MUMBAI: With a lot of live sports content at its disposal, Star India is gearing up to launch a new sports channel under the Star Sports brand on 11 March.

Christened Star Sports 2, the channel will have international football as its driver content. It will also show other sports content.

Star has the broadcast rights to football properties like English Premier League, Spanish league La Liga and Italian league Serie A for India besides FA Cup rights.

"Yes, we are launching a new sports channel on 11 March. Star Sports 2 will primarily have international football content besides other sports content," Star India COO Sanjay Gupta tells Indiantelevision.com.

The channel will be initially available on digital cable networks and will be subsequently rolled out on analog cable networks across the country.

Star is launching the new channel to avoid overlapping of cricket content with other sports content. The problem only accentuates when India cricket is on as the broadcaster has a bi-lingual feed in English and Hindi on Star Sports and Star Cricket.

It will also help the broadcaster to streamline the scheduling of its different properties.

"We have a lot of sports content, so at times we are unable to utilise this content when there are multiple events lined up simultaneously," Gupta explains.

The broadcaster has dedicated supply of cricket content throughout the year as it holds the media rights for three cricket boards, India, Australia and England, in addition to the ICC rights. Besides cricket and football, Star also boasts of rights to properties like Formula One, MotoGP, Wimbledon, Australian Open in Tennis, and PGA Tour.

News Corps, which had last year acquired ESPN?s stake in joint venture ESPN Star Sports (ESS) for $335 million, had restructured its sports broadcasting business in Asia. While the India business was brought under Star India, the rest of Asia business came under Fox Star Sports Asia under Peter Hutton.

Subsequently, the ESPN brand name was dropped across Asia except India where Star is awaiting government clearance on the ESS acquisition before taking a call on change of brand name.

"We have still not decided what we will do with ESPN. We are considering both Fox as well as Star brand name. However, a final call is yet to be taken," Gupta discloses.

MUMBAI: BBC Worldwide Channels has unveiled Numtums Adventures as the latest new title in production for the international CBeebies network.

Created as a result of BBC Worldwide Channels? ongoing deal with CBeebies in-house productions in the UK, Numtums Adventures continues BBC Worldwide?s commitment to invest in programmes that will encourage children around the world to learn through play.

BBC Worldwide will hold the commercial rights for the series, including global channel broadcast, distribution and merchandising.

Aimed at four to six year olds, the adventure comedy evolved from a series of five-minute learning shorts that currently air on the preschool channel in the UK and around the world to help children with their numbers.

The new series targets upper pre-schoolers by introducing story driven episodes, fast paced comedy and visual humour, and distinct voices and personalities for the Numtum characters. Using CGI, each episode sees the number-obsessed heroes use their maths and number skills to resolve problems in their quirky hometown of Gumnut Gorge.

Numtums Adventures is produced by the CBeebies in-house team and animated by A Productions in Bristol. The series will debut on CBeebies in the UK and around the world in 2013/14.

Numtums Adventures is the latest in a slate of new investments for BBC Worldwide?s international CBeebies network.

CBeebies is a multi-platform brand for preschoolers aged six years and under, which encourages children to learn through play. In the UK, CBeebies offers a mix of new and landmark, high-quality, UK-produced content to educate and entertain the BBC?s youngest audiences in a consistently safe environment.

The international CBeebies channel is wholly-owned by BBC Worldwide and is available in the following territories: Pan Asia, Australia, Pan Latin America & the US Hispanic market, Poland, South Africa and the Nordic region.

MUMBAI: UK pubcaster the BBC?s commercial arm BBC Worldwide has announced that Jon Penn, currently FremantleMedia Enterprises CEO Asia Pacific, is to take up the new role of BBC Worldwide Australasia MD in April.

Penn succeeds former GM Tony Iffland and interim leader Blair McQuade, but will see his responsibilities broadened to include ownership of the region?s P&L under BBC Worldwide?s new Balanced Regionalisation plans, which aims to significantly increase revenue in the territory within the next five years. He will report directly to BBC Worldwide?s President of the UK, Australasia Marcus Arthur, who is based in London.

Also being announced today is BBC Worldwide Australasia?s interim GM Blair McQuade?s appointment as chief commercial officer for Australasia, a new role supporting Jon, which will see him take responsibility for the commercial activities across the business.

BBC Worldwide adds that Australia and New Zealand are hugely important markets for it and both have seen growth over the last five years, across all five areas of business: channels; sales and distribution; content and production; consumer products; and global brands. BBC Worldwide?s strategic aim to increase its regional focus, which will begin on 2 April next, will enable the company to maximise growth across all platforms in the local market.

In 2011/12, BBC Worldwide Australasia increased revenue by nine per cent on the previous year, generating $140 million. Recent new business success stories include the launch of the global BBC iPlayer pilot in Australia, where it is the most successful territory, and the growth of live events, with 100,000 people expected to attend one of five live events in the year.

Penn founded FremantleMedia Enterprises? brand licensing and interactive media division in Australia in 2001 and his responsibilities later expanded to include the rest of Asia Pacific. He was particularly instrumental in turning MasterChef Australia into a multi-million dollar, multi-platform brand over three years and his career has seen him launch new business enterprises across both traditional and digital media platforms, delivering overall revenue growth for FremantleMedia Enterprises in the Asia Pacific region.

Promoted to CEO FremantleMedia Enterprises Asia Pacific in 2009, he added TV distribution, home entertainment and live events to his responsibilities and led the team who has built multi-platform brand franchises out of The X Factor, QI, Grand Designs and Merlin, amongst many marquee TV properties.

Prior to FremantleMedia Enterprises, Penn worked for Fairfax Media?s digital division - Fairfax Digital - and has held a variety of sales, marketing and business development roles over his 22 year career.

Arthur said, "I?m really pleased that Jon has decided to take up our challenge as MD of Australasia, a role that will have increased responsibility in BBC Worldwide?s new organisational structure. His strategic influence across so many platforms, properties and brands at FremantleMedia is impressive, not least because of the outstanding commercial growth he?s drawn from them. I know he?s the right person to lead BBC Worldwide Australasia on to bigger and even better things as the region takes charge of its own P&L for the first time."

Penn said, "I?m thrilled to be given the opportunity to guide BBC Worldwide Australasia through such a pivotal point in its history. I have nothing but admiration for the business and I look forward to building upon the huge success already achieved by its talented workforce and building upon Blair?s brilliant leadership since Tony Iffland departed."