News Broadcasting
Pogo officially launched but not to be seen
NEW DELHI/MUMBAI: Pogo, the new kids channel from the Turner stable, seems to have become a victim of the ongoing CAS controversy. At least in North India and Mumbai the channel, which debuted on 1 January, is not to be seen.
Though the official spokesperson for Turner International India insisted that the channel has been launched as scheduled on Thursday, he could only confirm that Pogo was available in Bangalore.
Cable operators in Mumbai and Delhi pointed out that with all the confusion around CAS, Pogo could wait.
A senior executive of Hathway Datacom, a multi-system operator (MSO) in which Star has 26 per cent equity stake, said, “We haven’t received the boxes for Pogo in Delhi and with CAS taking up our time, we cannot be really bothered about a kids channel, which can wait.”
An independent operator in Delhi, Home Cable’s Vikki Chowdhry, pointed out, “With so much of confusion already around, why contribute to it by adding another channel (Pogo) to the list? The pricing of the channel would throw up another controversy.”
Even senior executives of Siti Cable, a Zee Telefilms arm, were not sure whether Pogo was being shown on their networks in the country or not. Zee Telefilms has a distribution joint venture with Turner, called Zee Turner Pvt. Ltd.
Similar comments were voiced by representatives of INCableNet, Hathway and Siti Cable in Mumbai as well. Siti Cable officials in Mumbai however, did point to the possibility of Pogo being included as part of the MSO’s channel offerings by mid-January or thereabouts.
However, the Turner India spokesperson told indiantelevision.com over phone that in places like Bangalore, Pogo was very much part of the cable networks and that the boxes needed to access Pogo, a digitally encrypted channel, had already been seeded in the market.
In November, Turner India had announced that it would launch a brand new channel for kids and people in their early teens, especially customised for the Indian market, from 1 January.
Beaming off the PAS 10 satellite, Pogo features live action, drama, movies and series. The USP of the channel, however, will be feature films that will be regularly aired and will differentiate it from existing channels for kids, notably sister channel Cartoon Network and rival Nickelodeon.
News Broadcasting
Rajesh Sundaram joins NDTV Profit as senior editor, assignment
The 32-year newsroom veteran has launched channels on three continents and covered everything from 9/11 to South African television
MUMBAI: NDTV Profit has bolstered its newsroom with a hire who has done rather more than most. Rajesh Sundaram, a journalist with over three decades of editorial, managerial and consultative experience across India and international markets, joins as senior editor, assignment, tasked with sharpening the network’s newsgathering and real-time response.
Sundaram’s career reads like a tour of Indian media’s most formative moments. He began at Businessworld in 1994, moved to Zee News as bureau chief across Mumbai and Chennai, then joined NDTV in 2002 as part of its political bureau during a particularly febrile period in Indian politics. A stint as India correspondent for Al Jazeera International followed, where he covered key geopolitical developments and got his first serious taste of the global newsroom.
What sets Sundaram apart, however, is his serial channel-launching habit. At NewsX, he helped get the operation off the ground. At Headlines Today, part of the India Today Group, he served as editor. At News Nation, he helped launch the Hindi news channel and its digital ecosystem. He then crossed continents to lead the launch of ANN7 in South Africa as editor-in-chief, overseeing both television and digital. Back in India, he launched Tamil news channels News7 Tamil and Cauvery News, and later served as principal consultant for the launch of Marathi channel Lokshahi. Most recently, he helped build and lead the Press Trust of India’s video service and content studio, before stints consulting for Business Today and The Himalayan Times.
Rahul Kanwal, chief executive and editor-in-chief of NDTV, left little doubt about what Sundaram is expected to deliver. “The assignment desk is where a newsroom’s intent becomes action,” he said. “Rajesh brings a rare combination of field experience and leadership in building news operations at scale.”
Sundaram has reported from across India and the world, covering elections, civil conflicts, the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and the 2008 US presidential election.
At NDTV Profit, he will lead the assignment desk, driving editorial coordination and real-time response across markets and breaking developments. For a business news network sharpening its focus on speed and multi-platform delivery, it has hired a man who has built newsrooms from scratch on three continents. The assignment desk is in good hands.
