Cartoon Network has lined up three new franchises for the ongoing summer season. The franchises are the action packed Power Zone, comedy genre Cartoon Cartoon and timeless classic Acme Hour. These programmes will begin to air from 23 April, 4 May and 1 June respectively and will be available in English and Hindi.

Power Zone takes off from 23 April and will be telecast six days a week. The cartoon block will be aired between 9 am and 10 am and 3 PM to 4 PM on weekdays and on Saturday morning between 10 am and 12 noon. Kissan Fruit Kick, VGP Amusement Park and Funskool are the main sponsors.

Cartoon Cartoon will showcase original new episodes between 6:30 PM and 9 PM every Friday. Hosted by a different Cartoon Cartoon star every week, the series will have interactive elements.

Meanwhile, the ACME Hour featuring Loony Tunes characters such as Bugs Bunny, Daffy, Tweety, Porky, Elmer Fudd, Popeye and evergreen Tom and Jerry that launches in first week of June will be aired at 7 am from Monday to Thursday and at 7 PM on Fridays and again at 7 am and 8 am on weekends.

The network will also be re-launching its Toon Tamasha block as a weekend franchise. The telecast will be in three languages Hindi, English and Tamil.

In a move that should provide a boost for serious players in the direct-to-home (DTH) telecast arena like Star, the government yesterday indicated that it might not press for making it mandatory for foreign television channels to uplink from India.

Information and broadcasting minister Sushma Swaraj, in a written statement in Parliament on Friday, said since the convergence bill was still at the drafting stage, it was not possible to say whether it would have any provision for compulsory uplinking of foreign channels.

As per the DTH notification issued in March on the ground rules for companies wanting to enter DTH in India, any licensee will have to establish an uplink earth station in India within 12 months from the date of issue of license. All content provided by the DTH platform to the subscribers, irrespective of its source, will have to pass through the common encryption and conditional access system, located within the Earth Station, situated on Indian soil, the notification states.