ESPN Star Sports has announced the special Hindi commentary for the English Premier League with an eye to promoting soccer across India. The channel had earlier introduced Hindi commentary during Euro 2004 and the Fifa Confederation Cup 2005.

ESS VP sales and marketing Sricharan Iyengar said, “Localisation of content has helped us increase our penetration in traditional markets of India. The Hindi telecast also enabled us to open up several non-traditional markets for soccer like Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra.

“The viewership numbers of Confederation Cup 2005 as well as Euro 2004 testifies this. The localisation adds a lot of value to our telecast especially for viewers who find it difficult to understand the heavily accented English or for viewers who are not familiar with English at all.
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Bloomberg has announced that distribution of Bloomberg Television Asia Pacific service has expanded by 47 per cent in the region during the past year. It recently launched in South Korea.

The company says that the growing availability of the channel throughout Asia reflects the region’s surging demand for high-quality, real-time business news. Through alliances with premier global media companies, Bloomberg Television says that it is broadening distribution, reaching a wider audience and solidifying Bloomberg’s position as the leading provider of global news and data.

In Seoul, the channel is now available on the major cable TV systems operated by CJ Cablenet and Areum Broadcasting, and on Korea Telecom’s Mobile PDA video service known as KT Netspot Swing, which is available to 120,000 of its mobile users. Bloomberg’s James Ross says, “Bloomberg Television is the best vehicle for delivering global business TV news to Korean financial professionals. (more…)

US broadcaster MTV’s 24-hour college network mtvU in collaboration with MSN and Boston University (BU), will unveil Roller Palace. This is a comedy pilot entirely created and produced by students of BU’s Film and Television Department and the School of Theatre Arts at the College of Fine Arts.

The pilot is the culmination of a union between mtvU, MSN and BU and marks the completion of a nearly 15 month journey. In January 2005, students in BU’s Advanced Television Writing course began pitching ideas and scripts to Professor Paul Schneider, a television director of shows such as Beverly Hills 90210 and Jag.

At the end of the semester, the best sitcom ideas were presented to celebrity judges including E! Networks president and CEO Ted Harbert, NBC comedy development head Cheryl Dolans, and Fox television president Gary Newman. When Roller Palace was selected as the consensus choice, the show’s creators set off to develop, write, cast, produce and star in the original sitcom pilot.
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Priyadarshan is a name to reckon with when it comes to comedy. The director’s comedy formula worked wonders at the box-office in HUNGAMA, HULCHUL and his last comedy, GARAM MASALA,but PriyaDarshan claimed his next film ‘Malamaal Weekly’ to be totally different from his earlier comedies.

According to the media, “It is the story of a villager who sells lottery tickets and finds that one of his tickets has won the jackpot. The winning ticket, however, is with someone else. The story unfolds as he diplomatically traces the lottery recipient and manages to get the ticket back.� The movie stars Ritesh Deshmukh , Reema Sen , Paresh Rawal , Om Puri , Arbaaz Khan , Shakti Kapoor , Asrani and Rajpal Yadav .

The film being inspired by a real life story: The backdrop of the film is definitely real. The film portrays life in a small northern village where drought and famine are a regular occurrence and water is a luxury. A number of villages in U.P and M.P, face an acute scarcity of water in summer when people buy water from well owners and the Thakuranis.

It is during one such drought-hit period that a villager wins a lottery ticket that brings a renewed hope to the village. The film has been shot in the Kadekudhi village of Tamilnadu but my art-director worked at length to recreate a village called ‘Lahori’ in Madhya Pradesh. Even the names of the buildings and the shops in the vicinity were changed to give it a northern look.” (more…)

Supreme Court today declined to entertain a plea by Salman Khan in the black buck poaching case, in which he and four other Bollywood stars are accused. Salman had approached the apex court contending that the statement of the prime witness, Harish Dulani, could not be accepted as evidence as he had not made himself available for cross-examination.

However, a bench of Just- ices A.K. Bhan and L.S. Panta declared his petition dismissed as withdrawn and asked him to approach Rajasthan High Court with his grievances.The Jodhpur Court on February 27 had framed charges against Salman, Saif and actresses Sonali Bendre, Neelam, Tabu and two others relating to alleged poaching of two black bucks at Kankani village on the intervening night of October 1 and 2, 1998 .

The charges were framed against Salman, the main accused, under provisions of the Wildlife Protection Act that bans hunting of black buck and Section 147 of the Indian Penal Code. A Bench of Justices A K Bhan and L S Panta declared Salman’s petition as “dismissed as withdrawn”, thus allowing him to approach the Rajasthan High Court for necessary relief. Dulani had spilled the beans of this case. He drove the Gypsy carrying a galaxy of film stars on a shooting trip in 1998. (more…)

Amitabh Bachchan is now fit to resume work and is planning to return to the arc lights later this month. Bachchan says he will probably get back to work after March 20 with the shooting for his makeup man Deepak Sawant’s Bhojpuri film. “Then I’ll shoot for Karan Johar’s ‘Kabhi Alavidaa Na Kehna’. Then a couple of days will be set aside to shoot for ads. And then I go into Ravi Chopra’s ‘Babul’.”

He had undergone an abdominal surgery late last year. The songs in “Babul” are still being polished. “I want to sing them as well as I can. But the basics are in place. The fine-tuning needs to be done,” said Bachchan. A proposed trip to Mauritius for the Zee Cine Awards has been cancelled.

His son Abhishek was supposed to perform. And I’d have loved to watch him. My grandchildren, my daughter and Jaya were also supposed to join us in Mauritius. But Abhishek is down with a viral flu. And the doctors have forbidden me from travelling. So we aren’t going. Sanjay Bhansali or Rani can collect my award,” Bachchan told IANS.

This movie seems like just another Bollywood film. It has the disco-beat songs, the hip-swiveling dance number and the hero and heroine cavorting in the rain in drenched revealing clothes. But “Aisa Kyon Hota Hai?” or “Why Does This Happen?” is a unique first. The newly released feature film, which centers around the twin themes of safe sex and inter-religious harmony, was produced by the Roman Catholic Church in India.

The Rev. Dominic Emmanuel, the film’s scriptwriter and the spokesman for the New Delhi archdiocese, agreed that it’s not the church’s normal way of entertaining its flock. “It is all about using a medium, in this case film, which is not only the most popular in India, but also available to people across the country,” Emmanuel said.

“We did not want to sound preachy. A whole film on HIV would be too boring. At the same time we wanted to hold the attention of the audience,” said Emmanuel, who first thought about doing a television show, but ended up deciding a movie would be more effective.

With 5.13 million cases, India ranks second only to South Africa in the number of people infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. People infected with the virus face any number of prejudices, from difficulty getting into schools to hospitals that refuse to treat them.

The Hindi-language film, made on a comparatively low budget of $450,000, opened in New Delhi cinemas in late February and has seen a “fairly good response,” Emmanuel said. It was funded in part by UNICEF and contributions from Christian aid groups like Catholic Relief Services.

Zee Muzic is celebrating Women’s Day on March 8, 2006 with Bollywood’s Ace Director, Karan Johar. This Women’s Day Special will pay a tribute to the beautiful talent, Bollywood has witnessed in all these years. Zee Muzic and Karan Johar will take a walk down memory lane and look into the illustrious lives of those Bollywood Sirens who have left an extraordinary impact on the lives of millions of fans across the globe.

Mallika Sherawat and Karan Johar! Bollywood’s oomph girl and the suave director team up to host the LIC-Zee Cine Awards to be held Saturday in sunny Mauritius. While Mallika is a first, Karan is hosting the awards ceremony, being held at the Swami Vivekananda International Convention Centre, for the third time.

Those who have seen Karan’s hit TV talk show “Koffee with Karan” know that Mallika was the hot topic of discussion in more than one episode. Karan can seem comfort in the company of Arjun Rampal, Mallika Sherawat and Kokona Sen-Sharma who would be co-hosting the Zee event with him in Mauritius.

Abhishek Bachchan, says the media reports linking him with Aishwarya Rai and other actresses are disrespectful to women in the movie industry. Indian newspapers recently reported that a wedding between Rai and Bachchan was in the cards.

The two have just completed filming “Umrao Jaan,” a period movie based on a courtesan’s search for love. They are heading to Brazil to shoot “Dhoom 2,” a sequel to their successful film. Bachchan told Filmfare magazine that it was work as usual with Rai.

“I find it very disrespectful when people talk about women like that,” he said in an interview in the magazine’s March issue. “It’s like I get up in the morning and wonder, ‘Who have they linked me with today?’” He described himself and Rai, who starred in 2004’s “Bride and Prejudice,” as professionals.

We know that Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai are presently acting together in JP Dutta’s Umrao Jaan . The recent buzz about the alleged romance between Ash and Abhi, coupled with Dutta’s assertions of remarkable onscreen chemistry between the two stars, has now prompted other filmmakers to consider signing Ash and Abhi.

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Bollywood Star Madhuri Dixit, who took a break from Bollywood after marrying an NRI, is set to mesmerise her fans again but says she will sign only those films that can be shot in the US where she is now based. Seven years after her marriage to Dr. Shriram Nene and settling down in the US, Madhuri Dixit’s fan following has not reduced. Some things never change, and that is her commitment to the task at hand.

When she was acting in films, her roles were on the top of her agenda. Now, as a wife, and mother of Arin and Ryan, Madhuri’s priorities have changed. There are many filmmakers who still want to cast the actress, including veteran filmmaker Yash Chopra. He has offered her a role in his upcoming movie. Way back in 1997 they had teamed up for the super hit film Dil To Paagal Hai.

The actress didn’t deny that Chopra had offered her a role but said it was too early to talk about it because everything was at the discussion level only. Madhuri, who captivated the hearts of millions with performances in Tezaab (1988), Beta and Saajan, moved to the US after marrying Sriram Nene, a doctor by profession. Last month, after a long gap, she made an appearance at the 51st Fair One Filmfare awards function and gave a superb dance performance, choreographed by Saroj Khan.