The World Cup Network (not the Fifa World Cup, please note. We are talking cricket here) is what Sony Entertainment now calls itself.
Post-acquisition of the India cable and satellite cricket telecast rights for the International Cricket Council‘s (ICC) tournaments until 2007, including the 2003 and 2007 cricket World Cups, that is.

Some reflection of that is about to become visible on sister channels SET and MAX within the next ten days or so. The first week of July (1 July is the tentative date) will see the first phase of Sony?s efforts to spin off as much as it can out of the expensive property (at a reported $255 million that?s some serious money) it has bought for itself, says Rajat Jain, executive V-P, SET MAX.

The test run as it were for Sony?s World Cup plans will be provided by the ICC Champions Trophy in Colombo, Sri Lanka, that kicks off 12 September. Also known as the mini-World Cup, the tournament features all the test playing nations and will provide some clues as to how far Sony is successful in broadbasing its cricket tale.

Has television killed the radio star in India?
Marginally, if the National Readership Survey 2002 is to be believed. While urban radio reach has dipped from 27 million homes to 24 million homes in the last three years, rural radio reach has taken a lesser beating - standing at 30 million homes today as against 31 million homes in 1999.
Private FM players can however take heart at the thought that the decline has not been in the top eight metros in the country, but instead in the smaller one to five lakh population towns. As a matter of fact, among the 48 million adults who listened to radio in the last three months, 31 per cent or 15 million tune on to any FM station - an increase of six per cent since 2001. While the audience base of radio listeners widens, the AIR primary audience base has decreased from 48 per cent to 42 per cent in the last three years, says the survey.

NRS monitored audiences during January and March 2002, during which Bangalore noted an increase of 15 per cent in radio listenership, while Lucknow detected a 20 per cent increase. But it is the smaller cities like Jaipur and Vishakhapatnam, apart from Pune and Ahmedabad which have recorded a stupendous increase in radio listenership. The typical radio listener, says the survey, is a male (15-24 year old) from the SEC A and B categories, mostly a student (21 per cent) or a young executive (19 per cent), reads English publications - particularly sports and business magazines, is addicted to the Net (13 per cent) and loves to watch Channel V and MTV. He prefers his own set of wheels, owns an upmarket house, a PC and of course, a cell phone.

NRS also studied his listening habits and found that places like Lucknow even switch on FM during TV prime time hours. The average tuning time stays at two hours in the morning, and ditto in the evening, the study notes. NRS 2002, which also tracked the changing face of the ‘urban gharwali‘, noted that while her radio consumption has gone down from 71 to 64 minutes, her access to FM has shot up from the earlier 19 per cent to 25 per cent.

Russian communication satellite, Express-A1R was launched from Baikonur over the weekend.
The satellite replaces a sister satellite that was destroyed in a failed launch in October 1999. Express A1R is the third of the next-generation Express A series to reach orbit, after two successful launches in 2000. The craft‘s 12 C-band and five Ku-band transponders are to be used for television and radio broadcasting services, mobile telephony, data transmission, video conferencing and high-speed Internet, according to reports. The 5,700-pound satellite will operate in orbit for at least 10 years, its footprints covering the European part of Russia, the CIS countries, the whole of Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Northern Africa.

Express A1R is designed to relay government radio and television programs to Russia?s central regions and CIS countries. The satellite was manufactured at the Siberian Prikladnaya Mekhanika (Applied Mechanics) scientific production association with the participation of Alcatel. Russian space troops and Rosaviakosmos, the Russian space agency, carried out the launch. The Russian Satellite Communications Company and the Intersputnik organization will both use parts of Express A1R‘s capacity and capabilities, splitting the satellite‘s services between the Russian government and the commercial market.

The satellite bus was developed by Russia‘s Krasnoyarsk-based NPO PM, while Alcatel Espace of France supplied the payload.