Indiantelevision.com Team

(30 March 2009 9:50 pm)

MUMBAI: Sahara is adopting the outsourcing model for its media business. MediaSys Solutions, a company floated by former Sony ad sales head and K Sera Sera CEO Kacon Sethi, former CEO of aMAP and Zenith Optomedia Tapan Pal and Indira Ganguly, has grabbed the ad sales functions of Sahara's TV news business.

NDTV Media is already handling the ad sales of Sahara One Media and Entertainment Ltd, the TV entertainment business of Sahara.

Sahara India Television Network (SITVN), the news channel business of Sahara, said Monday it has appointed MediaSys Solutions as its exclusive advertising sales partner in India.

"We have a five-year contract with Sahara. We are creating a news channel bouquet to increase our capabilities in the genre. Our plan is to target specific growth markets and genres as we realise that offering the broad plate of entire genre of channels is not workable in this climate," says Sethi.

As part of the agreement, MediaSys Solutions will be responsible for selling airtime for the bouquet of six Sahara Samay news channels. MediaSys will also provide services in the area of packaging, events and brand development.

The arrangement will be functional immediately, with elections coverage being the tent pole event for this quarter with an array of unique opportunities and innovations through this platform.

SITVN network has national Hindi news channel Samay and five focused channels for the nine states of Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal, Bihar and Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Chhatisgarh, Delhi NCR and Haryana and Maharashtra.

Sahara India media head Sumit Roy says, "As part of our strategic initiatives to further strengthen Sahara Samay’s position in the industry, we have appointed MediaSys as an exclusive advertising partner for our channel. We believe that, this arrangement will enable us to deploy our sales resources more effectively and we are sure that this partnership would augment our branding efforts too."

MediaSys Solutions partner Sethi says, “We are glad to partner SITVN, one of the leading companies in television news channels. We believe that there are huge opportunities that are still untapped."

Sethi adds, “Our vision is to make MediaSys the best resources company. Early acceptance from media owners across broadcasting and publishing for our business model has vindicated our instinct.”