MUMBAI: Tuesday 30 April 2013 8 am. Just another day at the Balaji Telefilms head office opposite Fun Cinemas in the Andheri West suburb of Mumbai. Normally, scores of aspirants from all over India come to its gates everyday and leave their photographs, their concepts, in the hope that the Queen of Indian television - slowly becoming the queen of Indian cinema as well - will give them that elusive break.

Which she has done over the past decade and build many an acting aspirant?s, writer?s and director?s career. At least 200 young TV professionals buzzing with ideas go up the six story building, park themselves in their respective desks and plan the next big spike for the television shows Balaji delivers to TV channels every day.

But this morning was a little different. Posses of income tax officials - from the search and seizure department - reportedly stormed the Balaji head office, Krishna Bungalow in Juhu (where Ekta, Jetendra Kapoor and Shobha Kapoor reside) and brother Tusshar?s home, apart from four other locations. Along with the Kapoors? residences and the Balaji offices residences of other board of directors were searched.

A press briefing expected from the production house during the day, but no official word or address to the press was made. All the locations in which searches were in progress were like fortresses with no one being allowed entry. And those who did get access had to hand over their phones.

Ekta Kapoor and Balaji Telefilms have come even more into the limelight after she successfully launched her film banner Alt Entertainment and Balaji Films. With her slew of successful movies in her pocket (The Dirty Picture, Ek Thi Dayaan, Love Sex Aur Dokha, Ragini MMS), she was readying to release Shootout at Wadala on 3 May which is expected to do well at the box office.

Reports are that the IT department believes it should have been paid more money as tax by Balaji than it did. Details were not available at the time of writing.

"This could well be a case of the well-entrenched players in the Hindi film industry seeing Balaji Telefilms as a competitor who could threaten their fiefdom," says a veteran film industry critic. "It?s like this: every time someone makes a dent in the entertainment industry either rivals or the government intervene to make life difficult for him or her. The current IT search may well be in that space. Only time will tell us what it was all about."

The shares opened at Rs 46.30 and the closing price was Rs 45.85.

Trading volume was 181,714 at the time of closing.

MUMBAI: After achieving accolades as a professional violinist, Ratish Tagde is now entering the television space with India?s first 24 hour classical music channel ?In Sync?.

Already available in test mode on InCable in Mumbai (since 11 April), the channel will see a formal launch on cable digital platforms across the country in June. For the time being, In Sync will be available on digital cable TV platforms. Tagde hopes to be on DTH by next year though. For the first six months of its launch, the channel will be on MSOs on a free view basis, beyond which it will function as a pay channel.

The channel is being beamed from Insat 4A.

Aimed at classical music purists and enthusiasts across ages, the channel is owned by Perfect Octave Media Ltd, an event management company that specialises in organising music concerts.

"Through In Sync, I want to expand music lovers? horizon. The name itself is a reference to the basic element of music - synchronisation. Through the name we want to communicate that our content is in-sync with what the audience wants," explains a hopeful Tagde.

He and his team carried out research for launching the channel. "According to our research a large proportion of music lovers listen to Bollywood music, the second being ghazals and Indi-pop ranked as a third preferred choice. Further to this, our study also revealed that approximately 51 per cent Indians listen to music on a dedicated music channel and around 67 per cent have welcomed the idea of a launch of a classical-based music channel", says Tagde.

On the content front, the channel will be focussing on concerts for the time being. Having a music concert organiser as a promoter, the channel has access to concerts by musical stalwarts like the Late Pandit Ravi Shankar, Late Jagjit Singh and many others. To begin with, it will have four hours of fresh content which Tagde intends to take up to 10 hours eventually.

In Sync has nearly 150 hours of content lined up for its launch. Of this, 40 hours is studio recorded content with the likes of Shankar Mahadevan, Ustaad Zakir Hussain, Hariharan and Saadhna Sargam. He hopes to increase this to 1000 hours by mid June 2014.

Apart from live concert recordings and studio performances, the channel will also air shows that have semi-classical music to offer. In the future, Tagde is hopeful of airing content that transcends geographies and wants to bring western classical music genres like jazz to India through In Sync. The channel will air two minute vignettes educating and informing the different ?ragas? in Indian classical music between shows.

It will also feature Bollywood songs which have their origins in classical music like ?Laga Chunri Mein Daag? which has its base in raag Bhairavi.

The programming strategy for the channel will be to predominantly air music that is in-sync with the time of the day. "While music channels and news channels usually do not have appointment viewing, I feel that for a classical music channel, it is a good idea to have content (music) according to the mood and time of the day," says Tagde.

The strategy of appointment viewing may also prove beneficial from an advertising perspective. The channel intends to get on board high-end brands in automobile and jewellery to advertise on In Sync. The channel?s ad sales duties have been outsourced to Aidem Ventures, while Cira Media is the strategic partner on board taking care of its distribution.

While he refused to reveal the initial investment he has pumped into the channel, Tagde hopes to break even in two to two and a half years from launch. "Apart from my own investments, we have already roped in few high net-worth individuals for investment in the project and for future growth we will rope in strategic investors at an appropriate time," he adds.

Tagde is hopeful, this despite. ?Apart from advertising, we also intend to generate revenues through the numerous copyrights we own to concerts and recordings. Also, with digitisation setting in, we hope to go pay in due course of time,? he reveals.

He also has plans to take the channel abroad and is already in talks with parties in the Gulf and the United States. Additionally, he also hopes to launch a new channel for Carnatic music lovers in south India.

The channel will be a medium for recognising and encouraging new talent as well. The promoters have called for tapes and recording from upcoming classical singers and performers to be aired on the channel.

?Through this channel, I want to reach out to every classical music enthusiast and make him a part of the music one way or another. I also want to show that there is immense diversity in Indian classical music,? Tagde concludes.

NEW DELHI: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Secretary Uday Kumar Varma feels that the Indian media industry needs to introspect on the current models of self-regulation while emphasising that the government had no intention of placing any controls on the freedom of the press.

Giving a keynote address at the News Television Summit organised by Indiantelevision.com, Varma stressed that India was the only country in the world without a statutory regulatory authority.

While stressing that the government had no intention of imposing any statutory regulation on the media, Varma stated that media must do some introspection on its own ?sooner than later?.

Referring to digitisation, he said, the introduction of digital addressable systems (Das) was the largest single initiative taken by the country for the past few years.

Das will bring transparency and will necessarily force a paradigm shift with television channels working on newer revenue models, apart from working out on new content for the consumers, Varma said.

He also claimed that in the first phase of Das, both Delhi and Mumbai had gone digital de jure and de facto, while Kolkata had gone digital de jure. In Chennai, complete digitisation eluded the government because of a stay order from the Madras High Court.

He was confident that the TV channels along with the consumer will see the benefits of digitisation in the near future, but said state governments will also have to play a role in helping multi-system operators.

News television channels, he was confident, will become more sustainable and purposeful with digitisation as it will help in developing new revenue.

On the phase II of DAS, he said that 28 of the thirty-eight cities had already achieved over 50 per cent digitisation and four were fully digitised.

He said another major game-changer will be the auction of 839 FM radio channels in Phase III, cleared by the Empowered Group of Ministers recently.

Answering a question about permitting news on community and FM Radio, Varma said that the government is only restricting political news because it was difficult to monitor the large number of radio channels in the country.

However, the government had already decided to permit the FM channels to take all India radio news bulletins and this may be extended to community radio as well.

"We are just being prudent at present, but we are not ruling out permitting news bulletins in the future," he said.

He also said that India was working towards becoming a digital teleport hub and the government was taking steps to facilitate this transformation.

Indiantelevision.com Group CEO and Editor-in-Chief Anil Wanvari in his opening note lauded the decision to go digital but said the industry is struggling against various odds. He also said that ad regulation by Trai will only add to the woes of the television industry which has not been witnessing robust growth in the last few years.