BJP’s campaign for Delhi Assembly elections is already attracting media attention and not all of it that the party would like to be involved in.
Entertainment Network India Ltd (ENIL) has appointed Vikram Ahuja as Marketing Head for Radio Mirchi Mumbai. In this new role, Ahuja will focus on marketing initiatives that will add on to Radio Mirchi’s brand value. Prior to this, Ahuja was involved in marketing activities at Radio Mirchi Delhi as Marketing Head. He will be reporting to Kavita Bagga, National Marketing Head, Radio Mirchi.
Rajshri Media has recently added to its team in Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai. Shashank Sathe has been appointed as Chief Technology Officer at its Mumbai headquarters. Prior to this appointment, Sathe was with Digital Media Convergence Ltd, an Essel Group company. Shobhit Agarwal has joined Rajshri Media’s Delhi ad sales office. He moves from Clickjobs.com. Ravneet Munjal has been hired to head content acquisition at the Delhi office. Munjal was earlier associated with the India Today Group. Rajshri Media has also started its operations in Chennai with Palaniappan, a senior photographer, cinematographer, writer and director, heading Tamil content acquisition. Another significant addition is that of Rajiv Vijayakar as the in-house film critic for reviews of new Bollywood releases. Vijayakar has experience as a journalist and is associated with Screen and India West, USA.
Dinamalar, one of the leading Tamil dailies, has strengthened its online edition by adding two more sub-domains – ‘Cricket’ and ‘Car Buy’. While ‘Cricket’ offers tournament itineraries, scorecard, commentary, partnerships, match highlights and run rate graphs, ‘Car Buy’ provides information on cars based on brand and price.
India is among six other countries that are likely to face an outage in the next three years, says a transmission trouble report by CASBAA. The report also showcases the threat to television services posed by the deployment of broadband wireless access services in the radio frequency band used for the wholesale distribution of satellite TV signals in Asia.
Femina, which recently celebrated its 50th year with a jumbo 560-paged special anniversary issue, is all set to launch its Hindi edition. Femina Hindi is expected to hit newsstands in the first week of November this year. As in the case of Femina English, Femina Hindi would be a monthly magazine and would be priced at Rs 40.
Subramanian Swaminathan (popularly known as Subbu in the industry) has moved on from Mindshare. He has joined BCCL’s Times Private Treaties as General Manager and will be looking after Tamil Nadu and Kerala markets. Subbu had spent close to six years with Mindshare, which has seen a fantastic run in the South.
Leo Burnett and O&M have ensured that the Indian flag continues to fly at the 23rd London International Awards (LIA). Two Golds and two Silvers await Leo Burnett Mumbai, while O&M Mumbai has won three Silvers. The Awards would be given away at a ceremony at Hippodrome in London on November 10, 2008.
While the Indian radio industry remains largely buffered from the ongoing global economic crisis, the radio players are not breathing easy and keep a hawk’s eye on the market developments.
The Indian advertising industry is not immune to the global economic slowdown that is impacting businesses worldwide. With companies resorting to handing out pink slips and cutting down on expenditures by 20 per cent, the ad industry is beginning to face the brunt of this slowdown. Diwali didn’t bring much cheer and the outlook remains glum.
The Essel Group has found another reason to question TAM Media Research. According to TAM data, Essel Sport’s Indian Cricket League (ICL) has had a very poor show of ratings in its second season. Essel has compared this to the ratings seen in aMap and has asked TAM to clarify on the reason behind the deviation from the so-called correlation between the two data numbers.
We would publish ‘Femina’ in Hindi and in English. ‘Filmfare’ is the most powerful media brand associated with Bollywood. Both have live events that they are associated with. Both are strong brands that are really powerful, and we would like to take them international… If ‘Femina’ in Hindi takes off, which I am sure it would, then we would look at bringing out the title in Tamil as well. We are thinking of events even for our titles like ‘Grazia’ and ‘Hello’. Filmfare.com has been launched; there are plans to take the awards international. And you would see much of this action in the next six months.