Entertainment music channel etc has signed a strategic deal with RPG owned music company Saregama HMV.
Under this agreement, Saregama HMV and etc will jointly present various albums. etc will provide the on air promotional platform for the albums, while Saregama HMV will provide content from its own repertoire and other marketing support, a company release says.

To begin with Saregama HMV and etc are jointly coming out with four audio albums in this calendar year. The first album due for release is "Kya Zamana Aa Gya Hai" - a musical interpretation of jokes about today‘s materialistic world. Sung and composed by Vihan-Akask, it includes poets like Salil Chaturvedi, Vinoo Mahendra and Vishal Chaturvedi. While other albums include a compilation of memorable ghazals sung by some most popular singers of their music genre, a collection of specific genre songs from various movies of Raj Kapoor, and a compilation of some of the best-known devotional songs.

Speaking about the tie-up, Pradeep Dixit, CEO, ETC Networks Ltd. says: "The deal reaffirms the belief that etc‘s strong Bollywood focus approach is best suited to reach the music lovers of the country. Both etc and HMV believe that this tie up will enable us to provide our audience an opportunity to buy their kind of music and open up a highly lucrative source of revenue. For us it makes prefect sense to join hands with Saregama HMV as it has a catalogue that cover almost all the genres of music, something that is reflected in our programming policy."

Saregama HMV has the largest catalogue and roster of artistes of Indian music in the country.

Harish Dayani, executive director, Saregama HMV says: "It makes imminent sense for a music company like Saregama HMV to have a collaboration with a music channel like etc. In this form of tie-up both tend to benefit since we can provide the software and etc brings the platform to promote the same."

The MSOs are moving into Mysore. Zeenext.com, the cable ISP from the Zee Network stable, launched its Internet over cable TV services in Mysore on Wednesday (19 September).

The service, provided by Zee group MSO Siticable, is already up and running in Bangalore and has managed to attract a huge chunk of subscribers - both corporate and individual - in the garden city, a company release says.

Since Siti Cable is the major cable TV player in Mysore, Zeenext is targeting a maximum number of internet over cable subscribers in Mysore. While retail subscriber numbers are difficult to estimate, all SMEs, computer institutes, corporates and cybercafes are being targetting, an official source in Siticable says.

The Net is being delivered over one Siticable headend that covers all of Mysore, the source says. Siticable reaches more than 50,000 subscribers in Mysore so that will be the subscriber base targeted in the initial stages at least.

And the charges. For corporates it is Rs3000 per month while for home segment it is Rs1500 per month. There are a number of schemes available and for a complete rate card details are available on the website link - http://www.zeeaccess.com/tarrif.htm.

The modems in use are are: GI - SB3100i-Eu-CN-BG (surf-board) and RCA - DCM215 (digital broadband), Both the models are DOCSIS compatible. As far as bandwidth is concerned, 2 Mbps is what is dedicated to Mysore. In Bangalore, Siti has provided a 12 Mbps capacity through the international gateway supplied by New Skies Satellites.