MAM
ABC launches online contest around ‘Desperate Housewives’
MUMBAI: The comedy Desperate Housewives has turned the fortunes of US broadcaster ABC round. Now the broadcaster has launched an online contest. The grand prize includes a trip for two to Los Angeles for the Desperate Housewives Season-One DVD launch party
All viewers have to do is visit www.abc.com and answer questions like which Desperate Housewife do you most resemble, and for men which housewife would you most likely date or marry. The Which Housewife Are You? Quiz & Sweepstakes is being conducted at www.abc.go.com/primetime/desperate/quiz/index.html. The sweepstakes provides users the chance to enter to win one of 10 weekly prizes and be further entered to win the earlier mentioned grand prize
The quiz consists of 15 multiple choice questions that relate to previously broadcast Desperate Housewives episodes. The results of the quiz will feature a photo and brief profile of the character that the user most resembles or is most likely to date or marry, along with the opportunity to invite friends to take the quiz and enter the sweepstakes. As quiz questions are offered randomly, players will be able to take the quiz multiple times without duplication of questions.
Weekly prizes will consist show themed merchandise. The promotion runs for two months.
Desperate Housewives airs on Sundays at 9 pm. For the uninitiated the show has a contemporary take on the happily-ever-after theme. The drama takes a darkly comedic look at suburbia, where the secret lives of housewives aren’t always what they seem.
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Abhay Duggal joins JioStar as director of Hindi GEC ad sales
The streaming giant brings in a seasoned revenue hand as the battle for Hindi television advertising heats up
MUMBAI: Abhay Duggal has a new desk, and JioStar has a new weapon. The media and entertainment veteran has joined JioStar as director of entertainment ad sales for Hindi general entertainment channels, adding 17 years of hard-won revenue experience to one of India’s most powerful broadcasting operations.
Duggal is no stranger to big portfolios or bruising markets. Before joining JioStar, he spent a brief stint at Republic World as deputy general manager and north regional head for ad sales. Before that, he put in three years at Enterr10 Television, where he ran the north region for Dangal TV and Dangal 2, two of India’s leading free-to-air Hindi channels. The north alone accounted for more than 50 per cent of total channel revenue on his watch, a number that tends to get attention in any sales meeting.
His longest stint was at Zee Entertainment Enterprises, where he spent over six years rising to associate director of sales. There he commanded the Hindi movies cluster across seven channels, owned more than half of north India’s revenue across flagship properties including Zee TV and &TV, and closed marquee sponsorships across the Indian Premier League, Zee Rishtey Awards and Dance India Dance. He also handled monetisation for the English movies and entertainment cluster and the global news channel WION, a portfolio that would stretch most sales teams twice his size.
Earlier in his career Duggal closed what was then a Rs 3 crore single deal at Reliance Broadcast Network, one of the largest in Indian radio at the time, before that he helped launch and monetise JAINHITS, India’s first HITS-based cable and satellite platform.
His edge, by his own account, lies in marrying data and instinct: translating audience trends, inventory signals and client demands into long-term partnerships built on cost-per-rating-point discipline rather than short-term deal chasing. In a media landscape being reshaped by streaming, fragmented attention and AI-driven advertising, that kind of rigour is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable.
JioStar, which blends the scale of Reliance’s Jio platform with the content firepower of Star, is doubling down on its advertising business at precisely the moment the Hindi GEC market is getting more competitive. Bringing in someone who has spent nearly two decades doing exactly this, across some of India’s most watched channels, is a pointed statement of intent. Duggal has spent his career turning audiences into revenue. JioStar is clearly betting he can do it again, and bigger.
