The Advertising Club Bombay unleashed on 31 March, the Abby 2000 awards for excellence in creative advertising which attracted 4,109 entries. Oglivy & Mather (O&M) swept the awards ceremony with 48 points.

It walked away with 32 gold and silver Abbies, including the Campaign of the Century for its advertising work on spreading the chocolate eating habit amongst Indian adults for Cadbury. No other agency came even near the halfway mark of O&M‘s tally but those that put up some sort of fight include Contract Advertising (14 points) and Mudra Communications (seven points).

O&M and Enterprise Nexus bagged Gold Abbies for Castrol Scootex 2T and The Times of India (One man‘s burden) campaigns respectively in the ‘Consumer Products‘ section of the Cinema/TV category. The Silver Abby in the same category was awarded to O&M and HTA for Pond‘s Blackhead Removal Strips (Lady Bug) and Pepsi (Yeh Dil Mange More) campaigns respectively.

The classic movie channel, TNT, has been rechristened asTCM or Turner Classic Movies from 2 April.
The channel owned by the Turner Entertainment Networks Asia Inc, has been renamed to create a seperate identity for itself and to distinguish itself from the Cartoon Network and TNT brand both of which were spoken in the same breath.

The channel will now have a fresh treat for its viewers and show at least 40 new classics which have never been telecast in the Asia Pacific region.

Channel Nine chief Kerry Packer had a very busy India visit last week. He announced that he was very firm on making India his numero uno investment place following Australia. India has more advantage than his motherland due to the population which stands at almost a billion as compared to Australia‘s 20 million, he pointed out. India is also known for "brains" and is an emerging superpower in IT, telecom and media sectors. Being kicked by the convergence wave, Packer has lined up interesting investments in India. He has picked up a stake in telecom company Himachal Futuristic Communications Limited (HFCL) at a cost of Rs 11,000 million. On 27 March 2000, he joined hands with the blazing broker Ketan Parekh and HFCL chief Vinay Maloo to set up a Rs 11 billion venture capital fund - KVP Ventures. He has already invested close to Rs 700 million in four Indian software and dotcoms ventures. These include the cricket portal cricketnext.com, Omega Portals Ltd‘s children portal mykindasite.com, Hexaware Technologies and Chennai based Radiant Software.

Packer is closely observing the Broadcasting regulations which do not allow majority stake of foreign players in Indian media companies. He is likely to pick up small stakes in media and entertainment companies thus staying in tune with the government policies. Talks were already on to introduce a sports channel in India and the Aussie tycoon met up with the Sahara Group boss Subroto Roy. The group recently launched a general entertainment channel in India. The sports channel will be directly pitched against ESPN and Star Sports.

What is to be seen is whether Packer succeeds in India which has a presence of giants like Subhash Chandra and his arch rival Murdoch who‘s recent India visit unleashed his new ambitions for this region. It will be a wait and watch scenario in which the general consumer will more or less benefit.

Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh has invited the entertainment industry to come up with suggestions to help develop Maharashtra as a bigger player in the entertainment industry. While speaking at the FICCI seminar in Mumbai yesterday, Deshmukh said he would like suggestions from captains of industry to take his state forward.
"This region should be developed as a satellite hub," he pointed out. "I see earth stations coming up to make this as a centre of activity for television."

He added that his government was going to come up with a package to allow for the setting up of cinema multiplexes in the state. "We are examining what the other states are doing on this front. Top of our minds is making the sector viable."

He added that his government was working on setting up a new training institute for film and television in the state.

Indian information and broadcasting minister Arun Jaitley issued a stern warning to TV channels which are banking on nudity and semi-nudity or provocative programming to attract audiences and generate viewership.

"People have protested about how some organisations are taking advantage of liberal norms in India. Why should you have a stripper in a airconditioner ad which was shown recently on television? Why should a condom commercial be so erotic and put on television for all to see," he asked. "If fashion is to be marketed in terms of transparent clothing, and every decency violated on TV screens, I don‘t know if we can allow that. The cable and satellite industry has to morally police itself. Also advertisers. There are issues which affect our sensibilities. I don‘t think Indian society is prepared for this. We want a liberal regime. Hard censorship is abhorrent to any democracy. But if industry is not interested then we may have to step in."

Jaitley was speaking while addressing a gathering organised by FICCI on what Indian entertainment should be doing to ensure rapid growth in the new millennium on 30 March.

He responded icicly: "The industry has absolutely no responsibility does it? TV censorship in India is not in the form of pre-censorship. It is like the green channel in the Customs where the onus is on you to declare honestly. But if we allow some channels which are not comlying honestly than five others will get in and take advantage of our liberal attitude. "

Going by Jaitley‘s statements it is quite likely that the government may shortly come out with a ban against the Michael Adam promoted Fashion Television, which is generating high viewerships in India mainly because of scantily clad models. Jaitley had banned Russian channel TB6 last year because it showed pornographic films and had ordered Indian cable networks to stop carrying it on their networks. Most Indian cable TV operators have complied since.

The Ficci‘s International Conference on The Business of Entertainment ended today with a concluding speech by Tapan Sikdar, the Minister of Communications.
Earlier in the day, discussions were held on the content aspect of the entertainment industry. The session was headed by the noted film maker Shyam Benegal. The next session covered the film production and marketing, and the international status and presence of Indian films abroad. The internationally acclaimed director and the maker of the Oscar winning film "Elizabeth" spoke about issues involved about Indian films in the international market. Before this Harish Thawani, chief of Nimbus Communications projected his views about the television and film sector. He displayed his views about importance of synergy between the television and the film industry. The session enlightened the audience about the need of marketing of Indian films and globalising the industry.

The post lunch session was about the music industry in India. It covered issues from piracy, internet, IPR, radio and the general scenario of music industry in India. The concluding session was about convergence and the regulatory framework to enable it in India. The session was headed by the Nasscom chief Dewang Mehta and the panel of speakers included Sony Entertainment Television chief Kunal Dasgupta, MTV India chief Alex Kuruvilla, MD Modi Entertainment Network MD Ajay Nijawhan and UTV head Ronnie Screwvala. The session demanded a clear and comprehensive regulatory policy for the success of convergence in India which is a entertainment software heaven.

The effort by the Ficci was quite admirable as it enlightened quite a few and brought the whole entertainment industry together.