News TV India Ltd, the Indian arm of Rupert Murdoch-owned Star TV, is all set to acquire a 25% stake in Rajan Raheja-owned cable network, Hathway Cable & Datacom Private Ltd.
A formal announcement to this effect is expected to be made by Star officials next week.

With this deal, Star TV would have its long standing need of owning a cable distribution network, completed. With its rival channel Zee Telefilms owning its own cable network, Siti Cable, Star felt the serious need to strengthen its distribution platform.

Hathway is one of the leading MSO (multi system operator) in India with a substantial share of consumers in the cable distribution business. The other leading MSO‘s in the country are Siti Cable, owned Zee Telefilms, and Hinduja, owned IN CableNet.

Having gained access to the cable distribution network, Star can also go ahead with its convergence plans and other plans for the Internet sector. It has already set up a new media division to look into broadband, convergence and other Internet related services in the country.

Looks like Doordarshan is determined to improve the quality of its programmes, at least those in the prime time slot. After awarding the daily prime time slot of 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. to Kerry Packers Nine Broadcasting, it has now put its popular music show, Rangoli, on the auction blocks.

The show is aired every Sunday between 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. Doordarshan has invited bids from qualified producers/companies for production and marketing of the show for a period of one year starting 17 September 2000.

The interested parties are required to have experience of producing at least 100 hours of TV programmes and also must have telecast rights for minimum of 500 songs from ‘U‘ certified Hindi feature films.

In an interview given to a business television channel, R K Singh, CEO of Zee Telefilms has said that Zee will soon launch a new game show offering Rs 10 crore as prize money to counter Star TVs Kaun Banega Crorepati. The show is likely to be aired in the same time slot as that of KBC and will directly compete with it.

The show will have a high degree of viewer interaction along with a very transparent elimination round. There will be around thirty participants who would be gradually eliminated to pick out a winner. Each elimination round is expected to reward the participants who made it till there.

Apart from the game show, Zee will be adding quite a few new shows of different genres to their channel

This move shows the pinch that Zee was facing from Star‘s KBC and the money that can be staked in these cable wars having fierce competition. However it is the Indian viewer who will eventually benefit from these one-upmanship moves.