Zee TV has pulled off the curtain on its Sawaal Dus Crore Ka game show format. For starters, the show will air at 8:30 pm three days a week cum end this month.
A selection process will result in 21 of the millions of contestants who have sent in their entries being part of the first buzzer round. Three questions will be asked to select three contestants for the second round. Whoever answers the question right first moves into the second round.

In the second round, the three contestants will be pitted against each other and whoever gets two out of three questions right will move into the rounds that follow; the others will be eliminated.

He/she will be in the hot seat. Three questions will be hurled at him; if he gets two of these right he will progressively move onto the next round.

The buzzer round gives the winner Re 1. For each subsequent round, a zero is added to that figure. To win the magic figure of Rs 100 million he will have to go past nine rounds of questioning. Shoudl he/she fumble and go wrong in round eight, he will get only Rs 1 million as the prize money.

The questions are being devised by Derek O‘Brien of Cadbury Bournvita Quiz Contest fame. The host had not been announced at the time of writing.

Zee TV has, however, kept the viewer in mind too: viewers could win anywhere from Rs 15,000 to Rs 2,000 should they have a copy of TV World, the Zee TV programming guide with them. Each copy of TV World will have a six digit number printed on its cover. During each show one number will be generated by a computer and announced. Should a viewer have a TV World copy with all six digits matching he stands to win Rs 200,000; if he/she has five digits matching the prize is Rs 15,000; if four, it is Rs 4,000.

Classic Hindi movie channel Star Gold, which was launched last month, is gradually clawing its way back into Indian viewers homes, thanks to a push from the Star TV Network distribution team.

According to Star Gold head Raj Nayak, the channel was languishing for a fortnight but now has managed to get about 55 per cent penetration in Delhi and Mumbai, almost 100 per cent penetration in Kanpur and Lucknow, and 85 per cent in Ahmedabad.

"We have got a deal in place with Seven Star. We expect a resolution with InCable soon. Even RPG in Calcutta should get sorted out," he says. "I‘m looking at a penetration of about what Star World has for Star Gold in the next 15 days."

Three video on wheels (VOW) Vans are expected to go around in 70 towns in Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar over the next week promoting Star Gold. "It‘s a channel headed in the right direction," he says. "We will occupy our rightful place in the cable and satellite television universe."

Channel Nine India is quite pleased as punch about the performance of its shows on the 7-9 pm block on DD2. The company has sent out release highlighting how DD shows were performing before its launch and post its launch.
The management claims to have signed some top notch advertising clients among which figure HLL, Nestle, Paras and Emami, "all of which have commited large amounts of ad-spends on our programs" says a spokesperson.

Hectic activity is on at the channel to kick off the new 9-10 pm block which is slated to launch in mid-October.
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DD performance before launch

DD peformance after launch of Channel 9.

Star Gold was launched with a lot of song and dance last month in Mumbai. The classic Hindi movie channel has, however, not received the kind of push it needed from the senior management.
Net result: several cable operators have refused it carriage. The network has not managed to strike deals with large MSOs such as RPG Netcom, InCable, and Siticable. The only cable system to have come to some arrangement with it is Hathway Cable & Datacom, and that too because of the 26 per cent equity stake that Star TV has taken in it. Other affiliates of Hathway such as WinCable and Shri Bhawani Cabletel are also showing the channel on their networks.

The Star TV management is believed to be meeting to find an out of the jam the channel has got into. It will have to work some magic to get Star Gold into viewers‘ homes.

The new Indian information and broadcasting Sushma Swaraj seems hell-bent on earning that sobriquet. Reason: not even two days into the job and she is already talking of cleaning up Indian television. DTH, the amended cable TV act, the Prasar Bharati - all these were being looked at by her afresh and it would take her a couple of weeks to make up her mind about anything, the lady said.
But for the nonce, "TV is a family medium," she said to journalists yesterday. "And my priority will be to make it that. My ministry‘s job will be to ensure that it is carried out."

Extremely noble thoughts. But wasn‘t the government supposed to set up an independent regulatory authority along with a watchdog for this very purpose? Why is the minister and her ministry coming to the forefront on this issue? A government playing conscience keeper makes for a very eerie scenario. Who knows where when the fundamentalists in the BJP may forget where the morality lines and where they begin, and whether what works well for DD works well for private satellite channels too?

Swaraj on her part tends to posture a lot. During her earlier term she ranted and raved against the former Prasar Bharati chief M.S. Gill and eventually had him sacked by reverting the pubcaster to government control and reducing the age limit that the CEO could run it. At the same time she screamed against the obscenity on Indian television, saying she would have heads roll. But she did very little about it. Additionally, she drew up what would become a phased policy on uplinking, opening up uplinking to even foreign companies from Indian soil. She also allowed foreign ad agencies to own Indian ad agencies.

Swaraj seems to want to appear to be a cross old Aunt, but one who is jolly good at heart. Just a bit like Uncle George in Dennis the Menace comics. She will surely give some executives in foreign channels heart burn. In the long run however she should turn out all right. That‘s if she survives her full term.

Another bird has gone up in the sky with its eye on the Indian market. Americom Asia-Pacific (AAP)‘s GE-1A satellite was launched successfully yesterday by ILS from from the Cosmodrome in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, singalling the operational beginning of Americom Asia-Pacific, the joint venture formed by GE Americom and Lockheed Martin Global Telecommunications.
Andreas Georghiou, AAP‘s President who also serves as GE Americom‘s Senior Vice President of Global Satellite Services, said "With next month‘s operation of GE-1A, we look forward to realizing our plan of bringing high-quality Ku-band satellite service to this important region."

GE-1A, a powerful K[J Purvis2]popou-band satellite, is to be be located at 108.2 degrees east longitude and is expected to provide services via three beams to greater China, south Asia including India, and northeast Asia and the Philippines. The spacecraft has 28 active 36 MHz Ku-band transponders with 120-watt TWTAs. The GE-1A satellite is an A2100AX spacecraft, manufactured by Lockheed Martin, for a minimum useful life of 15 years.

The satellite is expected to be fully operational by November 15, 2000, and will deliver Internet applications, VSAT, data and telecommunications services, cable and broadcast programming.

AAP was formed in 1998, to provide high-powered capacity and state-of-the-art services to ISP‘s and their customers, programmers, telcos and carriers throughout the Asia-Pacific region. It has established its headquarters in Singapore with additional sales and technical support teams in Beijing and New Delhi.