Sports in India means cricket, cricket, and only cricket. To the world at large however there is far more to sport and that is what ESPN is attempting to bring to the notice of the Indian viewer. Come 18 August, ESPN kicks off an ambitious programming initiative built around the world‘s most popular sport - soccer.

The centrepiece of the thrust is the pan-Asia telecast rights ESPN Star Sports has acquired for the English Premier League (EPL). And in keeping with the current thinking among television strategists, appointment viewing is what ESPN hopes to garner in this no-expenses spared soccer-centric programme push.

Speaking at a press briefing in south Mumbai yesterday, Manu Sawhney, managing director, ESPN India, outlined four thrust areas which would be utilised to push the property in India. Multimedia - print, television and online activities; contests, live screenings in clubs, and school campaigns. Sawhney said the various promotional activities would be rolled out over the coming two months and expressed confidence that there was a market just waiting to be tapped on the soccer viewing front. He identified the big cities and the states of Kerala, Goa and West Bengal as primary focus areas.

Pepsi, Samsung, Madura Garments were the three principal advertisers for EPL and had signed one-year deals, Sawhney said. Questioned on whether the soccer initiative was a joint one with Star Sports, he said this was essentially ESPN‘s baby.

On the programming front ESPN is set to showcase three live games a week on prime time - one on Saturday and two on Sundays. The network also will telecast one additional game every Saturday (deferred relay), one additional Manchester United game and football-related magazine-style programmes, through the week .

And the backend efforts that go into getting a real "close-up and personal" fell of the goings-on on the pitch is quite amazing, going by the information put out by ESPN (no costing figures though). A total of 130 crew on-ground and at studio are involved. A fleet of ten trucks and support vehicles, with standby power generators. Twenty-five cameras are used for each game with that number going up to 35 for a finals fixture. For the audio 20 directional microphones are deployed.

Queried on what other properties ESPN was focussing on other than cricket and now soccer, an ESPN official said Formula One car racing, sports news and quiz-based shows had a lot of potential for development. Actions

One of the recurring themes in the just-concluded Enter Media 2001 conference organised by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) in Mumbai was the issue of piracy.

That the problem is a pan-Asian one was elucidated by Zee Networks group broadcasting CEO Sandeep Goyal, who referred to the easy availability of the latest Indian films on cable even in a developed market like Japan.

At a regional level, the Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (Casbaa) has taken up the issue of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection in Thailand to domestic regulators the public relations department of the Prime Minister‘s Office (PRO) and the Mass Communications Organisation of Thailand (MCOT).

Senior Casbaa officials met with the directors-general of the PRD and MCOT at the conclusion of a Casbaa Roundtable on Pay TV Piracy in Asia on 3 August in Bangkok and requested that the PRD and MCOT play a more active role in combating pay TV piracy in the Thai market.

Both MCOT and the PRD, as well as the Royal Thai Police, expressed a clear willingness to tackle the problem during the roundtable.

"We believe there may be as many as 150,000 pay TV households in Thailand that are not paying the rights owners for the channels they are viewing. Of course, this also damages the viability of the legitimate operators," said Simon Twiston Davies, the executive director of Casbaa."

According to Twiston Davies, one remedy on the pay TV front could be as simple as adding a clause to annual licensing conditions insisting that local cable operators provide proof that they hold legally binding contracts to distribute individual channels. If a cable operator were unable to demonstrate a contractual relationship with rights owners, it would not have its license renewed.

Twiston Davies noted that creative industries in markets as diverse as Hong Kong and India have been almost devastated by IPR piracy in recent years and Thailand could also be under threat. He added that Thailand remains on the US Trade Representative‘s 301 Watch List for piracy activities and that upcoming World Trade Organisation negotiations are expected to increasingly focus on IPR matters.

The Casbaa Roundtable on Pay-TV Piracy covered case studies from regional pay-TV operators, technology specialists and rights holders who outlined their views on the scale of the problem in Asia and potential action points.

Among those exchanging views during the day-long roundtable were representatives from AOL Time Warner, Star Group, Discovery Channel, Turner Broadcasting, Hong Kong Cable, UBC, Astro, Irdeto Access, NDS and the Motion Picture Association.

In recent months pay-TV piracy has been forced up the Casbaa agenda as the problem has escalated in the jurisdictions of Hong Kong, the Philippines, Taiwan and Thailand.

In the coming months Casbaa will be taking its concerns on these issues to governments at several levels as well as, on occasion, representing the interests of the industry in legal actions.

Watch out Femina Miss India, there is competition on the horizon. The Zee Network has announced plans to foray into one as yet unexplored arena - the Teen Queen Pageant - aimed at youth, the core demographic group where the craze of beauty pageants rages the most.

Organised for the first time in India, Zee‘s Teen Queen pageant will be held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, New Delhi on Sunday, 12 August, 2001.

The event plans to unfold in three stages over the next year, according to a company release. In the second stage, scheduled for October this year, an India World Teen Queen will be chosen from amongst contestants of Indian origin from 24 countries where there is a substantial NRI population. The final stage will see the World Teen Queen pageant being staged on a world canvas with representatives from the various countries participating.

"At Zee today, we are strongly focused on youth related initiatives and the India Teen Queen contest is in keeping with that focus. As a satellite television channel spanning 15 channels, and with a presence in 80 countries, we have a constant requirement for new talent. The India Teen Queen in its various avatars will help us to identify and nurture talent from across the world," says group broadcasting CEO Sandeep Goyal.

The India Teen Queen is being developed as an exclusive and unique property, says the release. Zee Network has already started receiving requests to host the forthcoming India World Teen Queen Pageant from Canada, United Kingdom and United States of America, the release adds.

Pantene is sponsoring the inaugural event. Twenty-two teens between the ages of 17 and 19 from across India are expected to participate in five separate rounds. The first round is the Body Fit round, followed by a Talent (VeeJay) round, a Trendy Hair round and an Attire round.

The final round will be an audio-visual round where the contestants will be posed questions by the panel of judges consisting of cine star Neena Gupta, designer Rocky S, actress Rinkee Khanna, musician L. Subramanium, and Maruti Udyog‘s Japanese Director, J. Sugimori.