UTV to take Vijaya global

agencyfaqs! News bureau

CHENNAI, November 7

United Television (UTV) is in talks with ESPN and Disney Channel to make their programmes available on its wholly-owned subsidiary, Tamil channel Vijaya TV. The company is also talking to Star TV among other broadband broadcasters for broadband capacity to enable Vijaya TV go global.

Screwvala told newsmen in Chennai recently that the multi-media company is looking to air around one-hour blocks of programmes from ESPN and Disney. "We are open to tying-up for quality content so as to avoid duplicating efforts in-house," he said.

With ESPN and Disney, the channel is looking to collaborate for content in the areas of sports and children's programming. According to Ronnie Screwvala, chairman of UTV, Vijaya TV is expected to go global in the next two to three months. It is already available in Singapore, and will now be made available to Tamil audiences across the US, the UK, Africa and Asia.

Vijaya TV, in a bid to get a good mix of programmes for the entire family had earlier entered into strategic tie-ups with NDTV for exclusive news content, Hyderabad-based Padmalaya Studios for mythological content and more recently Discovery Channel for infotainment programmes.

UTV also has plans to go for three more regional channels in the other southern languages. Screwvala said there are no plans to buy any existing channels but build its own brand. The company is giving final touches to it IPO plans, through which it hopes to raise up to Rs 130 crore to fund its expansion plans.

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