ZEE-Turner launches new bouquet for Rs 40

ZEE-Turner has launched a new bouquet of channels which includes POGO, HBO, VH1, ZEE Business and TV18 Group's new Hindi business channel. The bouquet will be priced at a retail price of Rs 40 and a wholesale price of Rs 25 per subscriber per month. The rates will be effective from January 1, 2005.

Siddharth Jain, chief executive officer, ZEE-Turner says, "The most distinctive aspect of our new bouquet will be to fulfill the ever-increasing demand for quality and variety. The new bouquet will provide a major fillip not only to our distribution platform, but also to the 44 million cable and satellite viewers.”

Interestingly, both ZEE Business and CNBC's Hindi news channel, which belong to the same genre, will be a part of the same bouquet. When quizzed on this, Jain says, "Even in the past, we have had similar genre of channels as part of the same bouquet be it Cartoon Network and POGO.” But then, both Cartoon Network and POGO belong to the Turner group. Therefore, there was no clash of interest in the macro-level.

Jain says, "Our job as a distribution network is to provide customers with a variety of channels. That's why we see no problems in offering HBO and ZMZ – both English movie channels – as part of the same bouquet. Therefore, it doesn't make a difference whether the channel is part of the same group (as Turner in Cartoon Network-POGO's case) or different groups such as CNBC TV18 and ZEE. CNBC TV18 is our partner in the distribution network ”

Meanwhile, the television distribution company has increased the rates of its existing bouquet by 7 per cent. With this, the new rates for the existing bouquet which handles the distribution of 25 channels including ZEE TV, ZEE Cinema, ZEE News, ZEE English, Trendz, CNN International, POGO, Cartoon Network, as well as a number of regional channels, will be Rs 58.85.

The move to revise the subscription price for its existing bouquet comes in wake of the amendment order issued by TRAI a week ago, which provided for a revision in the ceiling of cable rates as on December 26, 2003, on account of the inflation.

Jain says, "We had been looking at revising our existing bouquet rate for a long time and TRAI's recent amendment gave us that opportunity. We have also officially informed our cable operators about the revised rates.”

Commenting on the company's latest initiatives, Jain says, "Driven by the objective of offering the very best of entertainment mix to our customers and building profitable relationships with them, we have undertaken these initiatives to increase the reach, viewership and domestic revenue potential for all our bouquets.”

Talking about the distribution of ZEE Business, the recently launched Hindi business news channel from ZEE News, Jain says, "We are still on the process of putting the distribution in place and hopefully, by next year, the channel will be available across the country.

© 2004 agencyfaqs!