Manobala & Thyagu..

It would be director/actor Manobala whom we have been seeing for quite long time in many films & actor Thyagu in koffee with Anu this week.. I was thinking about Manobala to get into this show & its happening now.. it would be good to see his interview..

Political advertising might boosts Radio sector arnd 500 mn

A IndianTelevision.com News

With the elections nearing, political parties of every shade and hue are gearing up to toot their horns with ad spends of around Rs 6 billion likely to be splurged across all media. And this time a lot of that moolah is likely to find its way into the coffers of both TV and radio stations. Radio station heads are rubbing their hands in glee.

According to Indiantelevision.com's estimates, the political ad spend on radio will be around Rs 500 million, which comprises 10 per cent of the sector's annual revenues.
"We are expecting the radio sector to garner around 5-8 per cent of the total media spend. This is a windfall for the sector. The BJP has started its campaigns on some of our radio stations. We are in discussions with other political parties. We will be only carrying spots," says Red FM COO Thomas Abraham.

Not all that spend will, however, flow into the coffers of the private FM radio operators. Says Radio Mirchi CEO Prashant Panday, "All India Radio will corner about 50 per cent of the total spend. Private FM radio operators should be able to mop up anywhere between Rs 300-350 million". According to Radio City EVP & national sales head Ashit Kukian, "The current spend is going to come as a boon for radio stations which have been hurt by the drop in retail and financial advertising."

Media observers say that the radio stations are quoting card rates for political ads as compared to earlier when discounts were common for commercial advertisers. "This at a time when advertising inventory on radio stations is going abegging," says a media buyer. "It's a bonanza for the FM radio stations and for all of us. And to top it all, the payments are mostly in advance." But there's no denying that the parties are using a medium that's more effective than TV, say all the radiocasters in one voice. Big 92.7 FM SVP sales Praveen Malhotra says,"We reach 288 constituencies through our network. For any political party this is an excellent platform, given that they can localise their messaging as per their communication requirements of a particular constituency. They do not need to go with one common template and that is what works fantastically."

"Using a radio station to campaign for the elections is a very diligent idea as this is one of the best ways to target the youth. It reaches voters who are illiterate and it covers more than one constituency. For example, Radio Mirchi Bhopal station reaches more than four constituencies. The advertising cost is low as compared to other mediums and the power of voice reaches the people," adds ENIL COO Nandan Srinath. Kukian says his company has been approached by the BJP and Congress and certain regional parties from the south while Radio Mirchi has already started airing the Congress 'Jai Ho' campaign. Big FM is airing both Congress' 'Jai Ho' and BJP's 'Mazboot Neta Nirnayak Sarkar' across the day parts. With the shot in the arm that the hustings are expected to give to FM, many of the ad sales heads are going to be singing Jai Ho to the elections.

Something about "Chandralekha" Anupama

"Konjam nilavu, konjam neruppu, onraaga sendal endan nenjam" goes the lusty, passionate song which sent the crowds wild. Ooh! What a song! And what a voice! Rising effortlessly to a high, matching every move and emotion in that landmark number. `Chandralekha’ Anupama, the owner of that deadly voice, stormed the music scene with that song from `Thiruda Thiruda’. Eventhough the Maniratnam film did not exactly set the cash registers ringing, this song became a craze. And sit up and take notice, people did..

A string of great numbers like `July Maatham’ from Pudiya Mugam and Hulla Gulla in Bombay later, she is one of the sought-after playback singers in India. She maynot be with the likes of P Susheela or S Janaki. More the Usha Uthup kind. More suitable for the east-west Indi-pop masala mix which is more her style. She has now sung in all the South Indian languages besides Hindi and English and she informs that she has sung a French ditty for a Malayalam film. "Its all due to my knowledge of Sanskrit which makes it a cakewalk to sing in any lingo" she says.

Anupama seemed destined for a playback singing career. Maybe that was why she dropped out of the Mass Comm. Course from the prestigious Indian Institute of Mass Comm in New Delhi. Since the age of 8, she has been singing in school competitions, She has also trained in Carnatic music though now, she is best known as a Pop singer. She has the looks, style and the all-important voice. Before that, she had been doing jingles for ads with the not-as-yet maestro A R Rehman, when he was Dilip earlier. Ponds Dreamflower Talc and Soap, Medimix soap, Tatia Resorts, Diplomat Whisky, AVT Deepika Coconut Oil, Trupti range of products and Aavin Goodness ice cream are some of the ads she has done. With such awesome vocal chords, it’s a clear rise to the top for Anu. With 3 live shows abroad with A R Rehman in Dubai, Singapore & Malaysia and Colombo, Anu’s fans are spread allover the globe. Anupama is married to Murli Krishnaswami, Creative Director of R K Swamy BBDO and they live in Besant Nagar.

None Eliminated..

As expected.. none of the contestants are eliminated from Airtel Super Singer 2008 western round.. It was only one contestant Ajeesh who was waitlisted from the first 2 days & his performance with non-film song made him to go thru to next round.. It looks like next round as the information are leaked out.. might be relationship round. It becomes very much predictable on the results of quite few weeks. I am sure this will not make the show stronger anymore..

Its left with Ajeesh..

Airtel Super Singer 2008 in western round ("Merkethiya thaakam ulla paadalgal") has come to a very unique stage with 6 contestants out of 7 are spot selected to next round.. this mean only person Ajeesh is waitlisted and he will perform today. this is quite silly how can the judges spot select 6 out of 7 ???? the show started with Ranjani singing "sillendru oru kaadhal" & it was quite good performance. Vijay Narayan followed with his "uyirin uyire" & few of his innovative notes were really good. Ravi was next singing "oh mama mamamamo" & he as usual did extremely well.

Ajeesh disappointed with his "enaku oru girl friend" which was nowhere close to the original.. Renu followed him with "Muthal naal indru" & she was also as usual did well..Prasanna's "Something something" ROCKED & made few audiance to dance with him for the song. Finally it was Ragini shree for "unakena naan..enakena nee"... her performance was not so great but judges praised a lot. All the 6 except Ajeesh had been selected to next round of the show.. Lets see what happens today in the show.. Yet another drama in the making..;)

A R Rahman breaks into US Top 20 music charts

Slumdog Millionaire's Jai Ho! has not only won numerous awards and accolades but has also become one of the most downloaded and listened to song in the United States. As per the latest Billboard (a magazine that tracks the most popular songs) charts, the remix version of Jai Ho! with the Pussycat Dolls has made it to the top 20 on the Hot 100 songs.

Jai Ho! debuted on the Billboard charts two weeks back at the bottom of the charts at 100 and made a jump to number 15 in the second week itself. The Pussycat Dolls version has been renamed as Jai Ho! (You Are My Destiny) and released on Interscope records in America.

The song also made it as the greatest sales gainer for the week with its big jump. As per the magazine's website (www.billboard.com) the track is also on its way to climb into the top 10 in the coming week based on radio play and digital download figures. Jai Ho! replaces pop singer Pink's single Sober which drops from number 15 making way for Rahman's track. On the other important charts in the US, Jai Ho! makes an impressive debut on the Pop 100 at number 20 and cracks into the top 10 of the Hot Digital songs (most downloaded) at number 7.

This makes Rahman the first Indian to make it to the top 20 on the Billboard charts. Various chart predicting websites and sources predict that with the current number of digital downloads and radio play, Jai Ho! may even make it to the top 5 in the coming weeks.

Quite Boring..

Kana Kaanum Kaalangal is not so interesting these day.. what do you guys say ?? Ever since they started with the crew which was in the last season I am not liking the show. I have heard from many ppl that those guys were too good & better than the current team but I dont think so :) atleast with the boring part thats going on in the show. More on to it.. the show is now telecasted for 1 hour.. I feel that its okay if they have made the show into 1 hour.. they could have had 30 mins of current crew with rest 30 mins of last season crew. They have done similar kind when they had audition to select the crew sometime bac..

Got ur DTH connection?

The Indian direct-to-home (DTH) industry is adding 7 lakh subscribers every month compared to 2.5-3 lakh subscribers in early 2008. This is largely due to the entry of three new players and a price war between the five DTH firms, who are looking to bring on board new consumers. As per estimates of two executives with separate DTH companies, the total subscriber base is expected to almost double to 1.9-2 crore by the end of 2009, led by increase in demand from semi-urban areas.

N Arjun, executive director, Airtel digital television, said, "The industry is adding about 6-7 lakh subscribers per month despite the slowdown. I believe the new players are contributing 65% of the total numbers added by the industry every month." He refused to divulge the company's current subscriber base. Airtel digital TV, Big TV and Sun TV entered the market late last year and have expanded nationwide recently. Soon after their entry, DTH players claimed to have added around 20 lakh subscribers during the peak festival season sales in October-November 2008.

Ashutosh Srivastav, national sales head, Big TV, said the company has added 15 lakh subscribers since its launch in August. Currently the lowest monthly subscription package is priced in the range of Rs 100-125/ month. Meanwhile the older players, Dish TV and Tata Sky continue to build their own subscriber base. As per market leader Dish TV, it crossed the 50 lakh subscriber mark in February, while Tata Sky claims to have hit 35 lakh subscriber level this month. Vikram Kaushik, CEO, Tata Sky, said, "The economic slowdown has not impacted the subscriber additions for the industry. The only change one can see is that consumers are opting for the lowest or the basic package of channels."

Scores - 14th March..

This is how it stands in Boys Vs Girls at the end of week ending March 14th.

Malini & Preethi

It was Malini Yugendran's 3rd round in Samayal Samayal last week.. She had won previous 2 rounds & came into this final round for a chance to win the modular kitchen set.. I forgot to post on her earlier rounds. Yugendran was her opponent even once ;) It was Preeti (of Tinku-Preethi fame) who opposed her in the final hurdle.. The title of the episode was to prepare main course food. Malini & her team chose gave a chance with non-vegetarian food having Chicken & Preethi with he mother prepared coconut milk rice & double beans (not sure) side dish.. It was both who won the round.. Malini taking home dream kitchen & Preethi getting chance to move to next round.

Celebrities in Advertisements..

We have been seeing lot of celebrities in the TV channels with lots & lots of advertisements.. these are the facts of their participation in 2008.. This results are from ADex India's analysis..

Shahrukh Khan had endorsed for maximum number of advertisers on TV during 2008 and he is closely followed by Indian Cricket team captain MS Dhoni. This had made their rankings to move up in the category of maximum number of advertisements.

Aerated soft drink and Cellular Phone service were the top categories for celebrity endorsement on TV. This trend has been there for few years..

Airtel cellular phone service was the top brand with highest share of celebrity endorsement TV ad volumes during 2008. We could see how many ads were coming in all the channels ;)

Amitabh Bachchan, Shweta Tiwari (Prerna) and Sachin Tendulkar are not among the top five list of celebrities with maximum number of advertisers on TV during 2008.

Top 10 endorsements that had celebrities in them..

Airtel Cellular Phone Service
Pepsi
Airtel-Nokia
Hero Honda Motorcycles
Royal Stag Mega Music
Boost
Idea Cellular
Lux Strawberry Cream
Pantene Pro-V Shine
Dish TV

Cut Down Taxes - DTH industry to Govt.

DTH operators have urged the government to relook at the four-level tax system as mounting losses have plagued the sector in the wake of an intense competition, rising subsidies, low ARPUs (average revenue per user), and a content regulatory framework. The hardening of the dollar against the rupee has also increased the hardware costs by 10-15 per cent. DTH operators import hardware including the set-top boxes (STBs).

"We are dogged by service tax, VAT (value-added tax), licence fee and entertainment tax. We will approach the government on the tax issues even as we are hit by the softening of the rupee. The hardware prices have gone up by 10-15 per cent because of this," said Dish TV chief operating officer Salil Kapoor on the sidelines of a conference organised by the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (Casbaa).

Elaborating on the massive losses that confront the sector, Tata Sky managing director and chief executive Vikram Kaushik said the break even period could go over 8-10 years with cost of acquisition of subscribers being as high as Rs 4000-5000 and ARPUs being as low as Rs 100-150. A high churn rate also increases the liability for DTH operators. With the government not allowing content exclusivity, this has only added to the woes of the DTH operators. “In a few years to come, one can expect consolidation or players winding up businesses,” Kaushik added. Big TV DTH head Ashutosh Srivastava said “The price of import of STBs has increased by 25 per cent."

But the DTH operators are still bullish on the growth opportunities. "While we have lots of challenges to overcome, there is still scope for healthy growth. And this can be achieved by offering new and enhanced services to customers," said Srivastava.Agreed Bharti Telemedia executive director N. Arjun: "With the government not allowing content exclusivity in DTH, value-added-services like movie-on-demand (MOV) and pay per view (PPV) will give DTH operators the edge. DTH operators should, thus, look at ways of monetising these interactive services as it also helps in retaining or adding new subscribers," he said.

TRAI norms for non-discriminatory access to content

Digital cable TV, direct-to-home (DTH) and IPTV operators can't demand carriage fee and still get that channel under the "must provide" clause, a Trai guideline on Interconnect Regulation said.
Addressable delivery platform providers can, however, charge a fee for placement of the channel on their networks.

For facilitating introduction and roll out of voluntary Cas (conditional access system), Trai has made it mandatory for all broadcasters to have reference interconnect offers (RIO) for all addressable systems. The sector regulator has also made it compulsory for all interconnect agreements to be reduced to writing while prescribing the terms and conditions, which should compulsorily form part of a RIO for DTH or any other addressable system (Voluntary CAS, IPTV, HITS). Trai has also allowed distributors employing addressable systems to provide their services to commercial subscribers.

Trai's aim behind these regulations is to facilitate access to content on non-discriminatory terms. "It is expected that these amendments to the existing Interconnection Regulations will go a long way in facilitating access to content on non-discriminatory terms for distributors of TV channels deploying addressable platforms, which will in turn lead to greater competition between the various pay TV delivery platforms, bringing considerable benefit to the consumers," the sector regulator said.

Trai had first issued the Telecommunication (Broadcasting and Cable Services) Interconnection Regulation in 2004 to cover arrangements among service providers for interconnection and revenue sharing for all broadcasting and cable services.

Courtesy - Indiantelevision

Whats in Western Round ?

Western round of Airtel Super Singer 2008 show had started today & it will also follow few of its previous rounds.. First 2 days the contestants would sing western songs.. "merkethiya thaakam ulla paadalgal" & waitlisted contestants will be singing western songs that dint feature in tamil film. The show has Srinivas, Unni krishnan & Sujatha as judges with voice trainer Ananth Vaidyanathan. Malini & Yugendran will be anchoring the show. I should put Malini's photo of this episode soon.. I am searching for one.. I dint liked the way she had dressed for this episode & I think she was seeing Oscar awards and wanna dress like some celebrity who had come for the awards...

'Jeyam Kondaan' Kannan..

It was directory Kannan's marriage in Namma Veetu kalyanam show yesterday.. I think 'Jeyam Kondaan" is his first film.. not sure will confirm it.. & it had a decent run. Here are few snaps of the marriage.. just in case if you had not seen the show ;)

Koffee with Harini/Tipu

Koffee with Anu had playback singers couple Tipu & Harini in the show day before.. I expected the episode to be bit more interesting.. but :( it started with Tipu speaking with Anu then Harini joined them. There were very good moments when they spoke about their days when they fell in love, the way they discussed with their family ;) I was really interested in their singing part & they did justice to the show.. I liked Album section the most in the show.. there were photos with their family which was quite interesting and childhood photos were even good. Koffee award was awarded to A.R. Rahman which was as expected.

Here is Santhosh !!

People who had been seeing Airtel Super Singer 2008 for quite sometime would definitely know Santhosh who was in the contest till last few weeks of the show. He was a part of Terror Trio (Ajeesh, Vijay & Santhosh) I have been following his blog for sometime and I thought of sharing it with you guys.. it will be an opportunity for someone to speak with him and pass ur wishes/ideas/advices to him. Meet Santhosh here

Prasanna Eliminated ?

I got this from Chennai TV News blog but not sure how true this info is... here its mentioned as Western round will be followed by Relationship round. But, I remember this relationship round was over long back.. so doubt whether this gonna happen..



Almost every week the future of Airtel Super singer is leaked, probably wanting to boost ratings. But seldom do I like to reveal what many could consider worthy suspense. However a news like this is worth revealing, hoping it will come untrue.

AIRTEL SUPER SINGER is surely tamilagathin bremandamana malayala kural thedal. [ for correct pronunciation contact malini] A carnatic genius and special judge Mrs. sudha raghunathan watered the plans of the judges to eliminate pressy which they must have thought must have been easy [ since pressy is not trained in carnatic], by praising him for his soul singing. With a heavy heart the judges adjourned the round with no elimination. But now it looks like prasanna managed to live for just two week more, for he is getting eliminated in the relationship round. The coming week is western round and then comes the relationship round. it is rumoured that there is no elimination in western.

In a very active website for this program where every episode video link is available, a commentator mentions that vijay and prasanna are pushed to elimination round, when unni asks both to sing a Malayalam song and pressy is eliminated. he also claims that vijay had prior information about the Malayalam song request. well not entirely impossible.

The soul will be missing, soon. .....

No Elimination ??

Well there were rumours going around for quite sometime on the results of the Airtel Super Singer 2008 show & we get to know what had happened much before the actual show comes in.. and this is yet another interesting news that we could see in many forums & websites/blogs saying that there would be no elimination in the western round of the Airtel Super Singer show.. Western round had just begin today and this rumour is spread around 3 days back itself & no one is sure what is the base of this.. ;) Its quite obvious that after few rounds of show's results had been spread out & it happend to be true there is a high possibility that this would also become true.. what say ??

Flooded with Campaigns...

General Elections 2009 will have more sound and colour than the previous elections with the private FM radio stations and television channels, which have mushroomed all over the country, adding to the din of the battle. Voters are flooded with campaigns on the Sun TV Network, on the DMK owned Kalaignar TV Network, the AIADMK mouthpiece Jaya TV Network, the Congress backed Vasanth TV and the PMK owned Makkal TV. Sun TV group has a number of FM radio stations across the state and this will help the DMK to reach out more.

Though Election Commission of India (ECI) has set stringent guidelines and regulations for campaigning through the electronic media for the coming polls, ingenious campaign managers can sidestep them and get through loopholes.

The campaign through Doordarshan and Akashvani will have to be vetted by the screening committee appointed by the ECI. The radio and television manuals, which govern the programmes on Doordarshan and AIR, are strict on the kind of language that can be used by party leaders. "Radio jockeys in private FM stations can plead with the voters during the live chat shows. The television anchors can promote the candidates preferred by their bosses. This is another kind of surreptitious advertisement," K Kunhikrishnan, former director general, Doordarshan says.

Veteran broadcasters point out that private television and radio stations will be able to launch a blitzkrieg through special programmes. Though rules prevented private radio stations from broadcasting news, many of them had started airing news bulletins, Kunhikrishnan pointed out. "FM radio stations are not meant for influencing public opinion, they are for entertainment purpose only. Moreover, the rules are very clear that election campaigns should not be done through radio network," Kunhikrishnan added.

As per a study by the Centre for Media Studies (CMS), conducting elections is always an expensive proposition and when it comes to the world's largest democracy, the bill could go up to as much as Rs 10,000 crore. While the 2004 Lok Sabha elections had cost the country Rs 4,500 crore, the poll bill came to around Rs 3,200 crore in 1998 and Rs 2,100 crore in the 1996 Lok Sabha elections.

The two major national parties, Congress and BJP, alone have a media advertising budget of Rs 200 crore each. The other parties are also planning to spend a total of Rs 500 crore on their ad campaigns. The ad industry is expecting at least Rs 1,000 crore to be spent overall by political parties across mediums ranging from print to digital. National parties like Congress and BJP already have their creative agencies in place for the campaigns. While the Congress has two roped in JWT and Crayons, the BJP recently hired Frank Simoes-Tag and Utopia.

Courtesy - Television Point