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Star News may announce new partnership on Friday

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI SEPT. 17. Having found in the Kolkata-based ABP Ltd. a partner ready to help it meet the stricter guidelines for news channels seeking to uplink from India, Rupert Murdoch's Star News is expected to announce the new partnership on Friday.

An open secret all week, neither partner was willing to divulge details about how much equity ABP would pick up in the channel though the buzz is that it could be anywhere between 51 and 74 per cent.

While Star News has been non-committal thus far, ABP's Editor-in-Chief, Aveek Sarkar, informed his staff about the tie-up this Monday. And, further confirmation came when Mr. Sarkar accompanied the Chief Executive Officer of Star India, Peter Mukherjea, to North Block on Tuesday for separate meetings with the Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, and the Finance Minister, Jaswant Singh.

Though initial reports suggested that Mr. Sarkar would pick up 74 per cent equity in Media Content & Communication Services (MCCS) — the company Star News floated earlier this year to work around the revised guidelines for uplinking — insiders maintained that there could well be others on board also.

Star News had to scout for a major stakeholder after the Government decided on August 28 to revise the guidelines for the second time this year to mandate that 51 per cent of the total equity in a television news channel with FDI remains with one dominant Indian partner. Star News was given a month to comply, and the Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry has informed the channel that it should apply well in time to allow the Government ample time to process its application.

The second revision of the guidelines became necessary after the I&B Ministry prima facie found the channel flouting the earlier guidelines - revised in March.

The first revision — which mandated that all news channels with foreign investment scale down foreign equity to 26 per cent — had also been triggered by Star News when it decided to uplink from India as a wholly foreign-owned channel following the termination of its arrangement with NDTV.

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