MAM
Big Bang Awards 2021 set for offline event on 8 April
Mumbai: After skipping the 2020 edition due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Ad Club Bangalore has announced that it will be holding the Big Bang Awards 2021 in an offline event on 8 April. The award ceremony will celebrate the Indian advertising and marketing fraternity and honor excellence in creative, media, digital and marketing.
The Big Bang Awards are sponsored by Meta and supported by Manorama Max, Manorama News, The Hindu, and some other media houses. The event will take place at Hotel Ritz Carlton in Bangalore.
Ad Club Bangalore is a three-decade-old advertising club, known as one of the oldest ad clubs in the country. The ad club started the Big Bang Awards two decades ago. Every year it includes a jury from the advertising, media, and marketing industry. However, this year the entire judging process was online due to the pandemic restrictions.
Sharing inside details, Ad Club Bangalore president Laeeq Ali told, “We received over 400 entries this year from agencies and clients across the country and decided to wait till April so we could kick-start our activities for the year with an offline event.”
The awards have separate categories for consumer, B2B, media, entertainment and sports, brand and corporate communication and social causes. There is a separate category for healthcare and wellness covering Rx and OTC products.
“I have been involved with the Big Bang Awards for the last 20 years,” said Big Bang Awards chairperson Malavika Harita. “This year, we saw a lot of emerging creative, media and digital agencies with innovative and exciting ideas. Adding a category for marketing excellence rounded off the entire gamut of marketing activities covered.”
In order to pay homage to its late executive director Arvind Kumar, this year they have two special prizes for the best young media professional below 30 years and the best media team in his name. The MAA Group will be presenting the Ayaz Peerbhoy Award for the ‘Creative Agency of the Year’ as they do every year, said the statement.
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.
