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A WSN company spokeserson when contacted claimed that WSN put its
best foot forward, both qualitatively and financially, when pitching
for the MAX business. But the official refused to give any financial
details.
CHARU'S
ANGELS: Presenter Charu Sharma and his trio of 'Extraaa Innings'
co-presenters Mandira, Sandhya and Maria strike a pose. |
"WSN has arguably the best cricket production team in the world,
unparalleled experience in various parts of the world, a full fledged
and running operation in South Africa through its wholly owned subsidiary
World Sport Nimbus (SA) Pty Ltd, excellent knowledge of what makes
the Indian viewer tick and the ability to mesh entertainment with
cricket: all factors that it would like to believe are important
to broadcasters when awarding large scale production contracts for
the Indian region," the spokesperson adds.
Extraaa Innings programming:
The
scenic Table Mountain in Cape Town |
Elaborating on what was involved in, Dempsey said the mammoth exercise
will involve 15-20 cameras, and three placement screens within the
stadium. There will be three to four camera crews travelling across
South Africa. The entire activity will be coordinated from a studio
in Cape Town, that has the scenic Table Mountain backdrop. The various
cities (venues) such as Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Centurion,
Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein, East London, Potchefstroom, Kimberley,
Paarl, Benoni, Pietermaritzburg, Bulawayo, Harare will be showcased.
Dempsey states that MAX has finalised the programming flow for
Extraaa Innings component. The emphasis will be on providing
personality-based information on cricketers; likes and dislikes;
sight-seeing; cuisine; shopping; tarot-reading and celebrities.
The programming team will ensure that several aspects of the lifestyles
of Indian cricket team members will also be showcased on India
on Tour . This is to be a daily feature, irrespective of whether
India matches are scheduled or not.
Pre-match two-hour duration: During the first hour of the
pre-match programming, the focus will be on lighter aspects and
entertainment, essentially for the uninitiatied viewer. In the second
hour, as the show leads in towards match time, the overall pitch
is directed at the purists and several cricket-related statistics,
analyses and predictions will be made. Wisden will provide the statistics
and analysis, Dempsey reveals.
Post match one-hour duration: If the pre-match segment goes
from light to heavy across the two hours, the post-match show does
the exact opposite. The first 30-minute segment will comprise serious
post-match analysis and the like. The second segment will include
more of entertainment and lighter tidbits.
Queried as to whether Sony had been dissatisfied with the work
done by TWI, the television arm of IMG, which won the production
contract for the Champions, Dempsey replied in the negative. It
was more an issue of scale, Dempsey said. According to him, while
TWI had done a satisfactory job in Sri Lanka, he believed the WSN
team had the greater expertise to handle the logistics involved
in covering the World Cup (54 days of cricket across three countries).
In the case of national broadcaster Doordarshan, however, it will
be done in-house. DD has slotted a one-hour pre-match segment that
will be handled out of its own studios. All DD will be using is
the WSN world feed for match telecast.
Earlier this year, Doordarshan (DD) had however, awarded the television
production contract for cricket matches played in India to WSN wherein
the state-owned broad-caster has to pay Rs 284.6 million for cricket-related
programming production between 21 February, 2002, to October 2004.
WSN will have to arrange for production of 81 days of cricket.
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