MUMBAI: The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has awarded ARD and ZDF the broadcast rights in Germany for the XXII Olympic Winter Games (2014) in Sochi, Russia, and the Games of the XXXI Olympiad (2016) in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil.

ARD and ZDF have acquired the broadcast rights across all media platforms, including free-to-air television, subscription television, Internet and mobile.

 
IOC president Jacques Rogge said, "We are very pleased to continue our relationship with ARD and ZDF. They have provided fantastic broadcast coverage of the Games to the widest possible audience in Germany for many years and have demonstrated a strong commitment to the Olympic Movement."

IOC Executive Board member Thomas Bach, who led the negotiations, said, ?ARD and ZDF have proven to be excellent broadcast partners for the Olympic Movement. This is the first time we have negotiated broadcast rights directly in Germany, as opposed to through a broadcast union, and we are delighted to continue our relationship with the experienced teams at both ARD and ZDF.?

MUMBAI: US broadcaster NBC has announced that its singing based competition show ‘The Voice‘s final eight contestants will hit the road for Sprint presents "The Voice" Live On Tour.

The Live Nation-promoted tour has confirmed six shows beginning on 27 July 2011 at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Los Angeles, with stops in Las Vegas, New York, Chicago, Boston and Wallingford. Tickets for Sprint presents "The Voice" Live On Tour are on sale now at LiveNation.com.

 
The tour will feature performances from the show‘s top contestants including Team Christina‘s top two artists, finalist Beverly McClellan and runner up Frenchie Davis; Team Blake‘s top two, finalist Dia Frampton and runner up Xenia; Team Cee Lo‘s top two, runner up Nakia and finalist Vicci Martinez; and Team Adam‘s top two, runner up Casey Weston and finalist Javier Colon.

Sprint presents "The Voice" Live On Tour has also teamed with I Love All Access to provide a variety of VIP ticket packages for the show, including premium seats, meet and greets, exclusive gifts and more.

The top eight artists from "The Voice" are Beverly McClellan, a member of Christina‘s team who is a soulful rock singer with honest lyrics and a raw sound, Vicci Martinez, a member of Cee Lo‘s team who is a bluesy soul singer from Tacoma, Washington, Javier Colon a soulful pop singer, Dia Frampton a 23-year-old singer-songwriter, Frenchie Davis from Washington D.C. Nakia, Casey Weston and Xenia.

MUMBAI: In response to a PIL filed by Mukesh Sharma that challenges a promo of Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC 4) for insulting and maligning the slogan ‘‘Tum mujhe khoon do, main tumhe azadi doonga‘‘ coined by by Subhash Chandra Bose, the Bombay High Court has issued notices to Amitabh Bachchan and Sony Entertainment Television.

Chief Justice Mohit Shah and Justice G S Godbole have asked both Bachchan, anchor of the upcoming show KBC, and Sony TV to file their response by 28 of this month.

 
The Court also asked the petitioner to make the Indian ministry of Information and Broadcasting as well as Advertisement Standard Council of India as respondents.

Putting down his argument on the matter, counsel for Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) Rui Rodrigues said that the promo was not derogatory but was funny. He said that the supervising committee had gone into the matter before clearing it.

In his PIL, Sharma had said that there were six scenes in Hindi which were meant to promote the reality show and increase its TRP. Of the six scenes, five are insulting and derogatory to Netaji‘s slogan. Some scenes in the promo show that people were unaware about the slogan and Netaji‘s role in freedom struggle, Sharma‘s PIL read.

He said that all the promos were insulting, defamatory and maligning. Sharma further said that it was surprising to note why Bachchan did not excuse himself from playing his act in the controversial promo of KBC 4.

MUMBAI: Shah Rukh Khan?s upcoming superhero movie Ra.1 has fetched a whopping Rs 500 million for the satellite TV telecast and music rights, according to industry sources.

Star India has acquired the exclusive satellite TV telecast rights for the movie for Rs 350 million, sources say.

 
The music rights of the movie have gone to music label major T-Series.

Industry sources say that T-Series has paid Rs 150 million for the exclusive music rights.

Both Star India and T-Series have bought the rights from Eros International, the pure play movie studio.

Produced by Gauri Khan and directed by Anubhav Sinha, the movie is slated to release on 26 October. The film stars Khan as the superhero G.One, while Kareena Kapoor and Arjun Rampal are in other important roles.

MUMBAI: Saregama India has taken a 10 per cent stake in Timbre Media,a company floated by ex-WorldSpace Radio employees.

Saregama has also entered into a strategic partnership with Timbre Media to launch a variety of genre-based digital radio channels. The plan is to launch these channels on mobile, Internet and DTH services.The new radio channels will leverage Saregama‘s library as well asother labels. The content will range from old Hindi music, Hindustaniclassical, Carnatic classical, new Hindi music and ghazals.

The companies will also leverage the distribution network of Saregamaand Timbre Media-developed channels to target the digital domains.

 
Saregama India managing director Apurv Nagpal said, ?It is a significant step forward for Saregama into the digital domain and we believe that together we will bring back the customer delight for evolved radio listening through this strategic alliance.?

WorldSpace Radio was closed down in India on 31 December 2009, as the company filed for bankruptcy in the US. The company, which had 90 percent of the customers in India, said at that time that the ?potential buyer of WorldSpace‘s global assets has decided not to buy the assets relating to and supporting the subscription business in India.?

Later, most of the employees, headed by Worldspace India managing director M Sebastian, formed Timbre Media in early 2010. The company also secured exclusive licence to use the WorldSpace brand in India and the Middle East.

Sebastian said, ?We?re poised to take the big step now. Since early 2010 we have established the critical infrastructure needed for high quality services, including new studio facilities in Mumbai and Bangalore, We have been steadily building partnerships and clientele in the radio and music industry and Saregama, of course, needs no introduction ? its history is the history of recorded music in our nation. The partnership with Saregama provides a tremendous boost to our ability to package and distribute quality music content and with them on our side we believe that we are in a strong position to reach a very broad audience and grow rapidly.?

Talking to Indiantelevision.com, Sebastian said that Timber Media is in talks with players across the platforms. He said that while WorldSpace was confined to satellite, the new radio channels will be completely genre agnostic. ?We will also have flexible pricing approach, which will be based on platform as well as content,?Sebastian elaborated.

On the deal with Saregama, Sebastian added that Timber Media has got a good valuation with the partnership. He, however, refused to give details of the transactions.

Meanwhile, the company has a staff strength of over 80 people as it has absorbed most of the India team of WorldSpace Radio. Sebastian is hopeful that once the deals are struck, the company will see profits soon.

Timbre Media co-founder and head of content Seetal R Iyer added, ?Timbre Media was formed in 2010 and has drawn experience from professionals involved with WorldSpace earlier. We focused on returning those lost stations of WorldSpace to the people. For our listeners, this means that their favourite WorldSpace stations like Farishta, Jhankaar, Gandharv, and Shruti, to name a few, will be back again soon on various platforms.?

 
MUMBAI: Babies that eat their parents? Flesh-eating plants? Animals that build skyscrapers? The natural world has weird and wonderful stories beyond your wildest dreams. But can you really trust your eyes? Can one tell fact from fiction? Animal Planet has kicked off the show Fooled By Nature which brings viewers stories from the wild.

The 26-part series airs every Friday at 8 pm. Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific senior VP, GM South Asia Rahul Johri said, ?Our natural world is full of weird and wonderful creatures. Animal Planet continues to bring such incredible stories from the wild that entertain and engage viewers. In its new series Fooled by Nature, Animal Planet unearths strange facts and myths about animal behaviour.?

 
The amaurobios, a garden spider commonly found in Europe and North America, is a devoted mother ? so devoted in fact that she is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. Once her hundreds of spiderlings hatch, they feed on a special foodsack of eggs their mother lays for them. But once the eggs are gone, she urges her young to eat her alive to ensure their survival. Her grisly sacrifice safeguards the survival of as many of her offspring as possible.

But the Darwinian ruthlessness doesn?t stop there. In Kenya, the naked mole rat lives in colonies of up to 300 members, all controlled by a single queen mole rat. This queen guarantees her position as head of the colony by suppressing the reproductive cycle of all other females through a pheromone secreted in her urine. While the ordinary females toil for the duration of their short lives, the queen maintains a monopoly on breeding.

There is also the story of the penguin father that starves himself for four months just to keep his baby chick warm, the alligator babies whose gender is determined by the surrounding temperature, and the bird that incubates its eggs in a volcano.

In each episode, the series presents five unique stories. But only four of these stories are true. Is the suicidal spider the red herring? Or is it the authoritarian mole rat? The show explores the weird, the wonderful, the dazzling and the disgusting in the natural world ? with a twist.

One episode looks at Bizarre Breaders. Nature‘s Bizarre Breeders have the strangest ways of bringing up babies. Emperor penguin fathers that produce "milk"; alligator mothers who control their babies‘ gender by temperature; birds that use volcanoes to warm their eggs; and a spider mom that will die for her babies. All these animals are parents prepared to make extraordinary sacrifices for their babies.