STAR Picks Up Majority Stake In Asianet; Chandrasekhar Eyes News Channel, Newspaper Buys

News Corp owned STAR TV is forming a joint venture with Rajeev Chandrasekhars Jupiter Entertainment Ventures - STAR Jupiter Entertainment Television. STAR Jupiter will be a majority shareholder in Asiannet communications, reports News Corp owned Dow Jones Newswire. STAR will hold at least 51 percent in the venture, and STAR CEO Uday Shankar has told Indiantelevision.com that the news business will not be a part of the portfolio, since only 26% FDI is allowed in the News business. Murdoch wants to enter the news business - but is now interested only in businesses where News Corp will be a majority stakeholder. Asianet has been restructured into four companies - general entertainment, news, radio and media infrastructure, and it appears that STAR Jupiter will be involved only with the General Entertainment business to begin with.

The STAR-Jupiter deal had been reported by the Economic Times in August, around the time when Rupert Murdoch had visited India. One sensed that the deal had been done, when it was reported a few days ago that Asianet was looking to buy an English news channel, and a vernacular paper. During his visit to India, Murdoch had expressed an interest in the regional television space in India, saying that STAR will invest $100 million, and set up 6 channels.

Pyramid Saimira Owned Spize TV Buys South Asian Content Focused DTH Co WorldTV Europe

Spize TV, the DTH company owned by the Pyramid Saimira group, has acquired WorldTV Europe, the European operations of GlobeCast World TV. Globecast is owned by France Telecom, and also has operations in USA. Spize TV, in which Pyramid Saimira has 51 percent stake, runs a DTH network called RootsGlobal. Group Chairman PS Saminathan has told the Economic Times that they’ll be investing $15 million in the short term to integrate the operations of Spize TV and WorldTV Europe, and invest $50 million in the European operations over the next 2-3 years. Spize is targeting a total subscriber base of 30,000.

WorldTV was launched in 2007 with a South Asia focus - with a channel bouquet that included Sony Entertainment TV Asia, Star Plus, Star One, Max, Star Gold and Filmy, and the services were priced at EUR 299 per year. Since then, they have since expanded their channel bouquet to include Aaj Tak, Sahara One, NDTV 24×7, and Pakistani channels PTV and Geo News. That’s still a fairly limited list of channels.

Saimira and Spize really needs to be careful here - the South Asian piece has been attempted before, at least on the Internet, by a rather adventurous Jump TV, which then decided to focus primarily on the Sports TV business; perhaps the regional content business didn’t find many takers. However, the DTH business is different from the online TV business (wouldn’t you rather watch content on television?) so it’s perhaps not right to compare the two.

Related:
– Pyramid Saimira Winds Up Film Distribution In India; Defers Reel Acquisition
– Services On Airtel DTH: Indiatimes Shopping, MakeMyTrip, WorldSpace, MapUnity, AskLaila, StarsTell
– IPTV Gets The Government Nod; DTH, Cable FDI May Be Increased
– Reliance Launches BIG TV DTH; What About IPTV?
– Matrimonial Sites Ink DTH Deals - Shaadi-DishTV, Bharatmatrimony-Tata Sky

NDTV Q2-09 Revenues At Rs. 128 Crores; NDTV Convergence FY08 Loss At Rs. 5.5 Crores

NDTV Ltd has reported revenues of Rs. 128 crores for the quarter ending September 30th 2008 (Q2-09), up 65 percent, from Rs. 77.5 crores for the same quarter last year. The group has reported a net loss (consolidated) of 119 crores, with a standalone loss of 13 crores for NDTV Ltd. According to the release, NDTV Imagine Films, the groups films company, is in the process of developing and producing scripts. According to NDTV, NBC Universal is a potential partner for this venture. There’s synergy with NDTV Showbiz - a Bollywood focused channel that the company launched in August.

Most importantly, NDTV has, as reported earlier, has decided to separate its business into News and Entertainment, which will free up the Entertainment (and indeed the Digital Media business NDTV Convergence) for further investment.

Download the Q2 financials here.

NDTV Convergence
My quarterly requests to NDTV for more inputs on Convergence have been turned down. In this earnings release, NDTV has mentioned that pageviews for Convergence in the last quarter are up, and they’re exploring tie-ups to expand its range of services. One tie-up was announced yesterday, and another tie-up, with Career Builder India for jobs, was reported by WATBlog. Going through NDTV’s Annual Report, we were pleasantly surprised to find details of their financials:

By itself, NDTV Convergence reported a rather low turnover of Rs. 4.9 crores, and a net loss of Rs. 5.5 crores for the full year ending 31st March 2008. For three quarters of the last fiscal, NDTV Convergence sales were being handled by NDTV Media, and probably being bundled along with TV inventory as an add-on. NDTV Media also handles ad sales for MSN’s Desktop TV in India.

That would probably explain why, in January this year, NDTV Convergence took over selling their own inventory separately. MediaNama contacted Sanjay Trehan, CEO of NDTV Convergence for updates on how the first two quarters of this fiscal year have been, but he declined to comment on the financials. In the past, whenever I’ve contacted NDTV Ltd for comments on Convergence financials, they’ve declined to comment.

Download the NDTV Ltd Annual report here. Convergence results are on page 76.

Related:
- NDTV Board Approves Demerger Of News, Non-News Businesses
-Ixigo Powers NDTVtravels.com; Aloke Bajpai On Monetization & OTA Relationships
-Jaman Gets NDTV Lumiere Content; Launches Ad-Supported Streaming
-NDTV Active Gets Mobile Games From Hovr

BK Modi To Invest $1 Billion In Media & Ent Via Spice Enfotainment; Gaming Co Buy

Many a headline making statement from BK Modi in this interview with Mint, which gives you the big picture of the billionaires investment plans. Modi, who had sold his stake in Spice Communications to Idea Cellular reportedly for over $450 Million, now plans to invest $1 billion in the media and entertainment business through Spice Enfotainment. And, he is singing a digital tune. Some key points:

– Gaming Acquisition: Modi is looking to acquire “a big gaming company” from the Israel to Indonesia region. Any guesses?
– The MSM deal has not been completed. Despite several reports to the contrary in May, it appears that BK Modi has not closed the 32% stake buyout in MultiScreen Media. He says they’re in talks with Sony on the films side, and may come in as a financial investor in SET. So the deal is still in the balance.
– M Films: Modi’s launching a film production company called M Films, which will invest $200 million to produce 5 films in the next 3 years
– Cellebrum back on track? Apparently. Modi says that Cellebrum has filed its IPO prosectus again, after SEBI had pointed out issues with it earlier. It was a topic much debated at MediaNama.

Key themes from the interview:

– This Is The Time To Buy: companies in the media and entertainment space, which requires significant investment in content production and distribution, are either hard up for investment, close to bankruptcy, or looking to sell out. The funds that were backing them earlier have dried up. So if someone like Modi has the money, this is the time to pick up stake at lower valuations. A case in point is Lehman Bros backed California based Culver Studios in California, which Modi can now buy from the liquidator. He says that ” at least six companies that are talking to us.” What’s interesting is that he’s not looking at majority control, but to be the single largest shareholder, and have board control.

– Cross Media and Digital: Modi is looking to set up or acquire companies that will create digital content which can be repurposed across platforms for monetization. So he is eying the film and TV production business, and looking to buy gaming and music companies. Then there is the distribution element, where Cellebrum fits in on the mobile, and on TV - the TV channels he will have a stake in. What’s missing is the mobile operator play, which he exited. Appears to be on the lines of Anil Ambani’s plans for media and entertainment domination.

I wonder what Modi’s plans are for the Internet space. Do read the entire interview, which touches upon many other Media and Entertainment topics.

Related:
– “Is the Cellebrum IPO still on?” Apparently Not
– Virgin Comics Reincarnated As Liquid Comics; Thoughts On Cross-Media Content
– Reliance ADA Group Inks BIG $1.2 Billion Dreamworks Deal
- Sony Entertainment Television Sells 32 Pc Stake To BK Modi For $320 Million

MyTime To Get Two IPTV Specific Channels - ISKON & IGNOU

TIME Broadband will be launching two on-demand IPTV specific channels - one devotional channel from the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKON), and an educational channel from the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), reports Mint. Consumers will have to pay over and above the monthly subscription charges that they pay for IPTV.

But really, what’s the point? Is this what India wants “On Demand”? The first thing a user would probably ask, when choosing between DTH and IPTV, is whether the regular bouquet of channels is available or not. So does My Time have channels like STAR Plus, Aaj Tak, STAR World, Zee TV, SET, ESPN, STAR Sports, Times Now, CNN-IBN, CNBC-TV18 and others. Take a look around Time Broadband’s websites - both this and this - and you really can’t tell. And Time Broadbandband is targeting 1 million subscribers in 1 year. Am rather surprised that Mint didn’t ask about how they intend to achieve this magical number.

Really makes me wonder what IPTV service providers are upto. TIME Broadband, IOL Netcom and Smart Broadband have all made announcements over the past year, but we really haven’t seen anything, in terms of numbers, from them. The only numbers we have, are from BSE listed IOL Netcom, which reported a net loss of Rs. 9.68 crores last quarter, with revenues of Rs. 3.04 crores.

Related:
– India’s IPTV Guidelines: VAS, New Channels Require Govt Approval
– IPTV Finally Gets The Govt Nod In India; The Journey So Far
– Smart Broadband To Launch IPTV Services With HFCL And MTNL; An HFCL Group Company?

LiveJournal Goes The YouTube Way In India; Hosts Zoom’s Bollywood Club

BCCL Owned TV Channel Zoom TV will be hosting their Bollywood Club community at LiveJournal (LJ); this is the first such “Partner Community” for LiveJournal. Bollywood Club is essentially a talent show on TV, featuring a talent pool of actors, singers, writers, lyricists etc.

What’s interesting is that the same content is available on both Zoom’s site, as well as the LiveJournal community.

Sameer Pitalwalla, Head of Digital at Zoom TV told MediaNama that LJ is hosting the community for ZoomTV for free. Why isn’t Zoom hosting the community themselves? Says Pitalwalla: “the (Zoom) website is where people come to read and view Zooms content- it is top-down. We don’t have a platform ego. If there any way of monetizing a community for us? No! Are into banner ad sales? No! Our sales team doesn’t go around selling banners for the website. We partner with Ad Networks for that.”

Zoom is bunding the LiveJournal community as a part of the advertising offering to Idea, and LiveJournal will be promoting the community on its platform. So that’s what they’re getting out of it. Pitalwala wouldn’t comment on whether LiveJournal paid Zoom for the community. Zoom also hasn’t given a commitment for promoting the community on TV, but it will be providing some support via their Audience Network.

In an emailed response to MediaNama, Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, Director of Corporate Development, SUP said that the content on Zoom’s site does not have commenting or social functionality, while LJ does. They believe their users will use the socialisation features. He says that given that LJ is just starting in India, it is important for them to work with new partners and develop new areas of expertise.

The deal with Zoom is a pure marketing relationship, similar to that which Google runs with partners through YouTube. On who has the rights to serve ads on the BollywoodClub Community, Wegg-Prosser said that they’re not monetizing the community at the moment. When they do, they’ll discuss it with Zoom. “In some cases we do rev share and in other cases we do not, it all depends on the deal.”

Digital Media Stocks Hit; Markets Tank After Lehman Bankruptcy

The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America was the unfortunate highlight of a global market meltdown today, as the Sensex ended the day down 469 points at 13531, and the Nifty down 155 points at 4072. This was, however, something of a recovery from the days lows.

A quick look at how some of the companies we cover fared today: