MUMBAI: The Indian Merchants? Chamber is organising the second edition of its Sports, Media and Entertainment conference ?IMC Fusion? on 16 February at Grand Hyatt in Santa Cruz, Mumbai.

The conference is being organised under the auspices of IMC?s Entertainment Committee chaired by Karan Johar. Kabir Bedi will be the Host of Fusion 2013.

This year ?IMC Fusion? will feature discussions on the following subjects: 21st Century Entertainment: Talent Creation & Challenges of Nurturing & Mentoring, Hyper Channelization and The New Entertainment Landscape: Apps, Social Media, You Tube, Gaming and Commerce, The Brewing Content Battle: Who is Transforming Content and Consumer Experience for the Better?, Women in Cinema & Entertainment: New Realities & Challenges, Reality Shows on TV: Beyond Entertainment & Voyeurism, and Script is the Star: Can it also deliver Rs 100 Cr at the Box-office?.

The nine-part series is a part of Discovery?s block ?Ultimate Discovery? and starts tonight 11 February at 9 pm. Episodes begin with impromptu tricks captured by hidden cameras and culminate in full-scale, elaborate stunts in a melding of magic and science. The result is a blending of theatrical exhibition and empirical principles, bolstered by the before and after reactions of the audience.

The show looks to elevate the purely entertaining aspect of magic to new heights by proposing seemingly impossible endeavours, executing them flawlessly, and ultimately disclosing the scientific reality as the featured magicians, Canadian female, Billy Kidd, American Wayne Houchin, Briton Ben Hanlin and Australian James Galea explore the physics, chemistry, biology and a little pure Einstein that make illusions possible. The magicians are filmed in New York, London, and Warsaw with the help of both hidden and open cameras for the largest possible impact.

Commenting on Fusion 2013, IMC President Niranjan Hiranandani said, "This year the conference gets bigger in scope and scale. There will be dedicated B2B exhibition space that will provide a platform for product and service providers from the connected industry to interact with the right target group in a productive environment."

Key issues identified during the Fusion 2013 conference together with suggestions and outcomes from different sessions will be collated for taking up at appropriate levels.

MUMBAI: Savio Sequeira, the former Managing Director (MD) of Team Colgate at Bates India, has been appointed as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Percept Sports & Entertainment effective 1 February.

In his new role, Sequeira will be in charge for providing strategic direction, creating opportunities for integration, and paving the roadmap for the overall businesses for the Percept Sports & Entertainment vertical.

He replaces Joji George who quit Percept Sports & Entertainment last year to join UBM India as managing director. George had joined Percept in September last year from Global Brand Forum, Singapore.

Percept Sports and Entertainment comprises five SBUs, viz. Percept entertainment, Percept ICE, Percept sport, Percept talent and Percept art.

The products and services offered by the company span across experiential and entertainment marketing, sports management and marketing, wedding management, event management and marketing, celebrity endorsements & talent management, branded content, entertainment branding and marketing, branded entertainment, and intellectual properties in the sports & entertainment domain.

On his appointment, Savio Sequeira, said, "Having worked with leading brands across Europe and Asia over the past decade, I am excited to take up this new role with India?s leading entertainment, media and communications conglomerate. The 360-degree services and solutions offered by Percept along with the phenomenal synergy across the Group makes the task ahead exciting. I aim to make Percept Sports and Entertainment the preferred partner for businesses that are looking for creative and memorable brand experiences for their stakeholders."

Prior to joining Percept Sports & Entertainment, Savio was the Managing Director - Team Colgate at Bates India where he was responsible for setting up and building the team, strategic planning, operations, implementing the marketing and communications strategy across markets.

Previously, he also served at Young and Rubicam as Regional Business Director, Colgate international team in Hong Kong; Regional Account Director - Colgate international team, France; Director - network business at Young & Rubicam - Singapore. He has also worked with leading agencies like Ogilvy & Mather Advertising, Clarion Bates Ltd and Edge Communications.

MUMBAI: India TV has announced its first "Yuva Awards", an award event that will honour the "most promising" young faces of the nation.

Positioned as an aspirational salute to yuva (youth) icons who have shown leadership and extraordinary excellence in respective fields with achievements much bigger than their age.

The awards will be given away in six categories: Politics, Sports, Music, Film, Television and Business.

The honorees for the inaugural annual property by India TV will be decided through a process that involves the tabulation and stratified research by an international research agency and India TV viewers? votes and the diligent deliberations by the Jury.

The jury will be chaired by Sarod Maestro Ustaad Amjad Ali Khan. The panel comprises of personalities like Kapil Dev, Vandana Luthra and Pushpesh Pant. India TV chairman and editor in chief Rajat Sharma will also be part of the Jury.

India TV MD and CEO Ritu Dhawan said, "Yuva awards is a humble attempt to inspire iconic potential of Young Indians who will take our nation to newer heights. These youth icons will be those who have already displayed enormous potential and made it big at their young age. They have created benchmarks in their respective fields and brought pride to our nation."

The winners of the awards will announced at an awards ceremony at the Taj Palace, New Delhi on the 18 of February and the show will be telecasted live on India TV.

The awards have Real Estate Company Prateek Group as principle sponsor and Galgotias University as associate.

MUMBAI: Sporting and live events dominated when it came to wooing TV viewers in the US in 2012, as has been the case in recent years.

Super Bowl XLVI set new viewership heights by netting 111.3 million viewers, to edge out viewership for last year?s Super Bowl (111.0 million viewers).

Competitive reality programming continued to garner high viewership as well. ?American Idol?, ?Dancing with the Stars? and ?The Voice? all made way to the Top Ten list of regularly scheduled programmes.

For the second year in a row, only two scripted shows made to the same list. This year it was ?NCIS? and ?Vegas?.

Time-shifting played a larger role in American viewing habits in 2012, as evidenced by the significant lift in programme viewership, most notably with cable programming. Viewers time-shifted more of their viewing than in 2011, as each program on the list more than doubled its live viewership?last year, the highest gain was 90 per cent.

Cable shows comprised 90 per cent of this year?s list and all of the top time-shifted shows were scripted dramas.