Second Edition of Pro Wrestling League (PWL) to Start December 15, 2016

More than 100 wrestlers are expected to take part in the second season of the Pro Wrestling League (PWL), which gets underway from December 15, the organisers announced on Thursday.

The organisers announced numerous additions in the second season as the cash rich tournament will be expanded to an eight-team affair in place of the earlier six, while also increasing the pool of domestic players from 54 to 80 in the initial draft. The initial draft of foreign recruits has also been raised from 24 to 40 players.

The tournament will also be a month long event instead of the 18-day affair in the inaugural edition last year.

Speaking of the overwhelming response and growth of Pro Wrestling League, Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) President Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh said: "Wrestling as a sport has contributed towards the growth of sporting fabric of India. With sterling performances in the last three Olympics for India, wrestling followers are now becoming more vocal and visible."

"While local 'Dangals' enjoyed unprecedented live spectators, data suggests that on TV, wrestling emerged as the most watched Olympic sport for Indian audience in the last 12 months."

"The growth is a result of hard work and progressive outlook of our officials across the country. I thank state units and the professional team of ProSportify (commercial partners of Pro Wrestling League) for doing a commendable job in such a short span."

"Pro Wrestling League had direct impact on recent Olympic medallist Sakshi Malik, as she got an opportunity to study, share & compete alongside the best wrestlers in the world during PWL," he added.

ProSportify founder Kartikeya Sharma also reiterated: "We have created a friendly format for TV viewing sports fans whilst keeping the ethos, mat rules and rich tradition of the game intact. Additionally, our three innovations worked heavily in Pro Wrestling League's favour."

"Essentially, converting an individual sport into a Team Game with boys and girls representing the same team. Secondly, introduction of 'Toss' and subsequently 'Player Blocking' added a sense of suspense, excitement and drama in the competitive fast-paced game".

"Wrestling is deeply rooted in Indian cultural ethos and is the biggest sporting export from India to the world. We were privileged to enthuse over three crore sports fans every day in Season 1 and promise to surpass our stellar performance this year," he added.

--IANS

Pro Wrestling League (PWL) second edition from Dec. 15

The second edition of the Pro Wrestling League (PWL) is all set to commence from December 15 and will feature eight teams, which is two more than last year.

Besides increasing the number of teams, Pro Wrestling League on Thursday announced numerous other additions in the upcoming second season like enhancing the players’ pool and the duration of the event.

From the initial draft of 54, the players’ pool will now have 80 wrestlers, while the duration has been increased from 18 days to a month.

Started with the aim to provide an international platform for the country’s talented wrestlers to compete with the world’s best, PWL will now feature over 40 international grapplers as compared to 24 last year.

Kartikeya Sharma Founder & Promoter ProSportify (Commercial Partners of Pro Wrestling League) said: “We enthuses over three crore fans every day in season one and promise to surpass our stellar performance in the second year.” — PTI

Competition, not clutter, in English news TV

Kartikeya Sharma took time out from meetings with NewsX staff to speak to MxMIndia’s Shruti Pushkarna on his plans for the channel and the changes he intends to initiate.

Excerpts from the interview:

 What are your plans for NewsX?

We intend on getting NewsX back on track. We want to distribute the channel properly everywhere. And we think that the content of the channel is pretty good, it’s just that for whatever reason it’s not been visible everywhere and it’s not been distributed everywhere, so we are going to fix that.

Will there be any kind of content and resource sharing between the channels, NewsX and India News?

Yes, there will be because we already run seven regional channels at the moment and we are expanding that portfolio also to 14 in another six to eight months. So there’s a lot of synergy that comes out of it. There’s a lot of infrastructure asset that can be shared, lot of content which will be shared. It even becomes a more attractive offer for planners and other people to pick up a product which addresses different TGs and different age categories and different genres. So it completes our bouquet. We were expanding our regional footprint till now and this will add as a national product that w did not have.

Netherlands-based TERN teams up with iTV Network for UHD Channel

Netherlands-based Television Entertainment Reality Network (TERN) has teamed up with Kartikeya Sharma’s iTV Network to launch an ultra-high definition (UHD) factual entertainment channel called Insight in India.

As part of the partnership, iTV Network will operate the channel in India on behalf of TERN. It will hold the licence for the channel. It will also oversee transmission, distribution and ad sales of the channel.

TERN will provide the content. It has co-created 200 hours of exclusive content for the channel alongside industry-leading production houses including Zodiak Media, KIEM and Strix.

The channel, which went live today in Europe, will be launched in India as and when a deal is inked with a distribution platform.

TERN is owned by a UK-based company called General Satellite, which provides technology solutions to pay TV platforms.

“We are launching a UHD factual entertainment channel in Europe today. In India, we have partnered with iTV Network as our local partner for playout and broadcasting the channel. Content is owned by us, iTV will run the channel on our behalf. They also have the licence for the channel,” TERN CFO Andrew Spriggs told TelevisionPost.com.

“We are relying on them as our technical partner for playout and satellite broadcast in India. We are working with them on a revenue basis as a distributor to position ourselves with our bouquet of channels into the main pay TV platform and then extract advertising revenue out of it,” he added.

The partnership is limited to linear platforms. For non-linear platforms, TERN will chart an independent strategy.

Without ruling out the JV route in future, Spriggs clarified that there is as of now no joint venture or equity component in the partnership.

“At the moment, there is no JV or equity partnership. We are working closely with them, and downstream our conversation might move down that direction, but I can’t comment on that any further at this point,” he stated.

The tie-up is part of iTV Network’s expansion plans, which include venturing into regional entertainment besides adding to the existing fleet of news channels. It already owns and operates seven news channels including NewsX in English and India News in Hindi.

Spriggs revealed that the Indian partner is in negotiations with leading multi-system operators (MSOs) and direct-to-home (DTH) platforms to distribute the channel.

Read Also:

• India News: a 24-hour Hindi news television channel in India.
• NewsX: a 24-hour English News television channel in India.

India News banks on regional channels

India News believes that the future lies with regional channels. In line with this belief, it has extensive expansion plans. By December 2012, the channel plans to take its network coverage to 65 per cent of the country. The channel will expand to southern states in 2013.

In an exclusive conversation with exchange4media, Kartikeya Sharma Founder of India News and President, Association of Regional TV Broadcasters of India (ARTBI) shared, “We will have entertainment and news coverage in languages such as Bangla, Oriya, Marathi and Gujarati. We will also foray into North-Eastern states by the end of the year.”

Sharma further said, “We will be repositioning our national channels in six to eight months and will cater to a new target audience. Regional channels are more profitable and the economy of scale is helpful for a group entity to be viable in the long run.”

Regional channels can compete not just with other regional channels in that region, but with national channels as well. Today, audience expectations from regional channels are high and they want them to be of the same calibre as national channels. Hence, it is important to have similar packaging, presentation, look and feel, he shared.

His optimism is further buoyed by the recent announcement made by Ministry of Information & Broadcasting (MIB), waiving off 0.02 per cent on all India channel share for empanelment, while 40 per cent of the ad budget has been exclusively earmarked for regional channels. According to Sharma, the new policy means three things:

• Everyone will be empanelled
• The government has announced it will take bottom-up approach 
• This will give a fresh lease of life to regional channels that have been struggling to survive

When asked to share his thoughts on digitisation, Mr. Kartikeya Sharma remarked that it is the best thing to happen to the industry if one looked at the long-term perspective. According to him, the problem is that the industry is disorganised and certain cities such as Mumbai and Delhi are less prepared. Considering these ground realities, the digitisation process will take longer than what the government has envisaged.

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) diktat of limiting ad time to 12 minutes per hour of programming would affect broadcasters’ bottom and top line. “It would make inventory limited for everyone, though it will not affect India News much as we are already selling 12 minutes of ad time,” Sharma divulged.

Kartikeya Sharma, speaks on the occasion of ENBA Award 2014

Speaking on the occasion, Kartikeya Sharma, Managing Director - iTV Network which owns and runs NewsX said “Over the last few months, NewsX has become the home of breaking news, in-depth coverage, analysis and hardcore news reporting from the ground and this is a significant new phase to build our growth story.”

India News flexes muscles with revamp

India News, the 24x7 Hindi news channel from the ITV Network, has undergone a major revamp and unveiled its new look on February 14, 2013. With Deepak Chaurasia on board, India News has a fortified editorial team comprising Yashwant Rana, Manish Awasthi, Sheetal Rajput, and Tanya Dave.

The revamp involves a new state-of-the-art studio, along with new channel ID, packaging, presentation, and a refreshed line-up of programmes and presenters.

Commenting on the revamp, Deepak Chaurasia, Group Editor-in-Chief, India News said, “Speed, accuracy, credibility and accountability will be key to our news gathering. With more than 100 brilliant manpower at work, we will start a new chapter in television news industry. I will make sure that you will find our channel accountable to the aam aadmi. Our approach to news will be to provide answers to all the questions arising in a viewer’s mind.”

ITV Network’s bouquet of channels includes national channel India News and five regional channels – India News Bihar & Jharkhand, India News Rajasthan, India News UP & Uttarakhand, India News Haryana, and India News MP & Chhattisgarh. The Group is investing heavily in additional newsgathering capacity. Having fortified its presence in the Hindi speaking markets, India News is planning to expand its base and become a dominant player in the news channel segment across India.

 “Nothing can stop an idea whose time has come,” Kartikeya Sharma Founder ITV Network said, adding, “Definitely the time has come for India News to herald a new era in the Indian media industry and become a dominant player through content expansion, extensive marketing, distribution and enhanced market share to cater to a new target audience.”