and Yahoo! India country manager Neville Taraporewalla also informed that they were in talks with the government to form a legal framework, which will be conducive to the growth of the internet and mobile media.

The day started with a panel of speakers throwing light on the Potential of Internet Access Via Mobile and covering issues like the future of wireless broadband solutions in India. The session was moderated by Hungamamobile.com CEO and MD Neeraj Roy. The panel included Reliance Entertainment president Rajesh Sawhney, AirTel vice president new products development and strategic alliances Mohit Bhatnagar, Mauj Telecom COO Arun Gupta, Onmobile Asia Pacific Pvt Ltd CEO and co-founder Arvind Rao and Yes Bank LTD country head direct banking Ravishankar.

“There has been a huge change in what Internet was five years ago and what it is now and hence there is a huge opportunity for mobility. The options available are clearly more than just email. E-commerce and transaction options are what brings convenience to the consumer. However, there are some challenges in the space like screen size and application adaptability and the settings for Internet on mobile,” said Roy.

Sawhney started by refuting the perception that there were only two million people in India who used Internet on mobile. “Reliance has close to 70 million subscribers and 10 million out of them use R-World,” he said.

He went on to explain the ‘four screen’ paradigm - cinema, TV, Personal Computer (PC) and mobile. “In India there are close to 13,000 cinema screens, 100 million TV homes, 12 - 15 million PCs and 80 million mobile phones. And most importantly, mobile phone users are increasing at the rate of five million every month. Each of the ‘four screens’ are constantly reinventing itself, while the momentum is shifting to mobile,” he said.

Analog TV has moved to Plasma/HDTV and is now poised to move towards IPTV and DTH. While PC has seen the evolution from Internet to broadband to triple play services. In the mobile space, technologies have moved from 2G, 2.5G to 2.75G and the 3G era is poised to come in by early 2007. “This year will be a landmark for the industry with DTH, IPTV and 3G services,” Sawhney said.

Broadband will the be the key driver of digital entertainment and the three core content drivers of that will be movies and music, sex and gambling along with sports and gaming.

Mauj’s Gupta threw light on the fact that while there were about 50 million mobile handsets in India, only 10 - 20 per cent of them were capable of browsing the Internet”By 2010, the overall number of handsets will increase by two-three fold and the number of GPRS enabled handsets will increase almost 10 fold. That means close to 40 - 50 per cent of new handsets will be GRPS enabled. But the question that comes to mind is how to get consumers to get to use the service. That can only be done by bringing the entry barrier down,” Gupta said.

Onmobile’s Roy, who was instrumental in developing the 123 voice enabled service for Hutch in 2001, emphasised on the fact that using voice as the interface to create a completely new mobile industry.

AirTel’s Bhatnagar informed that while mobile handsets exceeded fixed lines last year, mobile revenues were poised to exceed fixed lines this year. “Mobile is on the cusp of serious growth in India. The winner and the loser in the game will be separated by how well customer experience is delivered and seen,” he said.

“There is rapid consumption of mobile services in the B and C towns and if companies can talk to them in their own language, therein lies the opportunity and challenge,” Bhatnagar said.

The second session titled the Business Opportunities of Broadband was moderated by Rediff.com CEO and MD Ajit Balakrishnan. The panel comprised BSNL DDG broadband Lav Gupta, ICICI Bank general manager retail assets products group Madhivanan B, Naukri.com CEO Sanjeev Bikachandani, IRCTC group general manager (IT services) Amitabh Pandey, Times Internet LTD head broadband Sanjay Trehan, Reliance Web World head of marketing Sunil Buch, and People Interactive Pvt Ltd (Shaadi.com) chairman and CEO Anupam Mittal.

With 38.5 million Indians online and 300 million connected users by 2007-08, it will be challenging to cater to diverse usability needs. As consumers adapt to sophisticated services online, the demand is expected to increase with the deployment of broadband networks connecting businesses and consumers. The panel brainstormed on how they were gearing up to service 300 million connected Indians in the light of the fact that generating profit was going to take a lot of work.

BSNL’s Gupta threw some interesting questions - What justifies multi-crore investments in broadband? What justifies building up mega byte and giga byte capabilities for broadband? “The fact of the matter is that VoIP, e-governance, e-education, e-commerce do not require broadband. For individual users, broadband internet access may not necessarily give any improved user experience beyond 512 kbps. Broadband is required for IP Video, VOD and network PVR. Can we think of anything else that requires broadband? We are still at the bottom of the learning curve. There are lots of gaps in the technological phase in our country. And in the business phase, we need to deliver the services that the customer is willing to pay for,” Gupta said.

“If all the pieces fall into place, by 2008 we will have 26 million broadband video users in India,” he added.

IRCTC’s Pandey stressed on the fact that e-commerce in India is a kicking business and it no longer belonged to the niche category. “It is real and profitable. In 2003-04, our online ticket sales went up by 76 per cent, whereas in 2004-05, they went up by 99 per cent. It offers value to the customer but what we need is better connectivity and more payment options,” he said.

Naukri.com’s Bikachandani emphasised on the fact that until companies engage with a new technology, they won’t know what it can do. “Broadband prima facie makes sense but when we engage in it, it will start making more sense. The key will to be able to provide services in the local language of the people by having a local language browser, keyboard, Windows etc. The real opportunity lies in going local and those who will get the local language application right, will be the ones who will rule in the future,” he said.

Times Internet’s Trehan too stressed on the dual need of compelling content and localisation. He dwelled on various issues like the definition of broadband and whether 256 kbps could be defined as broadband when countries like Scandinavia has that of 1GB and Japan - 100 mbps and Korea - 10 mbps. “Unless we get our definition correct, you can’t have on demand video or gaming,” he said.

He also added that broadband would change the internet industry landscape and will redefine the way media planning and buying is done.

Shaadi.com’s Mittal said that the differentiating factors in broadband would be the type of content, the type of interaction and the latency of content.

Internet, mobile, broadband, IPTV, VoIP, 3G. It’s all happening in India as far as new emerging technologies are concerned. And the core driver and differentiator for all these will be content that will be instrumental in ensuring the success or failure of these services. That was the moot point that was reiterated through the first day of the Digital Summit held by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI).

The summit was kicked off today in Mumbai and the speakers dwelled on various emerging technologies, its impact in the Indian market and the various challenges that players associated with these technologies will face in the not to distant future.

IAMAI chairman and Yahoo! India country manager Neville Taraporewalla also informed that they were in talks with the government to form a legal framework, which will be conducive to the growth of the internet and mobile media.

The day started with a panel of speakers throwing light on the Potential of Internet Access Via Mobile and covering issues like the future of wireless broadband solutions in India. The session was moderated by Hungamamobile.com CEO and MD Neeraj Roy. The panel included Reliance Entertainment president Rajesh Sawhney, AirTel vice president new products development and strategic alliances Mohit Bhatnagar, Mauj Telecom COO Arun Gupta, Onmobile Asia Pacific Pvt Ltd CEO and co-founder Arvind Rao and Yes Bank LTD country head direct banking Ravishankar.

“There has been a huge change in what Internet was five years ago and what it is now and hence there is a huge opportunity for mobility. The options available are clearly more than just email. E-commerce and transaction options are what brings convenience to the consumer. However, there are some challenges in the space like screen size and application adaptability and the settings for Internet on mobile,” said Roy.

Sawhney started by refuting the perception that there were only two million people in India who used Internet on mobile. “Reliance has close to 70 million subscribers and 10 million out of them use R-World,” he said.

He went on to explain the ‘four screen’ paradigm - cinema, TV, Personal Computer (PC) and mobile. “In India there are close to 13,000 cinema screens, 100 million TV homes, 12 - 15 million PCs and 80 million mobile phones. And most importantly, mobile phone users are increasing at the rate of five million every month. Each of the ‘four screens’ are constantly reinventing itself, while the momentum is shifting to mobile,” he said.

Analog TV has moved to Plasma/HDTV and is now poised to move towards IPTV and DTH. While PC has seen the evolution from Internet to broadband to triple play services. In the mobile space, technologies have moved from 2G, 2.5G to 2.75G and the 3G era is poised to come in by early 2007. “This year will be a landmark for the industry with DTH, IPTV and 3G services,” Sawhney said.

Broadband will the be the key driver of digital entertainment and the three core content drivers of that will be movies and music, sex and gambling along with sports and gaming.

Mauj’s Gupta threw light on the fact that while there were about 50 million mobile handsets in India, only 10 - 20 per cent of them were capable of browsing the Internet”By 2010, the overall number of handsets will increase by two-three fold and the number of GPRS enabled handsets will increase almost 10 fold. That means close to 40 - 50 per cent of new handsets will be GRPS enabled. But the question that comes to mind is how to get consumers to get to use the service. That can only be done by bringing the entry barrier down,” Gupta said.

Onmobile’s Roy, who was instrumental in developing the 123 voice enabled service for Hutch in 2001, emphasised on the fact that using voice as the interface to create a completely new mobile industry.

AirTel’s Bhatnagar informed that while mobile handsets exceeded fixed lines last year, mobile revenues were poised to exceed fixed lines this year. “Mobile is on the cusp of serious growth in India. The winner and the loser in the game will be separated by how well customer experience is delivered and seen,” he said.

“There is rapid consumption of mobile services in the B and C towns and if companies can talk to them in their own language, therein lies the opportunity and challenge,” Bhatnagar said.

The second session titled the Business Opportunities of Broadband was moderated by Rediff.com CEO and MD Ajit Balakrishnan. The panel comprised BSNL DDG broadband Lav Gupta, ICICI Bank general manager retail assets products group Madhivanan B, Naukri.com CEO Sanjeev Bikachandani, IRCTC group general manager (IT services) Amitabh Pandey, Times Internet LTD head broadband Sanjay Trehan, Reliance Web World head of marketing Sunil Buch, and People Interactive Pvt Ltd (Shaadi.com) chairman and CEO Anupam Mittal.

With 38.5 million Indians online and 300 million connected users by 2007-08, it will be challenging to cater to diverse usability needs. As consumers adapt to sophisticated services online, the demand is expected to increase with the deployment of broadband networks connecting businesses and consumers. The panel brainstormed on how they were gearing up to service 300 million connected Indians in the light of the fact that generating profit was going to take a lot of work.

BSNL’s Gupta threw some interesting questions - What justifies multi-crore investments in broadband? What justifies building up mega byte and giga byte capabilities for broadband? “The fact of the matter is that VoIP, e-governance, e-education, e-commerce do not require broadband. For individual users, broadband internet access may not necessarily give any improved user experience beyond 512 kbps. Broadband is required for IP Video, VOD and network PVR. Can we think of anything else that requires broadband? We are still at the bottom of the learning curve. There are lots of gaps in the technological phase in our country. And in the business phase, we need to deliver the services that the customer is willing to pay for,” Gupta said.

“If all the pieces fall into place, by 2008 we will have 26 million broadband video users in India,” he added.

IRCTC’s Pandey stressed on the fact that e-commerce in India is a kicking business and it no longer belonged to the niche category. “It is real and profitable. In 2003-04, our online ticket sales went up by 76 per cent, whereas in 2004-05, they went up by 99 per cent. It offers value to the customer but what we need is better connectivity and more payment options,” he said.

Naukri.com’s Bikachandani emphasised on the fact that until companies engage with a new technology, they won’t know what it can do. “Broadband prima facie makes sense but when we engage in it, it will start making more sense. The key will to be able to provide services in the local language of the people by having a local language browser, keyboard, Windows etc. The real opportunity lies in going local and those who will get the local language application right, will be the ones who will rule in the future,” he said.

Times Internet’s Trehan too stressed on the dual need of compelling content and localisation. He dwelled on various issues like the definition of broadband and whether 256 kbps could be defined as broadband when countries like Scandinavia has that of 1GB and Japan - 100 mbps and Korea - 10 mbps. “Unless we get our definition correct, you can’t have on demand video or gaming,” he said.

He also added that broadband would change the internet industry landscape and will redefine the way media planning and buying is done.

Shaadi.com’s Mittal said that the differentiating factors in broadband would be the type of content, the type of interaction and the latency of content.

The first roll out of cable TV through telephone lines will be in Mumbai and Chennai soon. That is, if union information technology and communications minister Dayanidhi Maran’s words turn true.

“MTNL and BSNL have already been asked to ride on IPTV. Mumbai and Chennai will be the first cities to start it soon,” Maran said, while addressing the press here today at the Digital Summit 2005-06, organised by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI).

It may be recalled that MTNL has pumped in money to deploy a networking platform developed by Ericsson. But it is yet to develop the content delivery platform (CDN) through which it can drive video content. BSNL has also not been able to offer IPTV, despite appointing I-Spatial as a franchisee to launch operations in Bangalore. The experiment failed to mature into a commercial launch and BSNL is working out plans on how to set the process forward for IPTV.

Speaking on the need for developing an Indian language translation browser, Maran said the government has asked the department of information technology (DIT) and Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) to work together. “It will probably take us 2-3 years to develop this. We have started preliminary work,” he said.

The government expects to come out with speedier and cheaper servers to host websites from India. “By June, we hope to come out with our own server farms. This will make it cheaper for websites to host from India as they don’t have to consume international bandwidth which is costly,” Maran said.

He expressed dissatisfaction over the progress of broadband in the country. “It is 367 days since we launched our broadband drive. BSNL and MTNL have a total of 400,000 broadband connections,” the minister said. This is despite prices having fallen from Rs 3,000 per connectivity in 2004 to Rs 500 in 2005 and Rs 199 now.

The mobile sector, in contrast, has seen exponential growth. The boom is because there is more transparency in this sector while “there is still haze” in broadband tariffs. Content will also have to be beefed up, he added.

The government is creating an information highway of state-wide area network and has made an allocation of Rs 33 billion. “We are setting up 100,000 kiosks,” Maran said.

Hollywood Foreign Press Association has announced the winners of its 63rd annual Golden Globe awards. In the television category, it was definitely not a one-sided verdict. Taking a look at the final statistics, we have ten television programmes sharing among themselves a total of 11 awards and that says it all.

As expected, ABC shows Lost and Desperate Housewives pocketed the top honours for Best Series Drama and Best Series Musical or Comedy respectively. While, the award for the Best Actress, Drama, went to Geena Davis for her performance in the ABC show Commander in Chief, Hugh Laurie won the Best Actor title for the Fox drama House.

Overall, ABC won four awards while, HBO took home three. NBC, CBS, Fox and Showtime won one award each. Veteran Anthony Hopkins was honoured with the lifetime achievement (Cecil B DeMille) award.

In the Musical/Comedy category, the best actor award went to Steve Carell for his performance in the NBC series The Office. Mary-Louise Parker’s histrionics in the Showtime series Weeds won her the Best Actress award in the category.

In the motion picture category, gay cowboy romance Brokeback Mountain won the coveted Golden Globe award for best dramatic film. The film also netted three more awards including the best director title for Ang Lee. The film is the heart-wrenching story of two macho cowboys who fall in love and pursue their affair over the next two decades, despite marriage and children.

Philip Seymour Hoffman won the award for best actor in a film drama for his performance in Capote. The acting honours for the best actress in the category went to Felicity Huffman for Transamerica.

Walk the Line grabbed the best picture award in the Musical or Comedy category. The best actor, actress titles in the category were won by the Walk the Line stars Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon respectively.

Zee Café Is all set to launch another popular reality series America’s Next Top Model, starting 21 January. Leading supermodel Tyra Banks is the producer and the anchor of this reality show where fourteen aspiring supermodels will battle it out to win not only the crown but also a glamorous career.

The show will be telecast every Saturday at 9 pm.

Announcing the launch of this reality show on Zee Café, business head Neil Chakravarti said, America’s Next Top Model is one of the most popular franchises within the reality genre. The presence of Tyra Banks should also drive greater affinity from Indian audiences. This is yet another effort from the team at Zee Café to showcase premium content for its viewers.�

America’s Next Top Model chronicles the transformation of everyday young women into potentially fierce supermodels. Fourteen participants will live together and vie for the incredible grand prize: an opportunity to be managed by Ford Models, a fashion spread in Elle magazine, and a $100,000 contract with Cover Girl, states an official release.

Cameras catch each moment as participants face weekly tests that determine who makes the cut. With mentoring by supermodel Tyra Banks and exposure to high-profile fashion industry gurus, the finalists compete in a highly accelerated modeling boot camp, a crash course that could lead to supermodel fame.

Participants are asked to demonstrate both inner and outer beauty as they master complicated catwalks, intense physical fitness, fashion photo shoots and publicity skills, all under 24-hour-a-day surveillance of the America’s Next Top Model cameras, the release adds.

Very much in line with market expectations, the Prannoy Roy promoted-NDTV Ltd today announced a net profit of Rs 26.5 million for the third quarter ended 31 December 2005, down 82 per cent from a consolidated net of Rs 148.92 million in the corresponding quarter in 2004.

On the revenue side, income registered a 29.5 per cent growth over the same quarter last year.

In a conference call to analysts and reporters while announcing the results, Roy also spelled out the future plans for his network, including foraying into the general entertainment segment. NDTV is also looking at selling a stake in its website ndtv.com, to help fund new initiatives.

As regards the quarterly results, the company’s Net was eroded to a large extent due to the high quantum that went in as ESOPs for the employees that amounted to Rs 114.7 million.

Still, that is an improvement over the immediately preceding quarter when the news broadcast major posted a net loss of Rs 65 million, slipping into the red for the first time since going public as expenses on personnel surged.

On future plans, Reuters quotes Roy as saying, “There’s a lot of interest for a strategic stake in ndtv.com, and we are weighing the option of unlocking value in it right now, or six months down the line.”

The company will also launch a general entertainment channel in India, possibly over the next six months, and look at broadcasting separate regional language feeds to the big cities, the report quotes Roy as saying.

Among the performance indicators that the company has chosen to highlight is the addition of 245 new brands and 96 new advertisers to its marketing base.

BUSINESS HIGHLIGHTS
The news broadcaster tied up with digital platforms with DirecTV (USA), BSkyB (UK) and ATN (Canada) to launch the English news channel NDTV 24×7. With this, NDTV’s global presence now extends across four continents.

NDTV’s marketing and sales subsidiary, NDTV Media has entered into a strategic tie-up with MSN to represent and market MSN in India. NDTV has also entered into the e-commerce business with the formal launch of ndtvshopping.com.

Earlier, this year, NDTV LTD marked its foray into radio through its subsidiaries, NDTV News LTD, together with the infotech company Value Labs, Malaysian broadcaster Astro. The company has acquired a minority stake in three radio companies that hold licenses for FM radio broadcasting in Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata under the brand name of Red FM. The company entry into the radio venture has happened at a time when the licensing regime for radio has liberalised considerably, making efficiently run radio ventures profitable.

Format creator FremantleMedia has announced that Gary Carter, who is the company’s senior executive VP, worldwide entertainment, has been appointed to the newly created position of chief creative officer, new platforms.

In this new role, he will be responsible for creating new brands and concepts specifically for new platforms such as mobile, broadband, game consoles and IPTV.

Carter will manage a team of development executives whose focus will be to create new brands and concepts specifically for new platforms and will also work closely with executives in FremantleMedia Licensing Worldwide (FLW) who are already responsible for exploiting the company’s TV brands across multimedia channels.

In addition, he will also work with third party developers to acquire formats that can be developed for new platforms. Carter is based in London and Amsterdam.

Carter has also been appointed FLW acting CEO. In his acting position, Carter will be responsible for exploiting FremantleMedia’s many strong brands off screen and developing product and promotional associations that enhance and extend consumers’ experience of each property, including brand licensing, music publishing, online and interactive, home entertainment, business diversification and archive sales.

Carter has worked in FremantleMedia Worldwide Entertainment since January 2005, having been a consultant for the company since August 2003. He worked closely with the division to set the overall strategic and creative direction and the operational agenda. He also provided central support to the development, acquisition and exploitation of entertainment formats, which have international potential and drove entertainment development activities across the company globally.

Carter said, “I believe that we are living through profound changes in entertainment, not just in production and distribution, but in form. I’m excited to have this opportunity to explore the world of entertainment creativity is opening up through technology.”

In related news Simon Spalding is Fremantle Asia Pacific director of operations.