Media Group NDTV on Wednesday said it will launch its English news channel NDTV 24x7 and business channel NDTV Profit in Singapore tomorrow.

Both the channels would be available on the SingTel's mio TV platform, a NDTV statement said here.

As contest prizes go, this one is out of this world. Literally. When Bindass TV launched last month, it offered to take viewers to a place normally reserved for its broadcast satellites: outer space.

The space tourism offer is the prize in a competition that makes no bones about its purpose - drive viewership to the new, youth channel.

NDTV Media has elevated Neeraj Dutt as its chief operating officer. Dutt was earlier executive vice-president at the company. In his new role, he will be responsible for looking after the company’s overseas operations and also carry on with his earlier responsibilities of looking after new business development and the digital business.

In a recent restructuring exercise, NDTV Media has elevated some of its key people, giving them larger portfolios. Neeraj Dutt, the EVP of the company, has been promoted to COO, while Senior VP, Avinash Kaul, is now the EVP.NDTV Media CEO Raj Nayak confirmed that these changes have already been affected.

India is the ‘Country of Honour’ at MipCom this year, which commences from today. With Subhash Chandra and Ronnie Screwvala as keynote speakers, MipCom 2007 is all set to see a lot of India action. The event is taking place at Cannes in France from October 8-12. The first day of the event is being observed as ‘India Day’. Since India is the partner country, FICCI, under the leadership of Kunal Dasgupta, CEO, Sony Entertainment Television (SET) India, and Co-Chair, FICCI Entertainment Committee, is mounting a 70-member delegation to MipCom.

Continuing with our series on what leading Indian media and entertainment figures have to say about the Indian television and media scene ahead of next month's television trade event Mipcom in Cannes, France we present NDTV Media CEO Raj Nayak's views.

He holds forth on addressability, ad spend, collaboration among other issues.

“What Advertisement is really of concern is that the size of the Internet advertising industry is so abysmally low... This is despite so many people evangelising it.”

Sam Balsara, chairman and managing director of Madison, started off the IAMAI ‘Digital Marketing: Wake Up And Smell The Coffee’ seminar (sponsored by Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions) on an unconventional note in New Delhi on Friday. For once, there was no back-slapping and congratulatory beginning; instead, there was this unsettling statement.

While the IAMAI Digital Marketing seminar promised much with a ”Wake up and smell the coffee” theme, a majority of what was said was a repetition of what we have heard before: some reasons for why the Internet in India is growing, reasons for why it isn’t, and a blame game between advertisers, media planners, agencies and publishers. Some impetus came in the morning session from Madison CMD Sam Balsara, who was more bullish on the mobile than the Internet, though he said that Indian agencies have been slow to adopt the power of the mobile. “The Internet”, he added, “competes for attention with Out Of Home (OOH) and other media. The OOH agencies have put up two screens outside the Madison office to demonstrate its effectiveness to media planners. What about the Internet agencies or publishers?”..

The one-day seminar on ‘Digital Marketing: Wake up and smell the coffee’ organised by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) brought to the fore a significant fact that Internet penetration is still very low in the country, and that Internet advertising continues to be a very miniscule part of communication plans.

Coming on top of an extremely successful award ceremony last year, NDTV Profit has announced the second distinguished NDTV Profit Business Leadership Awards 2007 to be held this year in Delhi on July 27. These awards not only honour business organizations that have shown exceptional ability in business performance but are also a recognition of the business houses which have fuelled the Indian economy to currently being among the fastest growing economies in the world.

NDTV India today announced the launch of ‘Bombay Lawyers’, a mini-series based on inspiring legal cases related to corruption, crime, nepotism and social ills rampant in India. 'Bombay Lawyers' is written and directed by Satyajit Bhatkal who has already carved a niche for himself in the film industry. ‘Chale Chalo: the lunacy of film-making’ directed by him was selected for the Indian Panorama at IFFI Goa, 2005. The English version of ‘Chale Chalo’ called 'Madness in the Desert' won a National Award and was invited to the Locarno Film Festival, Switzerland.

With 54% of India’s population under 25, corporates are trying their best to woo the youngs. The programming content of news channels have seen a dramatic shift, with shows focussing on the young. Consider this: NDTV is soon launching a reality show on education. The show will give its participants a chance to win scholarships to British universities in media and cultural studies, management, computing science, and engineering. Based on the performance in the show, the university will be allotted.

This is interesting. Star Network has appointed NDTV Media, the advertising sales company of NDTV, to sell advertising space of its portal Indya.com for the Cricket World Cup event, reports Business Standard. Why I find it interesting is NTV Media is headed by Raj Nayak, who was earlier the ad sales head for Star in India, and had fallen apart with the Rupert Murdoch company. The split was very muddy with Star dragging Nayak to court probably for joining competitor NDTV.

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