MAM
IBN 7 ties up with Canon India for ‘News Superstar’ contest
NEW DELHI: IBN 7 has entered into a strategic alliance with Canon India to bring to its viewers a month long contest – ‘IBN 7 News Superstar,‘ that will give them an opportunity to win Canon digital cameras and camcorders daily.
To participate in the contest, viewers need to watch IBN 7 from Monday – Saturday between 8:30 pm to 10:30 pm and answer questions pertaining to the day‘s top news stories.
The contest will comprise four multiple-choice questions asked at different intervals during the same time band. Four lucky winners (who answers any one question right) and one mega winner (who answers all four questions correctly) of the day will be announced at the end of Big News at 10:30 pm on IBN 7. The winners will in turn be featured in a telephonic interview on the breakfast news the following day, informs an official release.
“The contest is designed to encourage news-awareness and viewership by amalgamating news and entertainment. We constantly endeavor to introduce creative and novel ways of interacting with our viewers who are our crux,” says IBN 7 managing editor Ashutosh.
Canon India head marketing and sales Alok Bhardawaj said, ” We are glad to be associated with IBN 7 for the ‘IBN 7 News Superstar‘ initiative. We are confident that the viewers will respond to the contest positively and in turn get an opportunity to possess our premium products. We look forward to other such associations in the future.”
“We are excited to work with Canon India for a uniquely packaged interactive contest with interesting prizes provided by them. We are confident that innovative and exciting contests like these will strike a positive chord with the viewers,” added CNN-IBN and IBN 7 director marketing and online projects Dilip Venkatraman.
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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.
