In what will be a clutter-breaking format innovation on reality television, Zee TV in collaboration with Fathom Pictures will present audiences in early 2021 with the ‘Indian Pro Music League’ (IPML). While the world of sports has seen several league competitions, this first-of-its-kind music league will have six team mascots by the likes of Shraddha Kapoor, Riteish Deshmukh, Govinda, Rajkummar Rao, Bobby Deol and Suresh Raina, representing different regions of India. Each of these teams will have celebrated playback singers, one male and one female vocalist as their captains. To add to this pool of talent, the Bollywood music celebrities are in search of six fresh voices from various regions of the country, one for each team, who will get a chance to be a part of this league.

It has been over two months since BARC decided to suspend ratings for news TV. With no metric to go by, surprisingly, brands are still betting big on the genre. But the question is, what keeps them going?

In our quest to understand brand spends in this changed context, we spoke to news TV genre sponsors and other stakeholders to get a sense of how brands are continuing without ratings in place.

 

According to Meera Iyer, CMO, Medlife, most marketers with experience know that TV as a medium works best in building brands. That is not being questioned in this blackout says Iyer.

NEW DELHI: When it's a newsy year, it's bad for business, said Times Network MD and CEO MK Anand in a throwaway comment at the ninth edition of CII Big Picture Summit. All jokes aside, he can't deny the fact that the crises that popped up throughout the year benefited his news networks by reeling in more viewers.

“It was a fantastic opportunity, because we really had a period where we knew that the newsiness will be there for more than three to five days. This was also a period when the consumer behaviour changed drastically. They were not travelling and working from home and had more time to spend with family and watch media. Fortunately for the news space, we had the wherewithal and infrastructure to continue providing the fresh content on a continuous basis and in a period when people were interesting in knowing what was happening around,” shared Anand during a one-on-one session titled ‘Changing Face of News Media - Future of Indian News’, moderated by EY M&E lead Ashish Pherwani.  

Mumbai: The ongoing TRP Scam case has taken a dramatic turn with the arrest of Romil Ramgarhia, former COO of Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC).

According to Bar and Bench. Romil Ramgarhia has been arrested by the Mumbai Police today in connection of the TRP Scam case.

After his arrest, Ramgarhia was produced before a metropolitan magistrate court here, which remanded him in police custody till 19th December.

Police sought his custody saying they want to interrogate him in connection with the case and also need to retrieve electronic evidence from him.

The police official said, “During the probe, it came to light that Ramgarhia allegedly provided secret and confidential information to certain TV channels to help increase their TRP.”

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) will soon be coming up with the draft of National Broadcasting Policy, said Neerja Sekhar, Additional Secretary (Broadcasting) & CVO, MIB, at the 9th CII Big Picture Summit. 

Sekhar said, “The consultations on the National Broadcasting Policy were held by stakeholders sometime back and we have been putting the various parts together and the emerging issues as well. We are getting close to coming up with the draft version of National Broadcasting Policy.”

 

In 2019, Amit Khare, Secretary at MIB, had in an industry event said that the National Broadcasting Policy Regulation was being drafted in collaboration with stakeholders to address issues that are challenging the sector, and with the aim of promoting more self-regulation and less of government regulation.  

On the 49th week of COTT, MX player continued to be on the top. In the 48th week MX video player had 37.76 Million unique viewers translating to a reach of 6.58% and on this week, it has come down to 35.50 million viewers translating to a reach of 6.19%. still MX player has managed to be on the Top among all OTT platforms. The second place is taken by Sony live App with 4.72 % whereas the third place is taken by VOOT by 4.28%, followed by ZEE5 and Disney+Hotstar.

National Geographic India has bagged Asia’s Best Infotainment Programme in 2020 for its made-from-home documentary ‘Lockdown: India Fights Coronavirus’ at the prestigious Asian Academy Creative Awards, held recently in Singapore.

Competing against the best of films from Hong Kong, Philippines, Thailand and Taiwan, the official entry from India won the award that recognises the best of the best works in content creation and media production from Asian countries.

With ‘Lockdown: India Fight Coronavirus,’ National Geographic India took its authentic and immersive storytelling style a notch higher and stood in solidarity to salute the brave-hearts by capturing their unique and inspiring stories. Directed without a single member of the crew stepping out of their houses, the team stitched together self-shot sequences and archival footage from the protagonists themselves to showcase an unseen and moving narrative of their daily battles.  From the first line of defence to the unsung heroes, the documentary brought to life the pandemic from the eyes of India’s frontline soldiers and attempted to paint a complete picture as various Government and non-government agencies came together to fight this deadly virus.

Anjan Bandopadhyay has joined Zee 24 Ghanta as Editor. A news veteran of 33 years, he will preside over the input and output of all content of the channel along with its digital properties and drive its growth.

Before this role, he was with TV9 from ABP digital as the Editor to help launch the channel in Bengal.

Bandopadhyay was earlier also associated with Zee 24 Ghanta from 2006 to 2015 as Editor Input. 

On his comeback, Bandopadhyay said, “It’s always good to come back to the channel where you have spent many years in establishing. Now Zee 24 Ghanta by its own merit drives the viewership in the market. I will ensure that all my experience and learning further strengthens its position in the Bengal news genre.”

Republic Media Network CEO Vikas Khanchandani was granted bail by a Mumbai court on Wednesday. The development comes a day after he was remanded to 14 days judicial custody, after spending 2 days in police custody following his arrest in the fake TRP scam by the Mumbai police crime branch on Sunday morning.

Even though his anticipatory bail plea was scheduled to be heard on Monday, Khanchandani was arrested from his residence at 8.30 am on December 13 in connection with the fake TRP scam. This came days after Republic Media Network's Assistant Vice President Ghanshyam Singh was released on bail post spending 26 days in custody. After being produced in the Mumbai Metropolitan Magistrate court, the police sought his custody for 14 days. However, the court remanded the Republic CEO to police custody till December 15, and upon its completion, the court sent him to 14 days judicial custody following which he was lodged at Taloja.

With Uday Shankar moving on as President, The Walt Disney Company APAC and Chairman Star & Disney India at the end of this month, Rebecca Campbel, Chairman, International Operations and Direct-to-Consumer, The Walt Disney Company, announced today that the company will now have separate heads for APAC and India.

In an internal communication to the staff, Campbel said that a leader for the company’s India business will be named in early 2021. “In the interim, K Madhavan, Head of Star and Sunil Ryan, Head of Disney+ Hotstar India will report to me,” she wrote.