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UTV may rope in ESPN, Disney for Vijaya TV slots
Padmaja Shastri
Chennai : United Television (UTV) is in talks with ESPN and Disney Channel to make their programmes available on its wholly-owned subsidiary, Tamil channel Vijaya TV. Also, the company is talking to Star TV among other broadband broadcasters for broadband capacity to enable Vijaya TV go global.Talking to The Financial Express, Mr Ronnie Screwvala, chairman of UTV, said that the multi-media company is looking to air around one hour blocks of programmes from ESPN and Disney. "We are open to tying-up for quality content so as to avoid duplicating efforts inhouse ", he said. Vijaya TV, in an endeavour to get a good mix of programmes for the whole family had earlier entered into strategic tie-ups with NDTV for exclusive news content, Hyderabad-based Padmalaya Studios for mythological content and more recently Discovery Channel for infotainment programmes.With ESPN and Disney, they are looking to collaborate for content in the areas of sports and children's programming/cartoons. According to Mr Screwvala, Vijaya TV is expected to go global in the next two to three months. It is already available in Singapore, but will now be made available to Tamil audiences across the US, the UK, Africa and Asia as a part of a bouquet of broadband broadcasting group, he said. The company is yet to finalise whom it will associate with, he added. UTV also has plans to go for three more regional channels in the other southern languages. However, there are no plans to buy any existing channels, but build its own, said Mr Screwvala. The company is coming out with an IPO of Rs 130 crore to fund its expansion plans. It will file the prospectus in the next three weeks and is taking the bookbuilding route. MTV plans to go local
MTV Networks is exploring the possibility of syndicating content for regional channels. According to Alex Kuruvilla, managing director of MTV, the music channel is planning to make music programmes in regional languages and sell it to regional channels in the South, apart from Bengali, Marathi and Gujarati channels. Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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