Some heavy duty action on the programming front is what the Sony group‘s AXN channel has lined up for its viewers with a slew of new shows set to debut over the next four months.

Covering essentially action series and reality programmes, 12 new programmes will be launched in the new year, AXN managing director Todd Miller said today.

AXN, which is currently in the middle of a major promotion around the Asiawide premiere of the multi-award winning blockbuster movie "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" on 29 December, will be launching three new reality shows in February, Miller revealed. These would be launched almost immediately after the two reality shows currently airing on the channel - "Survivor" and "Amazing Race" - complete their run in January. Elaborating on one of the shows which will be screening on AXN, Miller said "Fear Factor" (it aired on the NBC network) was the biggest show of the summer of 2001 on US television. Miller would not provide details of the other two shows. He added, again without giving details, that two new action series would also be premiered every month over the coming four months.

The channel, which concentrated on popularising two programming genres in the first year of its operations - action movies and action series, now has five programming franchises including action adventure-reality, action sports and adventure and action animation. Of these action movies, action series and action adventure-reality constituted AXN‘s principal programming pillars for AXN India, Miller said. Although action animation is not such a big franchise in India it is huge in the Far East, he added.

Queried as to when the channel expected to reach break even status, Miller said he was looking at 2004 or 2005.

On the distribution front, he said the channel currently reached 21.6 million homes, up from 18 million in May with the figure across Asia being 31.5 million.

B4U Music brought some cheer for India at the PROMAX Awards given away in Singapore on 5 December when it took away nine trophies.
Nearly 9,000 entries from across the globe vied for top promotion, marketing and design glories from more than 100 judges at the annual awards. The majority of the award-winning works were from Channel [V].

B4U Music won four Gold, three Silver & two Special Category awards, a company release said. The Special Category Awards (which are different from the Gold & Silver category) acknowledge the most outstanding piece of work from entries that come in from the broadcast industry, throughout Asia, in which B4U Music won ‘Best Of Show‘ & ‘Rocket Award for Rising Talent‘. There were over 700 entries for the Awards.

Commenting on the achievement, Kalyanasundaram, director - creative and editorial, B4U Music said: "With our debut entry itself, we have bagged the maximum PROMAX Awards for an Indian music channel. This endorses us as the most creative channel in the rat race of music entertainment. We don‘t run the race, we lead it."

The PROMAX & BDA Asia 2001, serves to showcase the latest developments in techniques and technology that will determine the future direction of the industry. It is also the meeting ground for those in broadcast, allowing them to connect with other creative minds.

PROMAX & BDA are non-profit organizations representing 4,200 member companies worldwide. The awards are given in recognition of promotion and marketing activity in electronic media. Judges looked for overall creativity, production quality and results in achieving marketing objectives.

(In the original report posted on 7 December, there were details provided of award winners from Star India, among other channels, alongside that for B4U. This information was incorrect in that it referred to awards presented at the PROMAX and Broadcast Designers‘ Association [BDA] Awards 2001 held in Miami in the US in July and not to the Singapore event. The error is deeply regretted: MANAGING EDITOR)

Asia Satellite Telecommunications (AsiaSat) has signed a new lease agreement with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). This will give C-band more capacity on AsiaSat 2 and allow Asiasat to offer the EBU better transmission services of live sports and news events in Asia.

AsiaSat, the continent‘s leading provider of high-quality satellite services, claims in an official release that AsiaSat 2 has proved to be a very successful satellite gateway between Asia and Europe due to its extensive C-band footprint and the availability of turnaround facilities.

AsiaSat 2, a Lockheed Martin Series 7000 model, carries twenty 36 MHz and four 72 MHz C-band, as well as nine 54 MHz Ku-band linearised transponders. Its C-band footprint covers 53 countries embracing Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Australasia and the C.I.S. AsiaSat 2 also has a high-power Ku beam serving the Greater China region, Korea and Japan.

The EBU groups 70 national broadcasters from 51 countries in the region. It operates the Eurovision and Euroradio networks. It is also responsible for coordinating news and sports programming, besides actively promoting public service broadcasting.

The Union renewed its first lease of a full 36 MHz C-band transponder on AsiaSat 2 six months ago, using it to transmit regular and ad-hoc video contribution feeds between Asia and Europe. EBU had extended its Eurovision Network into Asia by signing the first lease on AsiaSat 2 a few years ago. Leasing additional capacity enables the EBU to strengthen the company‘s array of services as well as to increase the number of export feeds towards the Asia-Pacific region from Europe and other regions.

EBU‘s Eurovision Network is fully digital with a total capacity of 38 channels over Europe, six channels over Asia and 11 channels over the Americas. Eurovision Network boasts over 100,000 news items and 8500 hours of sporting and cultural events transmitted last year.