MAM
NASA inks deal with Yahoo! & Akamai to bring Shuttle Mission online
MUMBAI: NASA has signed innovative agreements with Yahoo! Inc. and Akamai Technologies, Inc. to help bring the Space Shuttle’s return to flight mission (STS-114) to millions of Internet users through the NASA web portal.
Yahoo! Inc. will provide live streaming of NASA TV mission coverage in Windows Media format and be the only other official online host of NASA TV footage beyond the NASA website. Akamai will stream NASA TV for RealPlayer and deliver all other Web content during the mission.
“We’re very excited to be able to offer this expanded coverage to the public. Internet users will be able to follow every event from launch through landing, including the spacewalks. Thanks to this agreement, they’ll be able to do so at no additional cost to the taxpayers,” said NASA associate administrator for space operations, William Readdy.
With a 12-day mission that includes three spacewalks, NASA expects to deliver more data to users than it has for anything but the Mars Exploration Rovers, which are still going strong after 18 months on the mysterious red planet.
Akamai’s agreement with NASA builds on its existing role as the content- delivery provider for the Web portal. Akamai has agreed to expand the portal’s available bandwidth by more than 30 times.
“We are pleased to play a role in NASA’s awe-inspiring Shuttle mission return to space by bringing the event through the Internet to enthusiasts around the world. This is another significant milestone for the Internet, and for organisations that take advantage of a globally distributed, on-demand computing platform that delivers web content to users around the world,” said Akamai vice president of public sector Keith E. Johnson.
NASA’s agreement with Yahoo! is one of the agency’s first online media partnerships. Video for both Yahoo! and NASA sites will be streamed through Yahoo!’s servers and the company has secured more than 50 gigabits per second of available bandwidth for the event. Additionally, the video of the Shuttle mission will be promoted throughout Yahoo!’s network, including the Yahoo! front page.
“The Space Shuttle’s Return to Flight is an important event, worthy of putting the strength of the Yahoo! network and technology infrastructure behind it. Making this event available at no cost to Yahoo!’s audience of nearly 400 million users will bring the Shuttle mission to millions of additional consumers,” said Yahoo! vice president content operations Scott Moore.
The STS-114 mission is NASA’s second major online event for July. It follows the highly successful coverage of the Deep Impact comet interception mission. More than 118,000 people watched the webcast of NASA TV mission coverage, and the portal served up 80 million web pages. Peak traffic may go as high as nearly three times NASA’s previous best during Deep Impact and 150 times normal operations.
Digital
Content India 2026 opens with a copro pitch, a spice evangelist and a £10,000 prize for Indian storytelling
Dish TV and C21Media’s three-day summit puts seven ambitious projects before an international jury, and two walk away with serious development money
MUMBAI: India’s content industry gathered in Mumbai this March for Content India 2026, a three-day summit organised by Dish TV in partnership with C21Media, and it wasted no time making a statement. The event opened with a Copro Pitch that put seven scripted and unscripted television concepts before an international panel of judges, and by the end of it, two projects had walked away with £10,000 each in marketing prize money from C21Media to support development and international promotion.
The jury, comprising Frank Spotnitz, Fiona Campbell, Rashmi Bajpai, Bal Samra and Rachel Glaister, evaluated a shortlist that ranged from a dark Mumbai comedy-drama about mental health (Dirty Minds, created by Sundar Aaron) to a Delhi coming-of-age mystery (Djinn Patrol, by Neha Sharma and Kilian Irwin), a techno-thriller about a teenage gaming prodigy (Kanpur X Satori, by Suchita Bhatia), an investigative crime drama blending mythology and modern thriller (The Age of Kali, by Shivani Bhatija), a documentary on India’s spice heritage (The Masala Quest, hosted by Sarina Kamini), a documentary on competitive gaming (Respawn: India’s Esports Revolution, by George Mangala Thomas and Sangram Mawari), and a reality-horror competition merging gaming and immersive fear (Scary Goose, by Samar Iqbal).
The session was hosted by Mayank Shekhar.
The two winners were Djinn Patrol, backed by Miura Kite, formerly of Participant Media and known for Chinatown and Keep Sweet: Pray & Obey, with Jaya Entertainment, producers of Real Kashmir Football Club, also attached; and The Masala Quest, created and hosted by Sarina Kamini, an Indian-Australian cook, author and self-described “spice evangelist.”
The summit also unveiled the Content India Trends Report, whose findings made for bracing reading. Daoud Jackson, senior analyst at OMDIA, set the tone: “By 2030, online video in India will nearly double the revenue of traditional TV, becoming the main driver of growth.” He noted that in 2025, India produced a quarter of all YouTube videos globally, overtaking the United States, while Indians collectively spend 117 years daily on YouTube and 72 years on Instagram. Traditional subscription TV is declining as free TV and connected TV gain ground, forcing broadcasters to innovate. “AI-generated content is just 2 per cent of engagement,” Jackson added, “highlighting the dominance of high-quality human content. The key for Indian media companies is scaling while monetising effectively from day one.”
Hannah Walsh, principal analyst at Ampere Analysis, added hard numbers to the picture. India produced over 24,000 titles in January 2026 alone, with 19,000 available internationally. The country now accounts for 12 per cent of Asia-Pacific content spend, up from 8 per cent in 2021, outpacing both Japan and China. Key exporters include JioStar, Zee Entertainment, Sony India, Amazon and Netflix, delivering over 7,500 Indian-produced titles abroad each year. The top importing markets are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, the United States and the Philippines. Scripted content dominates globally at 88 per cent, with crime dramas and children’s and family titles performing particularly strongly.
Manoj Dobhal, chief executive and executive director of Dish TV India, framed the summit’s ambition squarely. “Stories don’t need translation. They need a platform, discovery, and reach, local or global,” he said. “India produces more movies than any country, our streaming platforms compete globally, and our tech and creators win international awards. Yet fragmentation slows growth. Producers, platforms, and tech move in different lanes. We need shared spaces, collaboration, and an ecosystem where ideas, technology, and people meet. That is why we built Content India.”
The data, the pitches and the prize money all pointed to the same conclusion: India is not waiting for the world to discover its stories. It is building the infrastructure to sell them.
