Star, Zee Agree To Work Together

In a marathon meeting which lasted six hours, the performance of Zee TV, El TV, Zee Cinema and Siti Cable were reviewed by top executives of STAR and Zee TV. The meeting venue was shifted at the last minute to the Lawrence Road office of Siti Cable from a five-star hotel - to avoid camera crews and prying scribes, a senior executive of Zee TV said.

According to sources in both STAR and Zee TV, during the meeting the programmes on STAR Plus and the channels Indianisation also came up for discussion. Zee TV was assured that STAR had no intention of killing the Hindi satellite channel co-promoted by Subhash Chandra and Rupert Murdochs News Corp.

 

Though no Zee TV executive could be contacted, it is learnt that Zee had served a notice on STAR TV which accused the latter of breaching the contract which stipulates that STAR cannot have more than 10 per cent of Hindi programming of the total primary programming on the channel.

Yesterdays board meeting was attended by Zee Network chairman Subhash Chandra, Zee Network chief executive, V Jindal, Siti Cables director, Jawahar Goel, News TV (India) Pvt Ltd (which manages the affairs of Star TV in India) chief executive R Basu, STAR TVs Hong Kong-based chief executive Gary Davey among others.

The sources pointed out that the issue of a transponder on Asisat-2 for Zee TV was also discussed by the executives of the two companies. Zees contention, it is learnt, has been that STAR has breached the contract by going in for Hindi-language programming.

However, Chandra and his associates have not left everything to STAR TV. The search for an alternative satellite/transponder is still on in case Murdochs company decides to pull the plug, a Zee TV executive told Business Standard.

Star TV has drawn up a plan to shift on to Asiasat-2 from Asiasat-1 within 18 months on a digital pay platform. But Zees contract with Asiasat-1 ends middle of next year. Its concern is that if it is not allowed to come on to Asiasat-2, it has to look elsewhere.

However, on the Asiasat-1 platform, it is Zee TV which is the biggest revenue earner, while STAR TV channels are attempting to break even.