Keeping in line with its runaway success in The Indian Telly Awards 2001, Star has pocketed 24 awards - seven gold, 13 silvers and seven bronze - at this years‘ PROMAX and Broadcast Designers‘ Association (BDA) Awards in Miami in the US.
Nearly 9,000 entries from across the globe vied for top promotion, marketing and design glories from more than 100 judges at the annual awards. The majority of the award-winning works were from Channel [V].

"These awards speak of the breadth and depth of our dedicated on-air and off-air creative teams. They continue to set the standards for the Asian television industry. We are proud of their achievements," Bruce Churchill, president and chief operating officer of STAR said in the company release.

PROMAX and BDA are international associations of broadcast design and marketing professionals. They offer the world‘s premier educational conferences for promotions, marketing and design executives in electronic media. The two organisations are non-profit associations owned by their members.

PROMAX award winners

BDA award winners

News Corp company, NDS Group, a provider of conditional access systems and interactive applications for digital TV, has hired former Star India internet operations CEO, Lalit Ahuja, as Managing Director NDS India, to head up its new research and development center based in Bangalore.
Ahuja has more than 20 years of engineering software and commercial experience and his charge will be focusing on developing interactive TV applications and broadband technologies in conjunction with NDS R & D centers in Israel, China and the UK. He will also have to develop the India operations as a global hub for NDS R&D. In addition he will also develop markets for NDS‘s interactive applications, working closely with NDS sales and marketing executives to develop and implement the strategic business initiatives for expanding regional markets.

Ahuja will report to Dr Jasjit Saini, Vice President, Consumer Devices, NDS Group plc. Says Saini: "As NDS continues to drive the development and adoption of interactive television across the world it is critical that it maintains its lead in the field of R & D. Lalit Ahuja‘s tremendous experience in software development and his extensive business acumen makes him an ideal executive to help us maintain this lead."

Ahuja has worked as Country Head (India), president and managing director of LG Soft India. Prior to that he was with software firm Datamatics. He started his career in the Indian Navy retiring as a Lieutenant Commander.

National pubcaster Doordarshan finally launched its online portal yesterday in Delhi after nearly six months of dilly-dallying about the launch date. A joint initiative between DD and Satyam Infoway, http://www.ddinews.com contains national and international news, which is updated round-the-clock.

Earlier the web portal was scheduled to be launched in beginning of year 2001, a plan which was postponed due to the torrid times in the dot com world.

http://www.ddinews.com, at launch, is not fully functional. Nor is it very different from other horizontal portals. A surf through the site revealed that at least four five links either led to a dead end, or led to the same page from which a click through was being attempted on a link. For example, the link leading to information about Doordarshan, did not open at all. While trying to access the convergence section, clicking on a link still lead to national and international news. The video on demand service did not seem to be fully operational, and DD officials have mentioned that the launch date for it is sometime away. Even the TV Guide was not working when http://www.indiantelevision.com journos tried to access it. It appears as though DD and Sify officials were pushed into launching it prematurely. What the pressures were they only know.

However, despite that the site appears to be well-designed. The index page has a marquee (a scroll) just below the logo running the latest news across the page. Click on the marquee and a specific news item will open up in detail.

The DD‘s foray into the web came on the heels of the recommendations of the Shunu Sen Committee report which advised that DD needed to get into the latest technology without any further delay.

About Rs 25 million has been invested into building up the site. Doordarshan also has other plans to launch similar websites for Doordarshan Sports and DD World channels.