The Unit Trust of India has invested Rs 4.5 crores in Rathikant Basu promoted Broadcast Worldwide. Broadcast Worldwide, which promotes the TARA (Television Targeted at Regional Audience) group of channels, has picked up 10% of the Rs 45 crores which are to be raised in the second round of funding.

UTI is the second investor which has picked up a 3.3% stake in the total equity of the company. The shares having a face value of Rs 10 per share are being issued at a premium of Rs 40 per share to the investors. A venture capital company from Gujarat has already picked up Rs 5 crore equity in this second round of funding which is likely to close by the end of the month.

The company is being assisted in its second phase by Ashok Wadhwa of Ambit Corporate Finance Pvt Ltd.

Alarmed by the recent fall in stock prices, dismal Q1 results for the year 2000 - Zee reported a mere 5% increase in the net profits and drop in TRP ratings due to rival channel Star TV‘s hugely popular Kaun Banega Crorepati game show, Zee Telefilms is setting itself an ambitious target of raising up to $700 to $800 million over the next sixty days.
The money raised will be used to fund various activities like strategic acquisitions of cable networks and regional channels, digitalisation of its bouquet of existing channels and updating its movie library.

The recent decision taken by the government to allow broadcasters to uplink directly from India seems to have caught the fancy of almost all the television channels and most of them might be thinking about uplinking form India.

Not to be left behind, officials at Star will be meeting through next week to decide about uplinking from India. According to a Star spokesperson, if the policy is there, they would definitely take a look at it. He also said that they might take some decision regarding this issue by next weekend.

Asked whether Star‘s content partner for Star News, NDTV, would be applying for an uplinking license, because it might be left behind in terms of live coverage of news by rival news channel Zee News, the spokesperson said that NDTV is using VSNL‘s uplinking facilities and the time difference between uplinking directly form India and from Hong Kong is hardly be 2 to 3 minutes.

It can be mentioned that Star has its own uplinking hub in Clearwater Bay - Hong Kong form where it uplinks all its channels. This gives the group economies of scale as it uplinks its entire bouquet from there.

The recent decision taken by the government to allow broadcasters to uplink directly from India seems to have caught the fancy of almost all the television channels and most of them might be thinking about uplinking form India.
Not to be left behind, officials at Star will be meeting through next week to decide about uplinking from India. According to a Star spokesperson, if the policy is there, they would definitely take a look at it. He also said that they might take some decision regarding this issue by next weekend.

Asked whether Star‘s content partner for Star News, NDTV, would be applying for an uplinking license, because it might be left behind in terms of live coverage of news by rival news channel Zee News, the spokesperson said that NDTV is using VSNL‘s uplinking facilities and the time difference between uplinking directly form India and from Hong Kong is hardly be 2 to 3 minutes.

It can be mentioned that Star has its own uplinking hub in Clearwater Bay - Hong Kong form where it uplinks all its channels. This gives the group economies of scale as it uplinks its entire bouquet from there.