Broadbandindia Magazine

The Reliance ADAG group is planning a foray into the expand media business. A company executive said that the Reliance ADAG group is keen on foraying into television broadcasting business. “Currently, the company is proceeding with studies and analysis,” said the executive. Moreover, he added that the company would consider acquisition of sick-broadcasters as most of them are in deep financial trouble.

Reliance ADAG, through several affiliates and group companies, holds substantial equity stakes in several media and entertainment firms. Also Reliance  Entertainment planned to launch around eight websites, including a job portal and a classifieds portal.

`Big’ name

“All Reliance ADAG group entertainment businesses have the word ‘Big’ in their names,”. Reliance ADAG has already started producing regional content through Big Productions. The firm already runs gaming portal Zapak, social networking site BigAdda, and online movie rental business Big Flicks. The Reliance ADAG Group has ventured into the FM radio business through its Big FM; film production and distribution business through Adlabs; Internet gaming portal through Zapak; film music distribution rights through Big Music and Home Entertainment; and movie rental and online downloading segment through BigFlicks.

Channel Business

“The company, earlier, planned to launch and operate a bouquet of 20 channels under two new entities — Reliance Big TV Entertainment and Reliance Big TV News. A Hindi general entertainment channel and three regional movie channels were planned to be launched by August 2008. But the project has failed to take off from the discussion stage as the financial climate was not supportive for investments, said media.

lifestyle and an English music channel. The lifestyle channel will focus on fitness for which the content is being firmed up. Big Broadcasting, the entity which will own and operate Reliance’s TV channels, is also in talks with international music labels like Sony, BMG and Universal for the content lineup on its music channel.

The Hindi movie channel is on the backburner as there is paucity of content in the marketplace. Recently, Reliance sold telecast rights for 25 Hindi movies to UTV Movies on a limited screening basis for two years. The list included Rock On, Luck By Chance, Marigold, Johnny Gaddaar, Love Story 2050, Border, Refugee, Main Madhuri Dixit Banna Chahti Hoon, and Gangaajal.

“For building a movie channel like Zee Cinema or Max, content is just not available at this stage. The option is to either run a movie channel on syndicated content or acquire one. But on syndicated content you can’t have a movie channel of big size,” sources add. Reliance is believed to have started talks with Sahara One Media & Entertainment Ltd. for acquiring its Hindi movie channel Filmy, but couldn’t settle on the valuation.

Fatty DTH bouquet

BIG TV, the service of Reliance ADA Group, is expanding its channel bouquet with the addition of 10 new channels. The 10 channels will be available on the BIG TV platform. The 10 new channels include Korea’s KBS (international offering) and WB the latest, English entertainment channel from the broadcasting major, Turner  International India Pvt. Ltd. in association with their sister company Warner Bros. The rest of the 8 channels include leading regional channels in India; DD Podhigai (Tamil), NE TV (Telugu), India Vision (Malayalam), Star Jalsa (Bangla), Star Pravah (Marathi), Mahua (Bhojpuri), DD Kashmir (Urdu / Kashmiri), & TV99 Now Reliance ADAG company will launch two channels — a (Rajasthani). BIG TV will be offering these channels across various subscription packs. Customers wishing to avail of these channels can log their request at the call-centre by asking for the new subscription pack. The customer can select the free regional pack as part of the new subscription / recharge. BIG TV’s subscription packs are available from Rs.115 (plus taxes) onwards.

Commenting on the introduction of the new channels in Reliance BIG TV bouquet, Mr. Mahesh Prasad, President, Reliance Communications said,”Our new offers are part of BIG TV’s continuous endeavor to offer increased value to customers with great savings in mind. Besides reducing prices on some of the existing packages, we’ve also added to the regional channel count in 13 regional packs. We make sure Reliance Big TV caters to all kind of viewers in entertainment category. This goes to show Reliance BIG TV stands for the benefit of its customers at all times.” The introduction of new channels is part of Reliance BIG TV’s overall strategy to increase its channel bouquet to 400 channels over the next one year. Reliance BIG TV plans to offer a choice of Indian and global channels to its subscribers.

iStock

Reliance BIG TV launches iStock – India’s first portfolio tracking service on a DTH platform. Reliance Big TV has launched this unique application in association with Reliance Money. Reliance Money has created a unique iStock zone on Reliance BIG TV’s DTH platform. This zone will not only provide information about Indian and international indices, currencies, commodity, stock and market news; but also provide Reliance Big TV customers with value added services including a unique personal portfolio management tracker.

Commenting on the launch of this unique interactive application, Mr. Mahesh Prasad, President, Reliance Communications said, “The iStock launch is an excellent illustration of the Reliance ADA Group successful effort to draw synergies of its domain expertise across various sectors. The iStock application is part of our endeavour to offer customers unique and differentiated content and enhance their overall interaction with the Reliance BIG TV brand.” “Since the launch of Reliance BIG TV, we have been at the forefront of driving DTH penetration in India. We escalated the DTH growth story in India with the largest on ground roll-out of a home entertainment service in India. And we followed this up by acquiring one million customers within 90 days of launch,” Mahesh Prasad added.

According to Sudip Bandyopadhyay, Managing Director, Reliance Money said, “At Reliance Money, it is our constant endeavor to innovate and provide our  customers with value added services and increased levels of convenience. As a part of our electronic channel strategy to meet this objective, Reliance Money is already present on the Internet through our trading kiosks and on the mobile. Embracing the DTH platform of Reliance Big TV was the logical next step in providing our customers the added advantage of being able to access Reliance Money’s portal content from the comfort of their living rooms.”

Personal Portfolio Manager to add value to DTH Portfolio

An exclusive and unique feature of Reliance BIG TV’s iStock application is the personal Portfolio Manager. iStock’s Portfolio Manager will allow users to add, track upward / downward movement of their stocks automatically and the overall gain / loss of their investments. The Portfolio Manager will allow users to add up to 16 stocks in the portfolio and monitor them independently with an option to edit/ delete/ replace the target stocks anytime. Reliance BIG TV will also present all the information in graphic charts to display the trends.

This is part of Reliance BIG TV’s increasing focus to build its DTH VAS portfolio. The company plans to drive growth and broaden its customer base by a focused approach on providing unique and benchmarking value added services. Currently over 10% of Reliance BIG TV’s subscriber base uses its various interactive features such as iGames, iCooking, iNews, iAstro and iSports. Though currently offered as a “free of cost service”, as part of its long term strategy, Reliance BIG TV may decide to monetize its interactive applications through targeted revenue modules.

Reliance BIG TV sees big appeal for iStock application from cities and smaller towns alike especially amongst the trading community who have invested in markets and would like to keep a close watch on their stocks. Reliance BIG TV’s iNTERACTIVE applications offer a world of exclusive interactive features at the touch of a button on the Reliance BIG TV remote. iSTOCK is the latest in a bouquet of growing interactive applications under its iNTERACTIVE services which include sporting action on iSPORTS, games application iGAMES, daily astro feature iASTRO, recipe-rich iCOOKING and iNEWS with the latest news updates.