Aaj Tak was awarded the prestigious Indian Television Academy Award for Best Hindi News Channel at a glittering function in Mumbai. This is the ninth year in a row that Aaj Tak has achieved this feat. In fact, Aaj Tak has won a total of 20 Best News Channel awards since inception.
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and the Government of India has signed a Grant of Permission Agreement for establishing, maintaining and operating a community radio station at Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agriculture University in Hissar, Haryana. A Letter of Intent had been issued to the Institute after recommendations of Inter Ministerial Committee and seeking requisite clearances from various Ministries.
Coca-Cola in India has announced the launch of its globally premium energy drink brand ‘Burn’. As part of the phased roll-out, Burn will initially be made available at select premium channels and outlets in three key cities of Delhi & NCR, Mumbai and Bangalore.
Lowe Lintas has announced its foray into film production with the launch of Lintas Productions. Lintas Productions will offer feature film and television productions, content creation and talent management of the highest quality. Tarun Chauhan, Executive Director of Lowe Lintas, will be responsible for heading the unit, while Krishna Kotian will be the Business Head.
Worldwide Media Group has appointed Mudra West to handle the creative mandate for it’s newly launched monthly travel magazine ‘Lonely Planet’. This win comes close on the heels of Mudra West bagging the Filmfare business less than a fortnight ago.
TV guide channel ‘What’s On India’ is set for an all India launch. Currently, it is available to all Hathway users, but in next few days will go live on various DTH and cable channels as well. The TV guide channel is aiming to further integrate the TV guide channel to mobile, online and social networks.
The Government has come in for a lot of flak from television and radio broadcasters over the proposed amendment to the Copyright Act of 1957. What has irked the broadcasters even more is that they were consulted even once by either the HRD Ministry or the MIB before proposing the amendments. exchange4media spoke to a cross-section of TV and radio broadcasters as well as government officials to gauge the industry reaction to the amendment and the implications.
“While free newspapers are still available and are very valuable, can we imagine quality journalism without print newspapers?” this question was posed by Xavier Vidal-Folch, Deputy Editor, El Pais, Spain, as he sought to get the panellists to air their views on where print as a medium was heading. The session on ‘The future of journalism versus the future of newspapers’ had Jaideep Bose, Paul Johnson, Mahfuz Anam, and Martim Figueiredo, among its panellists.
To commemorate the exemplary work done by journalists who defy every odd in the book to put forth a defining picture of truth, WAN-IFRA presented the 2009 Golden Pen of Freedom Award to Najam Sethi, Editor-in-Chief, Friday Times and Daily Times, Pakistan. Speaking on the occasion, Sethi called upon the editors of today to essay a diverse role and become managers rather than remain plain journalists.
In the wake of a multi-agency pitch, OMD India has added the media mandate for Danone to its client portfolio. Danone, that has brands such as Evian, Activia, Actimel and Volvic, among others, is foraying into the Indian market. Sources close to the development have confirmed the win and said that the account size would be in the vicinity of Rs 12-15 crore.
The formal opening ceremony of the 62nd World Newspaper Congress and the 16th World Editors Forum (WEF) and Info Services Expo 2009 was held in Hyderabad on December 1, 2009 in the presence of President of India Pratibha Devi Singh Patil at the HICC Convention Centre. Also on the occasion, Najam Sethi, Editor-in-Chief, Friday Times and Daily Times, Pakistan, was presented with the Golden Pen Award.
Cequity, part of the RK Swamy-Hansa Group and one of the leading providers of data-led marketing services from India, has appointed Anand Siva as its Business Head to steer its newly set up unit of Customer Integrated Marketing (CIM). The new unit will focus on direct relationship and one-to-one multi-channel marketing.
Times Audience Network (TAN), the digital video arm of the Times Group, on December 1, 2009, announced the launch of the live stream for Times Now, India TV and Zoom. Web users can now watch the television feed of India’s leading English, Hindi and entertainment news channels on Live.Indiatimes.com.
UTV Motion Pictures has signed a series of non-exclusive television rights syndication deals amounting to Rs 95 crore. The deals are across their slate of 2008 and 2009 productions. As part of the deal, Colors will telecast the premiere run of these movies in India, followed by NDTV Imagine. These channels will have the right to telecast a fixed number of runs of each movie.
It is over a year now since 26/11 happened and a year later, the news channels haven’t seemed to learn much about giving coverage to such events, observes veteran journalist Sandeep Bamzai. He is confident that as in the past, India will overcome 26/11 as well and will be better and smarter at fighting terror.
After the combined introductory session on ‘World Trends in Newspaper Industry’ by Timothy Balding, Co-CEO, WAN-INFRA, the first maiden session of the 62nd World Newspaper Congress – ‘Newspapers: A Multi-Media, Growth Business’ – extended the view of the threat of digital evolution for the print industry. Eamonn Byrne chaired the session, while the panellists included Les Hilton, Andreas Wiele, and Paul Jansen.
Timothy Balding, Co-CEO, WAN-IFRA, highlighted several global trends in his presentation ‘World Trends in the Newspaper Industry’ at the 62nd World Newspaper Congress and 16th World Editors Forum in Hyderabad. He maintained that despite the problems of falling advertising revenues and pressure from new competitors, the global newspaper industry was far from facing an ‘apocalypse’.