Sony Entertainment Television is off DTH television screens in the US for the past four days. The reason: DTH provider Direct TV has switched off the signal.

According to Sony Entertainment Television India officials, the channel had a franchise agreement with the Ethnic American Broadcasting Corporation (EABC) which was trying to bring together a bouquet of several language channels, including Arabic, Chinese and Russian. But it failed when its entire investment planning went awry.

Sony has since then been working on bringing the Sony Entertainment signal back on air and is in talks with another DTH service provider in the US. The courts are supposed to reach a decision by mid-next week, following which Sony officials will be in a position to make some announcements. Sony officials say Sony Entertainment should be back on track within the next 15 days.

AXN channel, part of the Sony Entertainment Television franchise, yesterday announced its new programming strategy which would be built around five programme slots - series, movies, adventure & reality, lifestyle sports and animation.

While elaborating on the new initiative, Shantonu Aditya, senior vice president franchise channels and distribution, announced a slew of new programmes in the reality genre. Billed as the "extraordinary month", the programmes unveiled included the sequel to the "Survivor" series, "Survivor 2: The Australian Outback". Also showcased were three new series - "Ripley‘s Believe It or Not", "Core Culture" and "Exploring the Unknown".

Queried on how the original "Survivor", which attracted over 50 million viewers in the US in its final episode, fared in India, Aditya would only say that when the series was on air, it managed to capture 26 per cent of Indian audiences tuning into English programmes.

The final episode of "Survivor 2: The Australian Outback" aired on CBS in the US on Thursday and Tina Wesson, a nurse from Tennessee, walked away with the $ 1 million prize, it has been reported. "Survivor 2" never managed the kind of viewership that "Survivor" brought in but it was still a success for CBS. How Indian audiences take to "Survivor 2" considering the less than spectacular run of the original "Survivor" in India will be watched with interest.

AXN, which essentially targets 18 to 34-year-olds, currently reaches 18 million C&S households in India, Aditya said, quoting AC Nielsen TAM data. This was over 80 per cent growth from the 10 million penetration recorded in April last year, he added.

An interesting statistic that Aditya provided was that contrary to the general feeling that the channel had a largely young male viewership, 41 per cent of AXN‘s audience was female. This figured favourably with the norm in the west which had a 46:54 female to male ratio, Aditya said.

The Zee Group?s Internet portal company, Econnect India Ltd, has announced its plan to restructure its business strategy. Econnect India, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Zee Telefilms, will now focus on entertainment-based content and website development and design for group companies as well as third parties, a Zee release states.

At the same time, www.zeenext.com, the portal maintained by Econnect, has now been relaunched with focus on entertainment and lifestyle-related content. The move is expected to ensure better synergies with the Zee Group?s core content, the release claims.

The new initiatives are aimed at helping Econnect tap new business opportunities, even as it serves as the Internet interface of the Zee Group, the release says.

One fallout of the restructuring process has been that close to 60 people have reportedly been asked to leave.

There‘s a new channel on the block that has been beaming as a test signal since 2 April and its called Channel Guide.

Channel Guide officially launches on 15 or 16 May with the aim of being the "channel junction" for the television viewer, says the company‘s COO Ravi Deshmukh. It will be a free to air digital channel beaming off Thaicom-3.

The channel hopes to cover television, films, theatre, music and events with a very localised perspective. It will have genre-wise (also language-wise) anchored slots incorporating footage as well as interesting commentary about featured programmes.

Deshmukh appears undaunted about launching a channel at a time when the industry as a whole is facing a cash crunch with broadcasters cutting back on their projects rather than attempting new ventures.

Deshmukh says his channel provides a valuable service to the industry as a whole and expects both broadcasters and cable operators to support the channel. He aims to take his channel to 60 towns and cities across the country within the next four months.