INDIA TODAY GROUP TO LAUNCH NEWS CHANNEL

Another player is seeking to enter the crowded news & current affairs television channel segment. Aroon Purie-promoted Living Media, the publisher of magazines like India Today and Business Today, has drawn up a business plan to launch a news and current affairs channel by January 2000.

G. Krishnan, an executive director with Living Media and head of the group's TV venture, refused to comment on the issue, but did not deny anything outright.

Still, according to sources close to Aroon Purie, the group is negotiating with the Thailand-based Shinawatra for a transponder on the Thiacom satellite series, most likely Thaicom 3. Living Media has in its fold TV Today a television production company headed by Madhu Trehan, Purie's sister. TV Today has produced Aaj Tak, a daily news and current affairs for state-owned broadcaster DD for a couple of years now.

Recently Thaicom representatives from both and India and Thailand met up with the Living Media executives. The sources said, "Few rounds of talks have been held with the Shinawatra executives for a transponder on Thaicom 3 which has transponders with steerable beams." Living Media, however, has kept its options open and has sounded out Intelsat in this regard too.

Launching a channel makes sense now as the Indian government has allowed private Indian broadcasters, with maximum of 20 per cent foreign stake, to uplink from India and also have earth stations of their own for this purpose, thus ending state-owned VSNL's monopoly in providing uplinking facilities.

Three Indian broadcasters already have obtained permission for setting up their own earth stations in India and the government is also likely to permit TV production houses, which TV Today at present is, to uplink from India.

The name of the Living Media-promoted news channel has not yet been finalised, but names being toyed around with include TV Today or News Today. The channel will initially not be a round the clock channel, as cost of producing news and current affairs programming is fairly high.

Living Media sources said that the group is quietly putting together the infrastructure needed for a satellite channel. "But in the initial stages, the operation is likely to be a low-cost affair, along the lines of Zee News in its earlier days," the sources said.

Living Media has been juggling with the idea of launching a satellite channel for quite a few years now. However, it appears to be serious this time. Assignments on Doordarshan and other private satellite channels have been dwindling in recent times and this may have acted as a catalyst to force the group to launch a channel of its own.