BENGALURU: More than two-thirds of the calendar year 2018 (CY 2018) is over. The major Indian festival season is just around the corner and the tempo of brands presenting themselves to television viewers can only go up.

MUMBAI: One Take Media (OTM), the media firm founded by former Videocon d2h CEO Anil Khera, has inked a content deal with leading multi system operator (MSO) and headend in the sky (HITS) platform IndusInd Media & Communications Limited (IMCL) to launch value added services (VAS).

MUMBAI: Regional media company The Mathrubhumi Printing and Publishing Co Ltd’s capital expenditure (Capex) levels are expected to decline to Rs 40-50 crore in fiscal 2019 from over Rs 100 crore incurred in fiscal 2018.

Between fiscals 2012 and 2017, the company undertook Capex of more than Rs 540 crore for modernising its printing facilities, such as installation of high-speed and better quality colour printing machines, enhancing its magazine printing capacity, and consolidating its operations.

MUMBAI: Direct to home (DTH) operator Dish TV has seen a sharp increase in its subscription collection due to recharges happening through digital platforms, Dish TV chairman and MD (CMD) Jawahar Goel has said.

Underlining the importance of technology in the company’s business, Goel said that the company will be harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) for marketing and predictive tools for churn management.

MUMBAI: ZEEL-owned second Hindi GEC &TV is planning to strengthen its weekend programming with more fiction shows. The idea is to offer variety in programming.

Currently, the channel airs a mix of non-fiction and fiction shows in weekend prime-time. The channel’s weekend programming features kids live singing show ‘Love Me India’ at 9 pm and fictional drama series ‘Laal Ishq’ at 10 pm.

MUMBAI: Viacom18 is making moves in the regional space. Its latest bet was to launch a movie channel for the Kannada market called Colors Kannada Cinema. The conglomerate has a Hindi movie channel called Rishtey Cineplex which broke even in two years. Similarly, the idea is to get the Kannada movie channel to break even within three years too.

BENGALURU: Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (Zeel) free to air (FTA) Hindi GECs Zee Anmol and flagship Zee TV were once again ranked second and third in Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC) weekly list of top 10 channels across genres for week 37 of 2018 (Saturday, 8 September 2018 to Friday, 14 September 2018).

MUMBAI: Colors Bangla and Jalsha Movies swapped their third and fourth positions in the Bengali space in the BARC data’s week 37. Big Ganga and Bhojpuri Cinema exchanged their first and second positions in the Bhojpuri segment. In the Kannada, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu market, no changes were observed. Flowers TV and Mazhavil Manorama swapped their second and third positions in the Malayalam segment.

MUMBAI: OTT business across the world is now in a high growth period. In the next five years, revenue from online TV episode and films will reach $129 billion, which is more than double of same recorded in last year. Back in 2017, it stood at $53 billion and in 2018 alone $16 billion will be added. Global OTT TV & Video Forecasts has found the data after surveying 18 countries.

Karan Bajaj has quit as Head of Discovery Communications India. 
JB Perrette, President and CEO of Discovery Network International, sent an official mail to the India team saying, “I want to let you know that Karan has decided to move on to pursue his own entrepreneurial ambitions. Karan has embodied many of our company’s guiding principles...purposeful as he passionately lead a bold wing to create a new type of purpose driven GE channel in India with Jeet; a creative dreamer who believed we could invest in a great team, one who could take our small kids channel from the lowest rankings to being a top three kids network; consumer obsessed by launching new digital products that focus on making our brands and content more relevant to India’s exploding digital consumers.”