India’s latest blackout: TV ads
Cheesy taglines, catchy tunes and cringingly overdramatic delivery make adverts an important part of Indian television – they’re a topic of conversation as often as the TV shows themselves.
But this week, to the delight of many, several broadcasters have cut ads on the back of a tax dispute. Continue reading »
Taiwan and China: a musical interlude
A televised singing contest from China’s Hunan province is the latest front in the fight between China and Taiwan.
Many Taiwanese TV stations, including some news stations, devoted hours last Friday night to broadcasting the final round of Hunanese show “I Am a Singer”. That has prompted Taiwanese regulators to begin investigating whether any station broke laws covering the broadcast of Chinese programming. Continue reading »
Carlos Slim takes the triple jump
Lots of long faces among Colombian media executives – and doubtless other Latin American media executives too – about Carlos Slim’s latest move.
Late last month, the Mexican telecoms tycoon snapped up exclusive Latin American broadcast rights for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics. In doing so, his telecoms company, América Movíl, has effectively cornered the market for sports content in a sports-crazy continent (bar Brazil, where media empire Globo bought the Olympic rights). Continue reading »
India: tricky time for men’s TV channel
It’s a strange time to be launching a men’s television channel in India, given the controversy over gender issues in the country and the outrage over several widely-publicised brutal rape cases.
But Anil Ambani’s Reliance Broadcast Network is going ahead anyway, teaming up with RTL Group, the European entertainment network, to launch Big RTL Thrill, a channel targetting Indian men aged between 15 and 44. Continue reading »
What’s the score? Star India wins battle over cricket rights
Cricket is a big deal in India, as is broadcasting the matches and score updates. But showing the action is one thing – what about reporting the score? Can that be protected?
Apparently so. Star India, Rupert Murdoch’s Asian flagship, has exclusive media rights to broadcast Indian international matches and has just won a case in Delhi’s High Court, banning others from providing live match updates. Continue reading »
HBO and Eros: where Bollywood meets Hollywood
Ads are something of an institution in Indian television. Visitors to the country often walk away bemused by the hours of screen time devoted to grannies tempting audiences with baked goods, or preened ladies offering skin-lightening cream.
But this is all about to change. Continue reading »
India’s Hinduja throws Belgian media group a lifeline
Will a Bollywood producer soon capture and broadcast the Olympic Games? It’s possible, as the Indian conglomerate Hinduja announced this week it’s in exclusive negotiations to buy Alfacam, a TV production company that specialises in filming major sport events.
This summer Alfacam was among those hired to film the London Olympic Games and the European Football Championships in Poland and Ukraine. But for a while it looked like that would the last tour de force of the struggling Belgian company. Continue reading »
Serbia’s film industry: take two
By Nicholas Watson of bne
Emerging Europe’s luring of film and television productions away from traditional US and west European locations has been one of the region’s success stories over the last two decades.
With one of eastern Europe’s newest film studios, Serbia is now competing head to head with the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania. But industry players say it needs help from the government in the form of incentives if it wants to attract more big foreign features. Continue reading »
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