(30 October 2006 3:25 pm)

NEW DELHI: Zee Turner Ltd, the joint venture partner of Zee Telefilms Ltd. and Turner International India, today announced the launch of its new campaign Zee Turner Ke Saath Faide Ki Baat especially designed for rural market across the country.

As the campaign name suggests, the new scheme offers a sop for all...the viewers, cable operators and for the company as well.

Where as viewers will be able to get best of channels like Zee TV, Zee Cinema, Cartoon Network and Pogo at an extremely competitive pricing, the scheme at the same time betters the business opportunities for cable operators.

Concurrently,the scheme will enable Zee Turner to enhance its penetration and consolidate the market share in rural India, an official statement said.

Targeted at existing as well as new customers, the scheme will be active for three months starting 1 October until 31 December 2006.

As part of the rural package, an operator will be able to opt for any four channels from Zee Turner bouquets that best suit his market requirements.

Since Zee Turner offers over 30 channels with many of them as leaders in their own genre, this new scheme offers extensive choice to the operators, Zee Turner asserted.

Some of the leading channels that Zee Turner offers include Zee TV, Zee Cinema, Zee News, Cartoon Network, Pogo, CNBC, CNN, HBO, etc.

Each package will be available to the operator at a very competitive monthly payment. The operators also have an option of annual advance payment that can bring down the monthly cost even further.

Dwelling on the new campaign, Zee Turner Ltd CEO Arun Poddar said, “Rural market in India provides an immense potential for growth that remains untapped till now. The fact that, TV households in Rural India today stands at 61 mn as against 154 mn total households and out of these a miniscule 29 million households have cable and satellite connection, reminisces the huge potential that this market offers."

Poddar added that the new initiaitive not only provide better options of entertainment to the viewers and better business opportunities to the cable operators, but also help us in enhancing our penetration and consolidating our market share in this largely untapped market.

The number of TV households and C&S households has witnessed a buoyant growth in last four years. Where TV households showed a growth of 56 per cent in last four years (39 mn in year 2002 to 61 mn in 2006), the number of C&S households saw a stupendous growth of 130 per cent in 2006 vis a vis 2002 (12.6 mn in 2002 to 29 mn in 2006).

This is a testimony to the fact that rural market’s inclination towards television as a source of entertainment is increasing, therefore providing ample growth potential for entrainment industry, Zee Turner said.

Besides an aggressive sales campaign, Zee Turner is organizing road shows in rural markets wherein the channels will be taken to small villages with the objective of reaching out to people and giving them a first hand viewing experience.