MUMBAI: Last week, the affable Prakash Javadekar was named as India's new Information and Broadcasting minister. The senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader occupying the hot seat at Shastri Bhawan is perhaps good news for India's media and entertainment industry. Apart from being a seasoned politician, Javadekar is also known as a consensus builder. There are several key decisions the ministry is likely to take going forward, a new national broadcast policy being the most notable among them. The ministry will also look to finalise the DTH policy and amend the Uplinking and Downlinking Guidelines. It will also find it hard to resist the temptation of venturing into formulating regulations for streaming services. How the dispensation under the new minister treads will greatly shape the future of India's M&E industry, which is at a critical juncture of growth. As Javadekar prepares to implement his vision for this vital ministry, here is what we at Indiantelevision.com feel should be some of his priorities.

MUMBAI: After launching its maiden web series ‘Thinkistan’ on MX player, production house Jigsaw Pictures has two more web shows in the pipeline. One show focuses on urban lifestyle and another is an India centric show with a series of short stories interconnected with each other.

The production house entered the OTT space with ‘Thinkistan’ and has an aggressive plan for the segment.

Jigsaw Pictures Founder and Creative Producer Rajnish Lall said, “Apart from going on with the commercials which is a different vertical, we will be aggressive on the OTT space. We are planning for two more web series, one is on based on urban set-up, largely urban demographic because it’s set in a bustling metro but it’s about friendship so it will appeal to all who’ve had very close friends in their lives. The other show will have a series of short stories which will be interconnected with each other, both the show has been shared with OTT platforms. We will also have a feature film which is an advanced stage of pre-production.”

MUMBAI: Public broadcaster Prasar Bharati has urged private direct to home (DTH) and multi system operators (MSOs) to unblock the live-stream of DD Sports.

Several complaints have been made by the viewers on Twitter that they are unable to watch the matches since their operators have blocked the channel.

MUMBAI: Motion Content Group, a division of GroupM and Banijay Asia, the 50:50 joint venture between world’s largest independent content creation company Banijay Group, and media veteran Deepak Dhar, have entered into a first of its kind partnership for the Indian market in order to create content for TV broadcasters and OTT platforms.

The partnership sees the coming together of two giants from their respective industries and will provide a win-win for content platforms across the small and digital screens.

MUMBAI: The much-awaited Parliament election results were declared on 23rd May, and the media platforms have seen one of their highest peaks in recent times. While all eyes were on TV/Digital media, the curiosity of the audience clearly built viewership across platforms.

Out of a total of 258.5 million TV viewing individuals between the 4 states in the south, 65% (167.3 million) audience have watched any news channel on 23rd May, an increase of 67% compared to a regular day. The total news viewership during the day increased by 416 % to 721 Mn Impressions, compared to the previous 8 weeks.

MUMBAI: Rainshine Entertainment, a newly formed media, and entertainment (M&E) investment company, is targetting three to six investments in the coming year. The company is looking to raise $50-75 million to invest in companies.

Earlier this year, the company which is laser-focused on scaling up its presence in the digital content creation space had announced its first three investments through significant stakes in production house Culture Machine, Weirdass Comedy, and Kinsane Entertainment.

Rainshine Entertainment COO Anuraag Srivastava said that the company is targetting three to six more investments in the coming year. He said that the company is looking to raise $50-75 million which will be deployed into buying stakes in companies.

MUMBAI: Cricket continues to dominate sports in India. That is a fact that would surprise nobody. But the latest study from BARC India about the game’s humongous popularity does reveal some startling numbers. The sport clocked 12.3 billion impressions (normalised at 30 mins) in 2018 in spite of the absence of international tournaments in the year. Women viewership, albeit lower than their counterparts, displayed signs of growth year-on-year. Women viewers are to the tune of 48 per cent of all cricket viewers, up from 295 million in 2016 to 342 million in 2018.

MUMBAI: The implementation of the new TRAI tariff order has gone about rather smoothly except for a few errant MSOs, here and there, who have caused a four to six per cent drop in the broadcast industry’s channel reach. Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (ZEEL) also was impacted and hopes to recover quickly in the coming months.

“As an industry, the reach drop has been about four-six per cent (point), different for different genres. For us, in the Hindi genre, we have seen slightly more than the industry drop. But we are confident that in the coming months we will recover this and therefore things should go back to normal,” he commented in an earnings call after Q4 results.

Television viewership measurement body BARC India reacting to the TDSAT ruling on landing page has maintained that any viewing arising out of channel placed on LP will also be reported in the weekly data – and any changes in viewership (whether peaks or troughs) arising out of LPs will reflect in the final output.

In an email interaction with BestMediaInfo.com, a BARC India spokesperson said that any action regarding placing non-watermarked content on landing page, or similar solutions has to come from, and implemented by broadcasters with the cooperation of DPOs.

Mumbai: Sunita Uchil has been elevated to the role of Executive Vice President of the new international co-production and co-development division at Zee Entertainment Enterprises (ZEE).

In the role, Uchil will launch and head the new division, working with major production companies around the world to co-create and produce both scripted and non-scripted programming. She will be based in Mumbai.