India's booming entertainment industry in focus at FICCI-Frames (Lead)

Mumbai, March 24 (IANS) About 2,000 Indian and 500 foreign delegates from across the world are expected to participate in FICCI-Frames, a global convention that throws the spotlight on the country's booming media and entertainment industry.

Information and Broadcasting Minister Priyaranjan Dasmunshi will inaugurate FICCI-Frames 2008 Tuesday in suburban Powai.

The top honchos of the entertainment industry in India and abroad will participate in the three-day event to discuss, among other issues, the future direction of the country's Rs.500 billion ($12.5 billion) media and entertainment industry that registered a 17 percent growth last year over the previous year's figure.

Bollywood filmmakers Yash Chopra and Subhash Ghai, Kunal Dasgupta, CEO of Sony Entertainment Television, Amit Khanna, chairman of Reliance Entertainment Pvt Ltd, and Peter Mukherjea, chairman of INOX Group, are among the leaders of the Indian entertainment industry who will address the convention.

It has been divided into 30 separate sessions followed by a question and answer session.

The major topics to be discussed and deliberated on include: 'Blockbuster growth: Indian entertainment, what will make the boom bigger', 'The Opening weekend: how to get the audience in', 'Linguistic diversity in Indian cinema', and Talent crunch in the media and entertainment industry.

Television will also be covered extensively and this section will have topics like 'Is news entertainment? Changing face of the television news in India' and 'Redefining television content: shifting patters'.

Barrie Osborne, producer of 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy, will give a keynote address on the global entertainment industry.

Besides, there will be sessions on the newspaper medium, radio, animation, gaming, online media platforms, digital cinema, film marketing and distribution, changing trends in music, scriptwriting, VFX, entertainment through mobile phones and sports as big entertainment option.

Stewart Beck, assistant deputy minister of investment, innovation, foreign affairs and international trade, Canada; Swiss envoy Dominique Dreyer; Viviane Reding, European commissioner, information society and media; Philippe Cayla, CEO of Euronews, France; John Mathew, chief general manager of EXIM Bank are among the foreign speakers.

Indian media personalities like Vinod Dua, Barkha Dutt, Rajat Sharma, Girish Agarwal and Sanjay Gupta will deliberate on TV and newspaper content.

Timmy Kandhari, executive director of Entertainment Practice of PriceWaterhouse Coopers, will make a presentation on the overall growth of the Indian media and entertainment.