All India Radio, considered to be one of the most powerful pubcasters in the world and the low-profile cousin of Doordarshan, is all set to give the private FM radio broadcasters in India a run for their money and popularity. AIR will soon be made available on cable television as part of an exercise to generate additional revenues and increase its reach.

"We have a proposal to offer domestic consumers in India AIR through cable TV," a senior official of the Prasar Bharati Corporation said, pointing out that the effort is to increase the reach of AIR through various media.

The expansion mode also includes Prasar Bharati holding negotiations with the Indian Railways to offer the AIR‘s FM service on long distance running trains like the Rajdhani and Shatabdi Express. A pilot project undertaken in this regard has yielded good results, the official said, adding, "We are about to finalise the deal with the Railways."

The radio-through-cable TV initiative will mean that Indians can tune their cable TV to a frequency where the TV screen will appear blank, but the channel will carry audio feed.

"Radio over cable is very popular in the West, specially in the hotels," the official explained, adding once this gets popular, AIR can exploit the commercial opportunities too through advertisers who would want to target a particular set of clientele.

AIR‘s gross advertising revenues for 2000-01 were Rs 878.3 million while for 2001-02 they were Rs 969.8 million.

It may be worth mentioning here that during its early broadcasting days in India in the early 1990s, the Rupert Murdoch-controlled Star Group (then called Star TV) used to beam a satellite radio channel called Sky Radio which was accessed by cable operators and re-distributed as an audio channel broadcasting mostly music to cable subscribers. This was at a time when most Star channels, including Star Plus airing English programming, were not available in India as 24-hour TV channels.

Prasar Bharati feels that the radio-over-cable is an initiative, which is worth exploring considering the amount of content it generates and the huge library at AIR‘s disposal.

Considering that AIR is receiving more financial help from the government (courtesy Planning Commission‘s recommendations accepted by the government) this financial year for programming initiatives, Prasar Bharati can go in for innovations. AIR‘s programming budget has been increased from about Rs 10 million during the last financial year to Rs. 200 million during the 2002-03 fiscal.

Moves afoot to make AIR available as a satellite radio feed on cable networks

BBC World Service, InCableNet reach deal for radio programming

Prannoy Roy‘s New Delhi Television appears to have finalised plans for life after Star News. And it is not on the Zee CNN bandwagon that Roy will be pitching his tent.

Industry sources say that on 1 April 2003 (a day after NDTV‘s content deal with Star ends), Roy will be simultaneously launching two channels - one Hindi and one English.

Roy already has an uplinking licence and has acquired a teleport through which he will uplink the two channels, industry sources say.

More recent rumours however, have centred around the possibility that Roy might enter into a deal with Sony Entertainment Television. And the last word may yet not have been said on this particular piece of conjecture as there is still a distribution arrangement that NDTV has to put in place. And it would certainly simplify matters for Roy if he has a strong platform to push his channels. Especially considering the fact that preparations are reportedly on in full swing at the India Today Group to launch an English sister channel for leading Hindi news channel Aaj Tak by the year-end.

As far as the news management team is concerned Star News anchors Rajdeep Sardesai, Sonia Verma and Arnab Goswami have been slotted in for key positions, sources say. Sardesai is slated to be managing editor, Verma executive editor and Goswami news editor, the sources aver.

If the reports about the news management team are true, it may well be a move to pre-empt any attempts by rivals to poach key personnel. There looks like being a lot of that in the coming months what with all the news channels that are in various stages of development.

Cartoon Network‘s Samurai Jack has been voted the World‘s Best TV Series at the International Animated Film Festival. The animation festival in France screens 500 animated films from 33 countries with 5500 professional visitors and 380 journalists covering the events.

Samurai Jack was created by Genndy Tartakovsky, the talent behind Dexter‘s Laboratory and producer/director of The Powerpuff Girls. Samurai Jack has been a major rating success for Cartoon Network‘s channels around the world and is now in production as a major live action feature film.

Combining action, adventure, comedy and great character interaction, this is a unique tale of mental wit, Samurai strength and the fight of good over evil and stylistically is unlike any other animated show on television.

Cartoon Network, the 24 hour, seven day a week, all-animation channel is available on localised feeds in nine languages on digital and analogue satellite, cable and DTT in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. It is operated by Turner Broadcasting System Europe Limited, an AOL Time Warner Company.