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Ad Club, AAAI to fight violence against women together
MUMBAI: The Advertising Club (TAC) and the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) have combined forces to launch a campaign to pitch communication as a force for good and battle the scourge of violence against women.
Explaining the thought behind the initiative, The Advertising Club president Raj Nayak said, “From governments to Fortune 500 companies, everybody entrusts us to communicate their agenda to the larger public. It is time to take our combined learnings and experience to devise a campaign that is in the interests of this larger public. To this end, we will be running a national search for a multi-media campaign that will aim to mitigate violence against women. I am confident that, as one, our industry will rise to pool in the highly creative resources at our disposal, to come up with a highly creative and effective communication campaign. We will fund the production of the winning campaign and launch it at GoaFest in April 2017.”
Elaborating further, AAAI president Nakul Chopra commented, “Violence against women is an issue that concerns each and every one of us. As an industry we have the finest creative minds and strongest media linkages that are at the core of a high voltage communication effort. We also have the heart to take up a cause like this at a national level. I believe it will make the younger people proud to be a part of an industry that cares about real problems and uses its resources to address them.”
GoaFest chairman Ashish Bhasin observed the growing scope of the festival, saying, “GoaFest was all about saluting creativity and presenting the Abby awards. We then added a knowledge quotient with the day-long seminars. Now, with this meaningful effort being launched here, the festival will celebrate not just our achievements but lay down our agenda of giving back to the society that we influence through our creativity.”
The Advertising Club and the Advertising Association of India will release the campaign to call for entries on 19 January, 2017. The entries would be judged by an elite jury and the winning entry would be produced as a multimedia campaign and released ceremoniously on 7 April at the Goafest.
MAM
Paramount set to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery in $81 billion deal
Shareholders back merger, combined entity could reshape streaming and studios.
MUMBAI: Lights, camera… consolidation, Hollywood’s latest blockbuster might be happening off-screen. Shareholders of Warner Bros. Discovery have voted in favour of selling the company to Paramount in a deal valued at $81 billion rising to nearly $111 billion including debt setting the stage for one of the biggest shake-ups in modern media. The proposed merger, still subject to regulatory approvals, would bring together a vast portfolio spanning HBO Max, CNN, and franchises such as Harry Potter under the same umbrella as Paramount’s own heavyweights, including Top Gun and CBS.
At the heart of the deal is streaming scale. Executives have indicated plans to combine HBO Max and Paramount+ into a single platform, potentially creating a stronger challenger to giants like Netflix and Amazon’s Prime Video. Current market data suggests HBO Max holds around 12 per cent of US on-demand subscriptions, compared to Paramount+’s 3 per cent, together still trailing Netflix’s 19 per cent and Disney’s combined 27 per cent via Disney+ and Hulu.
Paramount CEO David Ellison has signalled that while platforms may merge, HBO’s creative identity will remain intact, stating the brand should “stay HBO” even within a broader ecosystem.
Beyond streaming, the deal would redraw the map for film production. Combining two of Hollywood’s oldest studios Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros., the new entity aims to scale output to over 30 films annually, while maintaining a 45-day theatrical window. Warner Bros. currently commands around 21 per cent of the US box office, compared to Paramount’s 6 per cent, underscoring the strategic weight of the acquisition.
But scale comes with scrutiny. Critics warn that fewer players could mean reduced consumer choice, rising subscription costs, and potential job cuts as the combined company looks to streamline overlapping operations while managing billions in debt.
The news business, too, faces a reset. CNN would join forces at least structurally with Paramount-owned CBS, raising questions about editorial independence and positioning. The merger has already drawn political attention in the United States, particularly given perceived ties between the Ellison family and Donald Trump, though the company maintains that newsroom autonomy will be preserved.
If approved, the deal would mark another milestone in Hollywood’s consolidation wave shrinking the industry’s traditional “big six” studios to a “big four”, with Paramount joining Disney, Universal, and Sony at the top table.
In an industry built on storytelling, this merger may well become its most consequential plot twist yet.
