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DD ASSIGNS PRODCTION
AND AIR TIME RIGHTS FOR KIWI CRICKET SERIES
After a lot of controversy involving
WorldTel around domestic cricket telecast rights, Doordarshan
finally awarded the production contract for the New
Zealand series to Trans World International for close
to US $900,000. The domestic air time selling assignment
for the series was awarded to Nimbus Communications'
Harish Thawani while overseas marketing rights were
awarded to TWI and Stracon Consultancy headed by Siddartha
Ray. Thawani has committed that he will generate minimum
ad revenues of $3 million for DD during the Kiwi series
telecast.
In the initial bidding process, TWI and
Stracon had made a bid of $1.2 million and $800,000
for the production and international marketing rights
respectively as against Asia Sport, which had quoted
$990,000 and $590,000 respectively. TWI however revised
its production quote to match Asia Sport's lower figure,
and DD decided to award it the contract.
The big race for the production rights
for the rest of the five years will commence after the
current series ends when DD will throw open the tender
for that to all and sundry. At that stage, the four
production companies who bid for the current series
- TWI, World Tel, Asia Sport, CSI - are likely to make
their offers once again. Hopefully, there will be less
controversy then.
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