(14 May 2007 5:45 pm)

MUMBAI: News broadcasters are getting into the media outsourcing business as a serious source of incremental revenue. If NDTV signed up with Genpact last year, it is TV 18 Group which has announced a strategic alliance with Infosys BPO to launch Source 18 for providing a full spectrum of services to media and entertainment companies globally.

The relationship will not involve equity tie up to start with, but this could change later.

The services on offer will include digital archiving and met tagging, repurposing content, work flow charting, ideation, reediting, transcoding, quality control as well as media process outsourcing which shall include promo production, traffic management, uplinking and inventory management.

Also available as an outsourcing service would be analytics, finance and accounting services, order management, rights management and HR.

Source 18 will utilize the services of Tangerine Digital Entertainment, a company specializing in content repurposing and media process outsourcing, for part execution of the contracts.

TV 18 Group CEO Haresh Chawla said, “Source 18 will be a key part of our strategy to address all aspects of the media value chain. We believe that as a full play entity, process outsourcing and media repurposing and production services are key focus areas for us. With SOURCE 18, we combine the technological, process and management know-how of Infosys BPO with the domain knowledge of the TV18 group and this will be a market making alliance.”

While Infosys BPO will psrovide the initiative the much needed process and technological support, TV 18 will bring in domain knowledge and expertise to the alliance.

“We believe this strategic alliance is a great symbiosis of competencies of two great organizations - Infosys BPO and TV 18. We expect media and entertainment to be a key growth driver for us. This partnership with TV18 is a significant step in that direction as we together cater to the tremendous opportunities in Media and Entertainment industry”, Infosys BPO Limited MD and CEO Amitabh Chaudhry said.

National Geographic Channel International (NGCI) has been roped in as the first client for repurposing their archived and current content for the mobile platform.

The media outsourcing market is set to throw up an exciting business opportunity with the global media and entertainment industry growing to almost $ 2 trillion by 2008 and proliferation of content in multiple formats across media platforms.