The new-look channel will have a South Asian identity with specific focus on India. The channel will be sourcing local programmes relating to life-style, current affairs, discussions and information technology, Cramer said.Without giving investment details pertaining to India, Cramer said that in the last three years CNN had put in around $40 million for its regionalisation effort across the world. According to CNN International, managing editor Bill Baggitt, Europe and Asia had been on the forefront of the channel's regionalisation programme in the last two years.

To carry the regionalisation programme forward Cramer said CNN was open to having vernacular language feeds at a later date. Talks were on with several software production houses in this regard, he added. CNN currently does programmes in local language, in Spain and Turkey. "However, we will continue to provide international news through regional eyes," Cramer said.

The new region-specific schedule will feature a five hour prime-time block, comprising of international and regional news bulletins. There will be new series of the "Q&A" programme for South Asia, to presented by Riz Khan. CNN International will reschedule some of its popular programmes for daily prime-time television viewing in South Asia. On the distribution front, India is the only market in the world, where the channel is behind its competitor BBC Worldwide. "However in the next one year we want to change all that," Cramer said.

The new South Asia feed will be free-to-air and digitally encrypted. According to Turner International India managing director Anshuman Misra the channel is presently available in over 4 million cable and satellite households in the country. The localisation effort is expected to pep up the channel's advertising and marketing revenue in the country, Misra said.

Turner India, which is responsible for the sales and marketing of Time Warner Inc's news and entertainment channels in India and South Asia, was in the process of doubling its staff strength in the country, to over 100 by the year-end from the present level of around 50, Misra added.

On the channel's interactive strategy, Cramer said CNN was planning to leverage advantages offered by the convergence of technologies. "We are looking at ways to drive traffic from our channel to the Website and vice-versa," he added. As a precursor to launching the South Asia feed, in May last year the network doubled its Hong Kong based production staff, and expanded its Asian programming roster from 14 hours to 30 hours per week.

With CNN becoming aggressive on India, how is market leader BBC planning to protect its turf? According to BBC World commissioning editor Narendra Morar "We are going to strengthen our existing base of India programming." On CNN's new initiatives Morar has just this to say, "we will just wait and watch what they are up to." India is the only market in the world where BBC is ahead of CNN in terms of viewership and reach.