Sharkstream.com, UTV Interactive‘s wholly owned subsidiary which offers broadband content for users in Singapore, has become a subscription service.

The service, priced at S$ 4.99 per month, features streaming programming in entertainment, drama, comedy and current affairs genres in Hindi and Tamil. Sharkstream also offers services in English, Malay and Mandarin which will remain free for the next two months, says Biren Ghose, CEO, UTV Interactive. Sharkstream was being launched with subscription driven services in only two languages so as to better understand the dynamics of high quality video acceptance over broadband in the East Asia region. After this the other language channels will also become subscription driven. Sharkstream was now the first paid broadband network in Asia, Ghose said.

The total broadband market in Singapore was roughly 200,000-strong Ghose said, and Sharkstream had a subscriber base of 45,000 to 50,000 (registered users using of the free service) making it the most-used broadband network. Ghose said he was expecting at least 5,000 to 10,000 subscribers to sign on in the beginning. They will be offered a menu card of five to seven content packages under different price heads, he added. The standard package is S$ 4.99 per month, S$11.99 for three months and S$23.99 annually.

Explaining why Singapore was an ideal location to offer broadband content, Ghose said in Asia, only South Korea was ahead in terms of being broadband-enabled.

Queried as to the minimum subscriber base required to cover operational costs, Ghose put the figure at 5,000. He pointed out that with this model having come into place, UTV Interactive could also offer its expertise to enable large content providers to set up their own platforms.

Zee TV has won three awards in the TV Programmes category at the 26th RAPA awards (Radio & TV Advertising Practitioners‘ Association of India) held on 8 June 2001 in Mumbai.

The awards were received by Zee TV vice-president marketing Partha Sinha who says: "These awards are especially important for Zee in this highly competetive environment as they reiterate the channel‘s efforts to offer the best to its audience. We are proud to get this recognition from an organisation which consists of some of the leading luminaries from the media and advertising fraternity."

The award winning Zee TV programmes in the various categories are:
Koshish-Ek Asha (the best Hindi soap opera,) which is the story of the valiant attempts of an Indian woman to fight powers, that are more powerful than her and emerge victorious.

Dastak (the best Hindi non-fiction programme) which seeks an insight into certain social issues that still fall in the category of social taboos like rape, child abuse, police brutality, AIDS, sale of human organs and so on. The show features a unique ‘dial-a-help‘ service for which the programme has tied up with NGO‘s like HelpAge India, Cry, Prayan and others.

Zee Talkies (the best Hindi film magazine) deals with current issues and happenings in the film and music world. The show features candid interviews with stars and other professionals in the show business.

The Raghav Bahl-promoted Television Eighteen India Ltd, a television software producer and broadcaster which holds 49 per cent stake in CNBC India, has just signed a deal with Star India to produce an entertainment based programme for the channel.

The signing of the show, whose name is still under wraps, marks a fresh phase in the programming thrust of TV18, according to Haresh Chawla, CNBC India CEO. TV18 would now be looking at increasing the number of such shows across channels, Chawla said. While not being entirely invisible outside the CNBC India channel, TV18‘s presence has been low key for the last five months or so. This was because all available resources for content development were being mopped up by the 24-hour business channel, company officials say. Currently, CNBC India airs an average of 11 hours of India-centric programming a day, all of which is produced by TV18.

The new show is essentially a talent search for people across the whole spectrum of the arts, company officials say. The show, whose name the officials didn‘t want revealed, is scheduled to launch in July and will be a return of sorts for TV 18 to Star. In fact the company shot into prominence with The India Show (later the Amul India Show) on Star Plus in 1993. India Show went on to become the longest running series on Indian satellite television and won the Asia TV Awards for two years running. Talks are on for two more serials for which pilots have been done, officials say.

While the focus at present was on the Star projects, pitches were also being made to Sony and Zee, company officials said. Sony had expressed interest in a few serial concepts but these were still at the discussion stage, the officials said.

Currently TV18 has two programmes airing on Channel V - Late Night V and Very V - available to viewers in the UK on the BSkyB Network.