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The agreement, as disclosed by Sony Entertainment TV India chief
executive Kunal Dasgupta, was signed today at a five-star hotel's
coffee shop by NDTV president Prannoy Roy, Dasgupta and Deepak Shourie,
managing director of Discovery Networks India.
One Alliance is a joint venture between SET India and Discovery
India and the entity's president is Shantonu Aditya.
Addressing a packed press conference here, Roy said, "We were wooed
by others. In the end it was One Alliance that became the first
choice because of their professionalism. It's a great step for us."
Roy also clarified that both, the Hindi and English news channels-
involving software and hardware innovations not seen in India till
now, will be launched together and not in a phased manner. He, however,
declined to give more details about the channels saying, "There
will be other times when we will disclose to the media those details."
The two news channels would be beamed through PanAmSat satellite,
which would mean all the One Alliance channels would be on the same
satellite.
"The combination of NDTV's two news channels with the tremendous
reach of the One Alliance will be unbeatable," Roy maintained.
If one sets aside the surge in viewership of the One Alliance channels
(Sony and SET Max) in recent times due to cricket, the bouquet has
claimed to be reaching 26 million homes of the estimated 40 million
cable and satellite Indian homes.
On One Alliance's part, Dasgupta said that NDTV's news channels
coming on board would complete the important missing link -news
and current affairs, in the bouquet. However, in the short term
there would not be any change in the subscription rate of One Alliance
channels as, it's "too early to say anything about the pricing"
of the two digitally encrypted news channels coming on board.
"We also hope that by July, we would be able to take the viewership
of NDTV channels up to 26 million homes that would be as much as
an entertainment channel's reach," Dasgupta said.
Ten thousand boxes or IRDs are being fed in the market for the
NDTV channels by the One Alliance team, which claimed that the number
is almost three times more than another company that proposes to
launch an English news channels and is not aligned with any bouquet.
"One Alliance's objective is to have a small bouquet, but with
the most powerful of channels that are in the forefront in their
respective genres," Dasgupta explained.
At the moment the One Alliance bouquet, one of the three in the
Indian context, has channels that include Sony, SET Max, AXN, HBO,
Discovery Channel, Animal Planet and CNBC India. The last is slated
to drift away to the Zee Turner bouquet after March 31, on the same
day as NDTV - Star marriage comes to an end.
When quizzed on the CNBC India issue, Dasgupta, maintained that
no notice has been sent by CNBC India yet to indicate that it is
leaving for some other bouquet. "They better give One Alliance a
notice well in advance," he added.
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