Sony Entertainment Television‘s CEO Kunal Dasgupta may have said that he didn‘t plan for his gameshow Jeeto Chappar Phaad Ke (JCPK) hosted by Bollywood laugh riot Govinda to have a head-to-head confrontation with Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) but Star will have none of it. It will be up to the viewers to decide this one. Will they plump for Bollywood‘s "Bade Miyaan" Amitabh Bachchan and his KBC or "Chhote Miyaan" Govinda and JCPK?

The answer will be out very soon. AB and Chi-Chi are facing off on Saturday 10 February at 8pm. Star Plus has planned a KBC Special at the same time slot that JCPK airs. The Star Earthquake Special has celebrity guests from the cinema and cricket worlds to give it added appeal. Bollywood star Madhuri Dixit and Indian cricket ace Sachin Tendulkar each won Rs5 million (now we have gender equality in winnings too) and have donated the amounts towards the Gujarat earthquake relief fund.

It is clearly a tough one for the guys at Sony. On the one hand they have the prospect of JCPK having to ward off the well entrenched KBC while the show is still in its infancy. On the other hand, the immediate appeal of a show which links to the tragedy in Gujarat, makes it doubly daunting.

And there‘s more likely to come. Reason: the way Star has positioned its KBC special episode clearly indicates that it is not going to let Sony walk away and capture the weekend.

It sure looks an unequal fight from here and it remains to be seen what kind of response Sony‘s head honchos come up with.

B4U Multimedia International has spun off a new company B4U Broadband, which will be the vehicle for the company‘s broadband plans.

B4U CEO Ravi Gupta made the point clear while clarifying that B4U Multimedia International had not been wound up as reported in the press due to its association with arrested film financier Bharat Shah, a key promoter in the company.

Gupta, however, admitted that one reason for the creation of the company was because national broadcaster Doordarshan was reluctant to continue an association with a company part promoted by a man with alleged links to the underworld.
B4U Broadband will continue to provide the latest blockbusters to DD as per our earlier arrangement,‘‘ Gupta confirmed.

Queried whether the Bharat Shah episode had hurt the channel, Gupta said actually revenues in January were better than previous months. "AS to whether they would have been even better without the arrest episode is speculative," Gupta added.

B4U Broadband will be the vehicle for a number of projects, including DTH, which the company is aggressively pushing through in the coming year, Gupta said. "For the DTH project we have calculated an outlay of Rs 5 billion and we are in talks with various prospective partners. We have to obviously keep in mind the government‘s insistence on the 20 per cent sectoral cap as well as foreign equity cap but we are seriously going ahead," Gupta said.
As to what other plans were on the anvil, Gupta said B4U was going ahead with plans for content delivery via the internet. He however ruled out B4U‘s getting into optic fibre cabling on its own. "We will be looking at collaborations with players providing such services", Gupta said.

"We are also looking at global alliances and towards that end we are in serious talks with British Telecom," Gupta said.

Star‘s bouquet of channels, which had been off air in the Delhi region for MSO Siticable‘s subscribers since 24 January, began beaming again on Thursday in what may well be a temporary truce in an increasingly high stakes turf war.

Since pending dues have been paid up by most Siti JVs (joint venture partners) and suboperators, the feed will be switched back on all across Delhi, Star‘s corporate communications head Yash Khanna said. There are only a few suboperators who are still to pay up, Khanna added.

Speaking for the other side, an industry source close to Siti said Star came around not over any dues issue but because the blackout of Star‘s feed was hurting their channels‘ TRP ratings in the Delhi and Ludhiana (Punjab) areas which in turn was leading to increasing pressures from their advertisers.

The differing statements indicate that the problem is a larger one of how big MSOs and channels conduct business. The present dispute had its roots in the issue of paid connectivity which is a recurring one (recall the recent spat between Sony Entertainment Television and Hathway Cable in which Star has a 26 per cent stake) as well as who the various JVs ally with. Siti has a 35 per cent cable home share in Delhi because of the 77 JVs who are allied to it. At the height of the dispute there was media reports that JVs were defecting to the Star camp, a claim Siti vehemently denied.

Its a war of attrition that is going on and it may well lead to the government stepping in to regulate the whole business.