Bollywood showman Subhash Ghai‘s Mukta Arts yesterday ended all speculation regarding the sale of satellite telecast rights of its film library when it announced that Sony Entertainment Television had bought them.
The deal, which includes the entire Mukta film library of 12 films, is for Rs 161 million for a five-year period. The company‘s first deal to sell its movie library to B4U channel fell through last year.

"We were talking to several channels for the last one year and finally signed the agreement with SET this (yesterday) afternoon," the Press Trust of India quoted company executive director Parvez Farooqui as saying.

Farooqui was quoted as saying Mukta Arts was open to enter into a similar arrangement with other television channels for its future movies.

Mukta sold the rights for Badhaai Ho Badhaai alone for Rs 12.5 million.

The rise and rise of the media stocks continue. The last few days has seen Ekta Kapoor‘s Balaji Telefilms scale new peaks. Today it was Subhash Chandra‘s Zee Telefilms that led the way as the bourses recorded a third straight day-on-day gain.

The BSE 30-share Sensitive Index (Sensex) ended with a modest gain of 8.10 points at 3,411.92. The NSE S & P CNX Nifty Index also gained 4.60 points to end at 1,110.60, capitalmarket.com reported.

Zee Telefilms (up 5.68 per cent to Rs 185.95) has seen renewed buying interest amid hopes that the board may discuss equity sale to a strategic investor at its 29 April meeting where it is to declare its year-ending financial results. The meeting is expected to clear the decks for a hike in foreign fund stake ceiling to 49 per cent from the current 30 per cent. Over 493.2 million Zee shares were traded on the BSE today.

Balaji Telefilms continued its uninterrupted rise to close at Rs 632.85, up 5.26 per cent over yesterday‘s close. The scrip has risen over 50 per cent from Rs 408.90 on 26 March 2002 to its current level.

The performance of the Balaji scrip is of course pivoted around the overarching popularity of Ekta‘s serials - one-third of the top 100 TRP-rated serials on air today are Balaji shows.

With Balaji launching some new programmes on Sony TV and Zee TV, while lowering focus on south Indian serials, things can only get better, is the market sentiment.

Mukta Arts (up 10.27 per cent to Rs 124) advanced on sustained buying after the company said last week that talks for the sale of library rights have been going on for more than a year with Zee Telefilms, Sony Entertainment Television and Star TV Network. Over 145.4 million Mukta Arts shares were traded on the BSE today.

Other media stocks like recent Zee acquisition ETC Networks (up 13.07 per cent to Rs 52.35), Tips Industries (up 11.42 per cent to Rs 156.10), Padmalaya Telefilms (up 7.60 per cent to Rs 160.65) and Adlabs Films (up 6.86 per cent to Rs 70.85), also gained ground.