April is a record month for ESPN's SportsCenter show in Asia as all three local versions achieved notable milestones with SportsCenter in Taiwan incorporating presenters into the programme, SportsCenter Hindi celebrating its first year anniversary as India's one-stop source for the latest sports news, and SportsCenter Asia becomes the most popular sports news programme on cable in Singapore.

SportsCenter Hindi, which claims to be India's first-ever live Hindi sports news bulletin, celebrates its first anniversary. Darain Shahidi hosts the show and segments include Headlines, International News, Cricket News, India Diary, India Results. The show airs at 8pm with a repeat at 11pm from Monday-Friday.

SportsCenter Taiwan is expected to strengthen its market presence with the addition of news presenters Teng Kuo-Hsiung, Julian Lin and Francis Chang, an official release states. The latest decision emulates the winning formula of the American show. Show sponsors are Daimler Chrysler and President PoSweat while segment sponsors include Federal Express, UBS and Adidas.

The live pan-regional edition of the show, SportsCenter Asia broadcasts entirely in English. In markets where peoplemarket research is conducted cable data shows that 39 per cent of professionals, managers, executives and businessmen watch the show in Taiwan. It attracts 47 per cent of male professionals in Singapore and more than half of upscale adult male cable viewers in India. (AC Nielsen Taiwan, TN Sofres Infosys Singapore and TAM India Media Xpress, 13 August 2001-15 March 2002)

In Singapore peoplemeter research shows that SportsCenter Asia is watched by 39 per cent of all cable individuals. The number increases to 52 per cent among professionals, managers, executives and businessmen ages 25 to 44. Competing sports news programmes on other news and sports channels on cable are lagging behind, an official release states.

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