Its veejays have also become uninspiring and unattractive, the survey showed. MTV, clearly, has its pulse on what audiences want. Attracting advertisers to Channel V is also not proving as easy as before, a member of the ad-sales team admits.

The buzz in the region is that Sony Music is pretty upset with how things are panning out at Channel V and is planning to launch its own music channel. Then Channel V's Asia-wide head Don Ateyo is moving out of the management and heading for retirement. India head Jules Fuller is, however, staying on. "We have noidea how long other talented professionals will stay on over here," says an insider. "Our productions have gone from good to bad to worse to absolutely terrible. Unless there is a shakeup on the programming front, things are likely to get tougher." Is Fuller listening?Incense stick of a different kind

An incense stick is an incense stick, right? No, say two young entrepreneurs from Mumbai. Teenagers Anand and Vishal Gurnani believe that there is a lot more to agarbathis than meets the eye. The two run a firm called Anand Sugandhalay and have introduced a range of agarbathis which revolve around certain religious beliefs and festivals. For starters, consider their product Shani Bhakti which they launched recently. Priced at Rs 10 for a pack of 30 sticks with a special fragrance, the product is targeted at people who are devotees of Lord Hanuman and others who are plagued by the influence of the planet Saturn on their moon sign (called saadde-satti). Says Anand, "While otherfirms offer a similar product, where we differ is in the fragrance we use and the verse from the Hanuman Chaaleesa that we have printed on the back of the agarbathi box. To the best of my knowledge nobody else does this to date." Shani Bhakti will be available in Maharashtra through grocery stores. Vishal points out that the two will be introducing incense sticks sub-branded Jai Mata Di (targeted at followers of Mata), Ganesh Mahima (targeted at devotees of Lord Ganesh) and Sai Kripa (targeted at people who do a lot of worship during the pre-monsoon season. "Each of these packages will have a verse of a prayer or bhakti geet on the packet," he says. "This will prove very convenient for worshippers and they will pres erve our agarbathi boxes."

He adds that the agarbathi market in the country is very huge and there exists a tremendous potential and he is part of the new generation of entrepreneurs who want to market agarbathis like consumer products."There are a few good brands like Three-in-One, Heritage and Denim in the market place. We want to consistently measure up to them in terms of product quality. But we want to bring innovative concepts to marketing agarbathis," says Anand. With a market that's close to Rs 750 crore in sales annually, who would fault the two brothers for trying.

Japanese firms' DTH blues

This is for all those in government and the cable TV business who believe that direct-to-home television (DTH) will hurt their interests. In even a well-developed and affluent country like Japan, DTH has managed to attract less than a million subscribers in a year. One of the players in the market Sky PerfecTV which offers a 171-channel service has managed to sign on less than 700,000 subscribers. DirecTV Japan, the other DTH player last week, reported its first set of subscriber numbers which showed that it had signed on 109,000 subscribers to its 88 channel service since it launched in December 1997. DirecTV chairmanGarethChang was quoted in Advertising Age as saying that the company has had a tough time figuring out the Japanese market but nevertheless hopes to sign on 800,000 subscribers to its service by the year-end.

The company needs 20 lakh subscribers before it can start churning out operating profits. One option being considered is placing ads on some of its channels. The company has spent millions of dollars on promotions and advertising of DirecTV's service.

The writer can be reached at wanvari@giasbm01.vsnl.net.in or television@hotmail.com