Addressing a press conference, TV 18 executive director Sanjay Ray Chaudhuri said that the company, in addition, would be increasing its total programme content from 90 minutes a day to 12 hours a day. The company has exclusive rights to provide CNBC with up to 12 hours of local Indian programming from Monday to Friday.

The company is currently having its distribution done through Star network, but hopes to set up its own distribution infrastructure. TV 18 hopes to extend its programming to regional languages in course of time which will either be sold to CNBC or to other existing channels.

On the convergence front, the company is hoping to cash in on the popularity of its programme bazaar where online stock market quotes are being given on television for select hours of the day. This will be extended through the day till the market closes. It is planning to build a portal to enable subscribers transact share trading businesses online. The facility will also enable queries posed on the net being answered live on a bazaar show on TV.However the company is not planning to deploy all the funds it raises in the first year but is staggering the amount for three years. Immediately on the anvil is launching the Internet portal, and to prepay from the issue proceeds term loans from Exim Bank and ICICI aggregating Rs 9.25 crore. For the year 2000, the company is planning to utilise Rs 28.77 crore of issue proceeds, for 2001 Rs 14.08 crore, for 2002 Rs 9.99 crore. The funds in the interim period will be deployed appropriately, Chaudhuri said.

TV 18 ended 1998-99 with total revenues of Rs 17.51 crore and a net profit of Rs 3.6 crore and an EPS of Rs 4.65.