Advertising Age, the leading global source of information for the marketing, advertising and media industries, and exchange4media group have announced a content partnership for India on February 18, 2009.
The Indian media and entertainment industry stood at Rs 584 billion in 2008, a growth of 12.4 per cent over the previous year. Over the next five years, the industry is projected to grow at a CAGR of 12.5 per cent to reach the size of Rs 1,052 billion by 2013, says a FICCI & KPMG report on the sector release on the first day of FICCI Frames 2009 that got underway in Mumbai on February 17.
The new format of Yuva, the youth-centric magazine from E-sense Entertainment Pvt Ltd, is set to be officially launched on April 15. The fortnightly magazine is targeted at the youth in the 18-30 age group. The magazine will have a pan-India presence and would be priced at around Rs 25-30.
Niche magazines are adopting various initiatives to stand out in newsstands, which include innovative ad concepts. Be it Femina carrying a comb in a new ad campaign for Dove or Pioneer Book Company introducing an audio chip that plays ad jingles in an ad for their magazine ‘Meri Saheli’, the idea is to stand out.
Southern Spice Music (SS Music), a Chennai-based 24x7 multi-lingual music channel, is all geared to strengthen its presence in the southern market as it completes eight years of operation in April 2009. The channel has recently roped in John Alan Fernandez back on board as Programming Head.
The Indian Premier League (IPL) was the single biggest television property last year, and in the initial process of the second season this year, many had said that IPL almost appeared slowdown-proof. Multi Screen Media’s CEO Kunal Dasgupta, however, says that not only is IPL facing a situation where sponsors are not “interested” in the property, but there is uncertainty on whether or not the IPL would be on a Multi Screen Media channel at all, following the latest compensation issue between BCCI and MSM.
Neil Stewart has been appointed Chief Executive of Maxus Asia Pacific, effective immediately. The announcement was made by Kelly Clark, worldwide CEO of Maxus. Stewart is currently Marketing Director for Motorola’s Mobile Devices division in Asia. He will assume his new responsibilities from February 23, 2009.
Media now feeds off rumour and stories passed on by pressure groups. Industrial waste has been increasingly recycled into pink waste, laments veteran journalist Sandeep Bamzai, stressing that one needs to take a call and put an end to this bazaar of speculation. If 26/11 was a watershed in telly reporting, then the vote on account bellicosity was yet another sad benchmark for the print journos.
If one thought that the Indian media and entertainment industry is going through a bad patch, the FICCI Frames 2009 forum was all about ‘just how bad’ it is. Experts from the industry were not only candid in stating that this was one of the worst recessions to have hit the global economy, but they also discussed implications and steps to brave the year ahead.