News Headline | Indian Television Dot Com

BBC series 'Kumars' sold to NBC for ?6m

Submitted by ITV Production on Aug 03, 2002

MUMBAI: This piece of news should certainly interest Indian TV production houses looking to find a market for their programming beyond the traditional Indian Diaspora audience. Popular BBC comedy The Kumars at No 42, has been sold in the United States, where the Asian characters will be replaced by Mexicans.US television network NBC has paid ?6m to copy the formula and title of the Bafta-nominated spoof chat show devised by its host, the actor Sanjeev Bhaskar, The Independent has reported.

The Kumars At No 42 revolves around Sanjeev Kumar (Sanjeev Bhaskar), a TV chat show host. His shows are filmed in a studio that is part of the house he shares with his family. The guests who appear on Sanjeev‘s chat show have to endure a pre-programme grilling from Sanjeev‘s father Ashwin (Vincent Ebrahim), mother Madhuri (Indira Joshi) and his grandmother Sushila (Meera Syal of Goodness Gracious Me fame).

The Kumars At No 42

Kumar is the only son of a rich Indian family living in England. He wants to be a chat show host and become an international star. Towards that end his devoted parents bulldoze their back garden to build him a TV studio. The comedy revolves Kumar and the hilarious situations that arise out of his family‘s inquisitive nature and his efforts to keep the family from interfering while he is interviewing famous people.

Jimmy Mulville, the joint managing director of the UK production company Hat Trick, which is to co-produce the show for NBC, has been quoted as saying: "We needed to identify the most successful immigrant population in the States. African-Americans are already well assimilated and we needed a socially mobile family. There are 25 million Hispanics in the States so we settled on Mexican-Americans."

Hat Trick, which makes the original BBC2 version of the show, hopes to sell the series to Hispanic stations. There are also plans to sell the series to Germany and replace the Kumars with a Turkish family because of the large number of Turkish immigrants to Germany, the report says.

Israel gives all-clear to cable ops to dump CNN

Submitted by ITV Production on Aug 03, 2002

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The Israeli government is calling it a purely "business decision", but the timing is curious to say the least. Israel‘s cable operators have been given the go ahead to drop CNN International from their networks.

The move comes at a time when CNN has come under increasing fire in the Jewish state for allegedly leaning towards the Palestinians in its coverage of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its endless cycle of violence. The roots of this turnaround in Israel‘s perceptions of the AOL Time Warner news network: CNN founder Ted Turner outraged Israelis and American conservatives in June when he accused both the Israeli and the Palestinian leaders of committing acts of terrorism.

The Israeli government claims though that the decision is unrelated to the network‘s coverage and is purely a business decision. The three main Israeli cable companies have said they would pull the plug on CNN unless they found a mutually agreeable financial arrangement before the expiry of the current contract in November.

Officially, the channels are saying they cannot afford CNN‘s prices in the current economic climate - the decision follows months of tough contract negotiations.

The likely beneficiary of the fallout looks to be CNN‘s main US competitor, Rupert Murdoch‘s Fox News. The three cable companies have recently begun to offer their customers Fox News, reports say.

Election panel orders Pak TV, radio to curb bias in coverage

Submitted by ITV Production on Aug 03, 2002

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In the subcontinent, government controlled media has more often than not faced accusations of biased coverage. And in this regard, Pakistan‘s state media must certainly classify as among the worst villains.
Therefore it remains to be seen whether an order issued late on Thursday by chief election commissioner (CEC) Irshad Hasan, following complaints raised by the opposition Pakistan People Party led by Benazir Bhutto, will have more than lip service value.

CEC Hasan‘s order followed PPP complaints that state-run media was maligning the party and its leader Benazir Bhutto, French news agency AFP reported.

The order states that radio and TV authorities must ensure "that the election coverage is not biased in favour of any political party," the AFP report states.

The PPP is spearheading a 15-party alliance of opposition parties campaigning against General Pervez Musharraf since he took power in a bloodless coup in October 1999. Parliamentary and senate elections on 10 October will be the first since Musharraf took over.

BBC Tamilosai launches series on human rights in Tamil Nadu, Sri Lanka

Submitted by ITV Production on Aug 03, 2002

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The new radio series Maanudam Vellum (Humanity Will win), which is part of the BBC‘s "I have a right to?‘‘ series, broadcast in various languages, will start on August 3 and will go on air every Saturday as part of the BBC Tamizhosai programming, according to an official release.

To prepare the series, BBC Tamizhosai producer Sampath Kumar visited the war torn Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu earlier this summer. Sampath Kumar looks at a cross-section of the population in both regions - the refugees living in Sri Lankan and Tamil Nadu camps, friends and relatives of the victims of war, parents of the children conscripted by rebels, human rights activists and others.

The series also includes exclusive interviews with Tamil Tigers leaders Karikalan and SP Tamilselvan where they speak about the human rights situation in the war torn North and East of Sri Lanka and the charges against Tigers‘ own human rights record.

In Tamil Nadu, the series discusses cases of human rights violations in the recent past and contemporary issues such as discrimination against Dalits in some southern districts, the controversy around capital punishment and cases of custodial torture and rape

Says Thirumalai Manivannan, editor of BBC Thamizhosai: "This is the first time in recent years that a Tamil journalist has gone so extensively into the war torn north and east of Sri Lanka and reported on the human rights conditions there."

The "Maanudam Vellum" - Humanity will win - series seeks to raise awareness of human rights issues and to tell people how they can make a difference to the human rights situation where they are.