As part of its newly-found camaraderie with UTV (see earlier story: UTV eyes foreign skies; to retain Star TV as an investor after IPO), News Television India Ltd - Star TV India - is likely to distribute the UTV-run Vijay TV too. The channel recently telecast the Filmfare South Awards. The addition of Vijay TV - a Tamil channel - to its bag will mean Star TV will have immediately bought its entry into the south.

For long, Star TV has been trying to coerce the politically-linked and Kalanithi Maran-run Sun Network to become its ally. But it has not been successful. It is quite likely that Star TV will use UTV to launch channels in other south Indian languages such as Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada.

It had earlier contemplated a tieup with the R.Basu-run Broadcast Worldwide Ltd but its MoU with the company has not made any progress. Broadcast Worldwide is slated to launch its Tara Bengali language channel soon and no distribution agreements have been signed with Star TV as yet at the time of writing. News Corp is an investor in Broadcast Worldwide and the Tara bouquet will have Gujarat, Marathi, Bengali, and Punjabi language channels.

The Vijay TV distribution agreement will mean that Star TV will have a bouquet to match Zee TV‘s package in time to come.

Star TV India CEO Peter Mukerjea is expected to be coopted on the board of UTV in the near future to further cement the close-found relationship between the two companies. UTV is scheduled to go in for any IPO in the next couple of months.

United Television is getting ambitious these days. And How. The content provider is looking at multi dimensional fields like Internet, entertainment & production of TV series as well as movies to spread its tentacles.

As far as alliances are concerned, UTV said that it would retain Star TV as their strategic investors. According to a report in the Business Standard the company is looking at a wide range of activities that the broadcaster and UTV could do together.

For starters, Star TV, which holds a stake of 12% in the company, would act as a delivery vehicle for its bouquet of channels for international viewing. This would involve packaging as well as distribution of the bouquet.

The similar arrangement has been worked out between the two where UTV will provide the content as well as packaging for Star‘s proposed education and health channels.

Apart from the this the two will also storm the movie market by producing movies for the big as well as small screen. The movies made will be shown on the small screen through the Star satellites. The distribution of these movies for the big screen would be done by UTV.

And this is just one of its alliances. The channel has allied with various other channels and Internet companies for providing content.

Zee Telefilms Limited (ZTL) has fixed up rates for their upcoming Direct-to-Operator (DTO) package which will be unveiled somewhere between 15 May, 2000 to 15 June, 2000.
For a seven channel package (Zee Movies, Zee English, Zee Movies, Alpha Marathi, Alpha Gujrathi, Alpha Punjabi and Alpha Bengali), ZTL has decided to charge Rs 11.50 per subscriber. However, Zee is offering different rates for various subscriber slabs.

For a subscriber base of under 500 cable homes, Zee will charge Rs 11.50 per subscriber. For 501-2500, 2501-10,000 and 10,001 homes onwards, the price will be reduced by 50 paise each.

Other packages are also fixed up for combination of different channels. Zee will charge Rs 11 for a four channel package of Zee English, Zee Movies, Zee Cinema and any Alpha channel. The package consisting of Zee Movies, Zee English and Zee Cinema will be priced at Rs 10 while Zee Cinema and any Alpha channel would be priced at Rs 8.00.

The individual pricing of the channels from the Zee bouquet is:
Zee Cinema at Rs 6, Zee Movies at Rs 5 and Zee English, Alpha Marathi, Alpha Gujrathi, Alpha Punjabi, Alpha Bengali at RS 4 each.

Zee TV, Zee News and Music Asia will, however, remain free-to-air.

The publishing major - The Indian Express Group has made a foray into television businesses. The finance daily, The Financial Express will soon enter into pact with the Raghav Bahl promoted business news channel CNBC India which is a joint venture between CNBC Asia and Raghav Bahl‘s TV-18.
They have entered into a content sharing agreement. The Financial Express (FE) will have access to CNBC India‘s news while the satellite channel will utilise FE‘s journalistic infrastructure facilities for CNBC India‘s television channel and its business portal www.rupeemaker.com.

In the meanwhile, the Indian Express Group has entered into an agreement with the Rathikant Basu promoted broadcasting company Broadcast Worldwide. The Indian Express will produce Marathi and Punjabi news and current affairs programmes for the ‘Tara‘ group of channels promoted by Broadcast Worldwide. Shekhar Gupta, CEO of The Indian Express Group signed a pact with Kishor Alhuwalia, the CEO Broadcast Worldwide Punjabi channel in Chandigarh.

The Indian Express will use its editorial expertise while Broadcast Worldwide will provide it with its technical and production expertise. A new show ‘The Indian Express on Air‘ will also be launched.

The Indian Express Group has entered into the broadcasting world with this pact. But what needs to be seen is will it be able make hold its ground in this media.