Events
Zee’s Magic turns Wembley Arena into a dance floor in first event
MUMBAI: In one of its biggest endeavour to bring the greatest Bollywood personalities to the UK and offer world class entertainment to the people here, ZEE Network has clearly turned out to be a winner. ZEE recently organised one of the biggest Bollywood musical events at Wembley Arena, with Pritam taking centre stage along with 7 of the most sought after singers from Bollywood. The event was a huge hit and Pritam and his troupe played to an enthusiastic full house. The event was also attended by esteemed personalities such as Mr. G P Hinduja amongst many others.
The event kick-started with ZEE’s very own Sa Re Ga Ma Pa winner, Jasraj Joshi and his rendition of Vande Mataram which left the crowd feeling nostalgic and was the perfect beginning to the Bollywood night. Pritam’s grand entry onto the stage was with his popular chartbuster “Mere Bina”, which made Wembley Arena reverberate with people’s cheers. This was followed by power packed performances from Benny Dayal, Aditi Singh Sharma, Harshdeep Kaur, Sreerama Chandra, Soham Chakraborty and Nikhil George, who sang popular numbers like Badtameez Dil, Dhoom Machale, In Dino, Jugni, Aashiyan amongst many more. Since it was also Vaisakhi, Harshdeep sang Ek Onkar, wishing everyone a happy new year. There was an extraordinary Dhol session, which got the crowd on their feet dancing and Harshdeep gave a powerful act singing popular Punjabi and Sufi numbers. Aditi did a spectacular song and dance act on the Dhoom series which left the crowd whistling. There also was a special unplugged session by Pritam where Soham and Sreerama sang soothing and romantic numbers such as Subhanallah and Tu Jaane Na. Benny’s high energy numbers like Ilahi and Badtameez Dil got the crowd dancing to his tunes. The evening ended with all the performers together on stage and the audience on ground singing the blockbuster song Balam Pichkari. Security tried hard to keep the audience on their seats throughout the show but eventually gave up, as every person in the arena was on their feet dancing. The audience even persuaded Pritam and his gang with a lot of “once mores”, but ZEE had to end the show due to time constraint.
With a well promoted event, there was a lot of anticipation amongst people. Also, there was immense buzz about the show on social media, a Live interaction throughout the event and innumerable post event tweets and comments congratulating ZEE. People were all praises for ZEE’s initiatives, right from the stage lighting to the line-up of songs and singers.
ZEE Network Europe CEO, Mr. Neeraj Dhingra said, “We are extremely pleased with the response to the concert. The performances by Pritam and the singers converted the near full house in Wembley into a large dance floor. Never has there been a concert with so many persons dancing and swaying to the popular tunes. Keeping with the premium image of ZEE, we ensured that the production quality (stage and sound) was second to none and surpassed most mainstream concerts held in the UK. A special thanks to Bank of Baroda and other sponsors who helped make this event a memorable affair. This gives us the confidence to arrange several more concerts in the time to come and bring acclaimed artists to London and rest of UK and Europe.”
ZEE Network Europe Dy. Head & CFO, Mr. Parul Goel said, “We are very happy with the overwhelming response we have received for this concert. We were always confident that this one of a kind event with 1 music composer and 7 singers will be a grand success. ZEE has set a benchmark with this event and we are sure that every event we organise is going to get bigger from here on.”
Mr. Dhimant Trivedi, Chief Executive Bank Of Baroda said, “We are proud to sponsor the event and thank ZEE for organizing it successfully. We also convey our thanks to Pritam and Company for leaving a memorable experience for music lovers.”
Pritam himself was impressed with ZEE’s initiatives and humbled by people’s response. He said, “ZEE has done an excellent job and organised the concert extremely well. I was very happy to collaborate with them and give my first performance in the UK. I am now looking forward to visiting the UK and Europe again and having several concerts for my fans.”
With such a successful event, everyone at ZEE definitely has all the reason to smile, and with a promise to bring on more such events, all of you keep a look out for world class entertainment by ZEE.
MUMBAI: Disney Star India is in the running for this year’s IBC2024 Innovation Awards which are to be held on 15 September at 18 hours. The category for which it has been shortlisted is the social impact award for its work with India Signing Hands through which it brought the IPL 2024 coverage to almost 67 million hard of hearing and 34 million visually impaired fans on Star Sports.
Late last month, the IBC announced the finalists for the IBC Innovation Awards which celebrate and honour collaborative initiatives leading to ground-breaking solutions that address real-world media, entertainment and technology industry challenges. This year’s awards bring together under one roof IBC’s innovation and social impact awards to create a unified celebration of industry advances, with five categories now being judged: content creation, content distribution, content everywhere, social Impact, and environment & sustainability.
“This year’s entries once again showcased the global reach and appeal of the IBC Innovation Awards with projects of the highest quality received from six continents,” said chair of the 2024 IBC Innovation Awards jury Fergal Ringrose. “Meanwhile, constantly evolving delivery methods and audience consumption patterns demand that content producers around the globe must innovate dynamically in order to stay relevant and competitive in the modern media and entertainment technology ecosystem. I would like to sincerely thank our panel of judges for their diligence and ability to adapt, as we brought our three content categories together with environment and sustainability and social impact this year for our new-look IBC Innovation Awards.”
Former news anchor Sasha Qadri is set to host the awards in the auditorium complex at the RAI on Sunday.
This year’s finalists in the Content Creation category include:
* The National Football League (US), ESPN, Disney/Pixar and Beyond Sports for creating the first fully animated, real-time NFL alternative broadcast set in the Toy Story universe.
* Olympic Broadcasting Services and partners for live broadcast production with more than 200 smartphones contributing video for the Paris 2024 Opening Ceremony and a sea-based 5G network for sailing competitions in Marseille.
* Aspire for working with Vislink and FocalPoint VR to develop a virtual reality over RF wireless solution for the inaugural season of Aspire’s Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League (A2RL).
The organisations named as finalists in Content Distribution are:
* Claro for creating a new approach to pay TV in Brazil, integrating streaming channels and applications, delivering entertainment to consumers with a complete pay TV offer.
* NBCUniversal Operations and Technology for its pioneering project to transform the way its TV channels are delivered to consumers worldwide.
* The National Hockey League (Canada and US) in partnership with Verizon, AWS, Zixi, Vizrt and Evertz, for producing a 5G and Edge compute framework for assembly, control and delivery of live broadcast.
The Content Everywhere finalists are:
* LaLiga for working with Play Anywhere and Ease Live to enable true fan interactivity for itself and its worldwide broadcast and streaming partners.
*Red Bull Media House for bringing together real-time GPS tracking, data management and advanced visualisation to transform viewing experience across live broadcast, web widgets and AR mobile app.
* Franceinfo (France Télévisions) for working with PimpMyCompany to aggregate text/audio/video/photo messages from various platforms and broadcasting them live on air.
Apart from Disney Star, the Social Impact finalists are:
* CultureQ for a new technology platform developed by indigenous-owned tech company Kiwa Digital that enables indigenous peoples globally to revitalise their language and culture at scale, while retaining sovereignty
* Sesame Workshop for its Watch Play Learn Distribution Hub which allows government agencies and aid organisations to preview and request videos for children in crisis settings.
The Environment & Sustainability finalists are:
* France Télévisions for reducing CO2 emissions by 300 tons via a pioneering 100% glass-to-glass cloud production and private 5G network.
* GreeningofStreaming for addressing growing industry concerns about the energy impact of the streaming sector, with international reach and over 30 member organisations.
* Anton/Bauer for Salt-E Dog which harnesses the power of sodium chemistry to enable sustainable television production practices.
The Innovation Awards ceremony will also feature the presentation of the IBC International Honour for Excellence, which goes to an individual or organisation that has made an outstanding impact in the industry, and the best technical paper, with all papers being presented at the 2024 IBC Conference that runs 13-15 September in the auditorium complex of the RAI.
