The Indian CAB&SAT Reporter Search

The Board for Control of Cricket in India is expected to announce the channel that will pocket the telecast rights to international cricket matches to be played in India for the next five years. Among the front runners are: DD, Zee TV, Sony, and ESPN Star Sports, though others have also made their bids.

CABLE OPERATOR ARRESTED FOR SHOWING PORNOGRAPHY

The police arrested a cable operator and a local political leader Shakir Ansari in Mumbai for showing pornogrpahic movies on his network. The police say that more than 60% of the networks switch off one of their regular channels late at night and instead air porn. They also say that it is very difficult to nab the violators because they hook into a network for the blue films from locations other than the headend. Ansari was caught with his hands dirty as he actually was showing the blue films from his cable TV head end.

TURNER DUMPS WOMEN'S NETWORK

Turner Broadcasting System announced last week that it was dropping plans to develop a female-targeted network in the US. The Women's Network was in the planning stage for a year and the company had announced just two months ago that it was going ahead with its development. Turner had planned to develop programming jointly with another Time Warner firm, Advance Publications, publisher of magazines such as In Style and Vogue.

STAR TV TIES UP JACKIE CHAN & FORMS INTERNET PARTNERSHIP

Star TV, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., has signed an agreement with Media Asia, a Taiwan-based company partly owned by movie action hero Jackie Chan. Under the deal, Star TV will exclusively broadcast new theatrical products from the Media Asia Group, which plans to churn out at least 40 movies within 5 years. The Media Asia Group scored a major success grossing more than $2 million at the box office in Hong kong from the recently released film Gen-X Cops which Media Asia Group is also the exclusive distributor for Star Mandarin Movies, which has more than 500 film titles.

Meanwhile, a News Corp-People's Daily joint venture in China, PDN Xinren Information Technology, has struck a deal with the Huajian Group of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Under the agreement, the PDN-owned information technology website, ChinaByte, will provide instant on-line English-to-Chinese translation service, making it the first service in mainland China to offer such a facility. The agreement also makes PDN the exclusive agent of the service in mainland China.

NEWS INTERNATIONAL LAUNCHES FOOTBALL SITE

The Rupert Murdoch-owned News International last week launched an online sports information web site called footballFC.com. The company hopes that footballFC.com will emerge as a superbrand on the Internet. The new web site has more than 1,200 pages and has football news, chat and photos on offer to Web surfers. The site has been developed by the team that designed CurrantBun - the Internet service connected with News' Sun newspaper and it is expected to pose a major threat to existing leaders such as Soccernet and Football365.

HALLMARK CLAIMS HIGH PENETRATION

Hallmark Entertainment has announced that the channel has managed to penetrate 2 million homes within four months of launch. The management hopes to raise that to 5 million by the end of the year. Hallmark is being distributed in India by cable TV distribution firm Modi Entertainment Network.

MAHARASHTRA GOVERNMENT LOOKS FOR PARTNERS FOR FILM COMPLEX

The Maharashtra government is on the lookout for partners to keep its ailing film complex, Film City, located in Mumbai afloat. Film City once a favourite with Indian film producers has been losing out to newer facilities like the Hyderabad-based Ramoji Rao Film City and to locales such as Mauritius and Switzerland. The complex has been losing Rs 20 million annually. The government is looking for a partner who will pay 15% of the land value as hire charges apart from developing it. The control over the complex will continue to be with the Maharashtra government. The plan is to lease the 520 acre complex for 30-years to private partners.

LEO BURNETT UPS EQUITY STAKE IN LOCAL AD AGENCY

US ad agency Leo Burnett has bought out local Indian partner agency Chaitra Leo Burnett (CLB) promoter Walter Saldanha's 23% equity stake in the agency. Leo Burnett now owns 74% of CLB. Earlier, Saldanha had sold his 51% stake in CLB to Leo Burnett. Saldanha has also retired from the Rs 1,500 million billings agency.

TV SUPERHERO GIVEN CLEAN CHIT

TV producer and actor Mukesh Khanna whose local TV series superhero Shaktimaan had been accused of inspiring children to commit foolhardy acts has been absolved of the blame by a committee investigating the charges.

CREATIVE AD HOTSHOP LAUNCHED

Five Indian advertising industry professionals have come together to set up Chlorophyll Brand & Communications Consultancy, a creative advertising boutique. Kiran Khalap, Anand Halve, Nalesh Patil, V. Gangadharan, and Manjunath Hegde are being funded by Ad Factors' (a financial advertising agency) promoters Madan Behl and Rajesh Chaturvedi. At launch Chlorophyll had no clients but the quintet was confident that many would soon sign on.

LOCKHEED MARTIN-INTERSPUTNIK SATELLITE LAUNCH NEXT MONTH

Lockheed Martin Intersputnik (LMI), a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Global Telecommunications and the Intersputnik International Organization of Space Communications, is slated to launch its first satellite LMI-1, by next month. LMI-1 will provide communications services to eastern Europe, south and southeast Asia, parts of Africa and the Middle East, and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Senior executives claim that almost all the transponder capacity on LM-1 has already been leased to customers