Zee Telefilms Ltd
The country's largest vertically integrated media company Zee
Telefilms Ltd can term 2005 as a year when its hopes got dashed (as the
Supreme Court ruled against its petition challenging the Indian cricket
boss' diktats) and rekindled as towards the end of the year a new
regime took over the Indian cricket board and promptly handed Zee the
rights for the India-Sri Lanka Test series.
Considering that the group's promoter Subhash Chandra is bullish on
cricket and his sports channel, late developments augur well for the
group.
And, then the predictably unpredictable Chandra relinquished the
position of managing director deciding to continue as the non-executive
chairman and principal promoter of Zee Telefilms. Who'll fill the MD's
vacant slot? A good question for which nobody has an immediate answer
except guesses like CEO Pradeep Guha who might be elevated to the
vacant position.
The high profile Guha joined as the CEO of Zee Tele from Bennett, Coleman & Co, publishers of The Times of India.
While Chandra re-entered the FM radio race through Essel Group
company Pan India Network Infravest, he also hived off the news
business into a separate company, Zee News Pvt Ltd with scaled down the
foreign holding to comply with government norms.
In the restructured news entity, Zee Telefilms' equity stake is 35
per cent, which works out under a complex formula to about 20 per cent
of foreign holding on a pro rata basis.
ZTL also restructured its top management. The most crucial was the
change at the top for flagship channel Zee TV. Puneet Goenka, who had
been overseeing the operations of Zee Sports, was made Zee TV business
head, while outgoing Zee TV business head Abhijit Saxena returned to
the arena where he first made a mark, the distribution business. Saxena
also supervises special projects for Zee TV.
After almost 13 years of existence, the Zee Network decided to sport
a new look, which also included renaming of the three English channels.
Zee English, ZMZ and MX were re-named as Zee Caf, Zee Studios and Zee
Select, respectively. Comedy channel Smile TV became Zee Smile and
Trendz got re-christened as Zee Trendz. All channels under the Alpha
brand were brought under the Zee brand. The company's lone south Indian
presence, Zee Telugu, got relaunched in May 2005.
With game shows being the flavour of the year, Zee TV launched the
Rs 30 million Kam ya Zyaada in the last leg of the calendar year with
actor Manoj Bajpai as an anchor.
Programming-wise, the channel attempted a variety of genres this year. Sinndoor Tere Naam Ka and a consistent Tumhari Disha have helped the channel to strengthen the 7:30 pm - 8 pm time band. 2005 also saw Zee TV increasing its production and promotion budgets manifold.
On the international front, Zee Arabiya, a music and lifestyle
channel for the youth, was launched. This was Zee's first localised
channel offering in the Middle East. Zee has commited to invest around
Rs 1.2 billion in the region within a year.
Source: Indiantelevision.com
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