When entertainment makes news
SANGEETA BAROOAH PISHAROTY
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The box is getting choc-a-block, with NDTV Imagine entering the fray.
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Photo: Rajeev Bhatt
MUM'S THE WORD Filmmaker Karan Johar is not yet ready to divulge much about his role in NDTV Imagine.
The whispers have been in the air for some time. And now it is loud and clear.
NDTV's entertainment venture, NDTV Imagine, is starting three new channels. The first of the lot, a Hindi entertainment channel, will hit our TV screens by end 2007 or January 2008.
The CEO of NDTV Imagine, Sameer Nair, says, "We are in the process of hiring the staff for the Hindi entertainment channel and should be able to go on air either this December or coming January."
Known for taking Star Plus to new heighst in the genre of family entertainment, Nair is likely to face immediate competition from his former employer of 12 years.
For, NDTV Imagine's yet to be named channel will include all that Star Plus has - soaps, series, game shows and talent hunts, Ekta Kapoor's production house included.
Same difference?
The new channel will have companies common to Star Plus - Siddhartha Basu's Synergy Communications, Hatts Off Production and Endemol. Nair, though, promises to do things "differently" here.
"If I could do something right with Star Plus, I could do it again here," says Nair, brimming with confidence. "In 12 to 15 months time, if not number one we would try to be number two," he adds.
Among known names associated with NDTV Imagine is young and popular filmmaker Karan Johar. NDTV Chairman Prannoy Roy calls Johar "the single person to have transformed Hindi cinema," explaining why he is in the venture. "The others have fallen," Roy says. Starting the new channels, he feels, "is like going back 20 years" when he started New Delhi Television.
Chance meeting
Karan, recalling his first chance meeting with Roy in Goa some years back, says, "Prannoy had told me then, `Hope you do something for us too.'
And now after years, it is happening. Some might look at it as a coincidence, but I would call it destiny." Though he won't be able to shift his popular Star World chat show, "Koffee With Karan" to the new channel as Star owns the copyright over its name and format, he is likely to do a similar show. "It is too early to say. There are various possibilities. It could be a personality-based show, but I am sure they won't be sitting on a sofa and answering the rapid fire round. And once I leave `Koffee with Karan', it will be dead unless Karan Thapar decides to do it," Johar says jovially.
The second venture from the Imagine stable is a movie channel.
Among other movies, it would surely get the rights of Johar's films. The rights of all his films are at present with Sony TV. "The rights of all my movies have different years of expiry. `Kuch Kuch Hota Hai' has another two years to go. `Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna' is with Sony till 2011," says Johar.
The affable filmmaker chooses to respond with just a smile to the question whether he will renew the deal with Sony.
The third venture of NDTV Imagine could have kids and youth-based programming. Nair doesn't deny or confirm this either. "We are working on it, we will tell you all soon," is all he says at the moment.
No timeframe has been announced for the launch of these two channels.
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