ETC Networks Ltd, the first channel to secure clearance to build a commercial teleport in Mumbai, is now looking to set up its uplinking facility in adjoining Raigad district‘s industrial town of Khopoli.

Jagjit Singh Kohli, managing director and one of the promoters of ETC, said ETC had signed a deal to provide uplink facilities for the Thailand-based Shin Satellite Public Company Limited which runs the Thaicom satellite systems.

Once the teleport is commissioned it is expected to reduce the operating costs of the channel and also provide additional revenue streams for the company by offering uplink services to other private channels and Internet service providers.

Industry sources, however, indicate that work has still to start on the 30 acres of land acquired for the purpose as a "technical clearance" is still awaited from the Maharashtra state government.

Close to Rs 18.6 million has been put aside for establishing uplinking facilities. The teleport is expected to be up and running within this financial year, and ETC is confident that it would also be generating revenue from Day 1, Neelam Gupta, head corporate communications, has told indiantelevision.com in an earlier response to queries.

Asian sports broadcaster ESPN Star Sports claims that the recently concluded Major League Baseball World Series drew excellent ratings on ESPN. Major League Baseball programs are shown on ESPN Taiwan, ESPN Asia, ESPN Philippines and MBC-ESPN (Korea).

About 115,000 people watched the best match of the MLB series on ESPN, according to an ESS release. Next day‘s repeat saw viewership peaking at 241,000. This figure was double the average viewers of the last two days‘ telecast. When the final game was repeated the crucial male segment spent two and a half more times viewing it as compared to music and news shows on other channels.

A total of 2.8 million viewers saw the 2001 World Series, a 67 per cent jump over last year‘s finals. The number of women watching doubled while more young people between the ages of 15-24 saw the finals. MLB‘s popularity saw 27 million viewers tuning in last year on ESPN.

ESS constantly tracks programe trends in countries which have a passion for the sport, particularly Taiwan. Then the company tried to customise MLB broadcasts to sports fans. Asian players making their mark in Major League Baseball include Ichiro Suzuki and Kazuhiro Sasaki of the Seattle Mariners and Chan Ho Park of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

And now get ready for an Urdu version of KBC.

ARY Digital, which is all set for a mid-January 2002 launch, has secured the Urdu rights for the game show from Celador. ARY Digital was all set for a post Diwali launch in the Middle East, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, but has been postponed due to delays in shifting from PAS 10 to Thaicom 3. The shift has been necessitated to cut down on time lags in transmission, says Live Satellite Media director Atul Saraf, who is distributing and marketing the channel in India.

Saraf expects the channel to reach nearly 20 million homes in the next five months. Currently a 24 hour free to air digital channel, ARY Digital is planning to go pay by April 2002. Positioned as a family entertainment channel, Saraf expects to do better than other Urdu channels that met a sad end in the region, armed as it is with a plethora of cross border soaps and Bollywood based shows. Its only competitor in the region, ETV Urdu, was launched in June this year, but Saraf says ARY Digital will counter the competition with ‘better quality programming‘. The channel, which will have 10 hours of original programming, has already commissioned four serials in the suspense and family genres and is building up a library of Pakistani movies. Most soaps will be shot in London, Dubai and Turkey and should appeal to a pan Asian audience, says Saraf. Seventy per cent of the programming mix is to sourced from Pakistan and the rest from India.

The Urdu KBC will stay true to the ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?‘ format, but the finer details are yet to be worked out, says Saraf. The show will rope in a well known Pakistani actor to anchor the show, and is likely to go on air by mid 2002, he adds. The Urdu version will be the third from the subcontinent to launch a ‘millionaire‘ style game show. Koteeswaran, the Tamil version, went on air in November 2000 on the Sun TV network, at a time when Star and ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?‘ rights owner Celador were threatening to launch regional versions for Indian language channels.

ARY Digital is a television network owned by ARY, one of the largest gold manufacturers in the world, based in London. The channel was launched in August 2001. The network was formerly known as The Pakistani Channel; its name was changed when it was bought over by the ARY Group.