MAM
i3 Mobile and ESPN hatch alliance to give users audio highlights
Di3 Mobile Inc. a premium wireless media content and service provider in America and ESPN which claims to be The Worldwide Leader in Sports have announced an agreement to offer ESPN Radio SportsCenter audio reports updated every 20 minutes directly to Pronto users across America from 28 June.
To receive ESPN Radio SportsCenter reports, subscribers can call Pronto and say, “Get me the top sports headlines,” to hear ESPN anchors deliver the latest sports news updates. Sports fans can now stay up to the minute on the World Cup — or get any other sports news all with one call to Pronto. The alliance fits in with ESPN’s strategy to reach sports fans whenever, wherever an official release informs.
Pronto is a premium monthly subscription service that works on any phone with any calling plan. Pronto delivers information and service 24 hours a day, with live operators that are available to provide detailed answers for more complicated inquiries. Pronto users can also send e-mails with just the sound of their voice and access virtually any information they need just by asking — from stock quotes, weather reports, driving directions and airline schedules.
The agreement with ESPN follows recent announcements that Wall Street Journal business and market reports as well as CNN news business updates, are also available from Pronto. The addition of ESPN gives Pronto users 24/7 access to news and information from the world’s leading news and sports brands.
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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.
