Monday, February 22, 2010
Indian media conglomerate Viacom18’s Hindi entertainment channel Colors has been launched on Sky digital.
The 24 hour channel will be available free-to-air at launch and later be added to the View Asia package. We wrote more about the company and the channel earlier here.
Viacom18 Media is a joint venture between US based Viacom and Mumbai’s Network 18 Group.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
The broadcasting union Bectu revealed this week that Ofcom had stopped enforcing commitments made by broadcasters on issues around diversity, even if they breached licence conditions.
The shocking revelation came only through legal action by the union.
Bectu had made a Freedom of Information request in 2007 for Ofcom to disclose ethnic monitoring data it collected for the year 2005. Ofcom refused, claiming the disclosure of the data was not necessary. It also argued the regulatory landscape had changed so it did not have to.
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Thursday, January 21, 2010
A new Asian entertainment channel endorsed by Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan is due to come to the UK and US.
‘Colors’ will be the first branded channel by Mumbai-based Viacom 18 Network. The company is an equally owned joint venture between America’s Viacom Inc and India’s Network 18.
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Monday, January 11, 2010
British Muslim women are hitting the road – taking their independence in both hands and putting their foot on the gas.
An entertaining BBC series, starting next week, tells their stories from home as well as their cars over the weeks and months as they build towards their driving test.
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Thursday, January 7, 2010
The BBC is likely to stir up a hornet’s nest of controversy over a programme due to be broadcast this week on Sikh history.
An hour-long documentary presented by Sonia Deol titled ‘1984: A Sikh Story’ will ret-tell the story of the year the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi sent troops into the holiest and most revered of Sikh shrines, The Golden Temple.
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Sunday, January 3, 2010
On the first day of the year BBC soap Eastenders aired its first Asian wedding in full spectacular style.
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Thursday, December 17, 2009
Asian broadcaster B4U Network celebrated a decade of operations in the country last week, with a small party in West London.
It airs two channels in the UK: B4U Moves and B4U Music.
CEO of B4U Network Sunil Rohra, said, “We are delighted to be celebrating 10 years of B4U here in the U.K. Over the past ten years B4U Network has expanded into different ventures and fulfilled our promise in providing complete Bollywood entertainment to a global audience.”
Thursday, October 29, 2009
by Joyeeta Basu
Freelance Writer
For the first time the ION International Film Festival will bring together two of the world’s largest film industries at the vibrant Port Harcourt: from India and Nigeria.
The event, Connecting Bollywood to Nollywood, will seek to explore collaboration possibilities between the two giants of celluloid.
After Hollywood, Mumbai-based Bollywood produces the world’s largest number of feature films. Rapidly-growing Nollywood comes close on heels as the third largest.
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Tuesday, October 27, 2009
A Sikh group has written to the BBC Trust to complain about the misuse of the holy symbol of the Sikh symbol Khanda in a news report.
The London based organisation United Sikhs claim that on Friday 16th Oct 2009, a news story about a Sikh rape victim from Wales used the Sikh religious insignia, the Khanda, in the report. They say that suggests the Sikh religion was connected to the crimes.
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Monday, October 26, 2009
Channel 4 has unveiled a Punjabi Asian family for the new series of their observational documentary series: The Family.
It will be the first documentary of its kind to show British Asian life in such detail.
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Tuesday, October 6, 2009
The BBC has now received over 400 complaints after Strictly Come Dancing contestant Anton du Beke reportedly called his dance partner Laila Rouass a “paki”.
The corporation was last night trying to justify the decision not to boot him off the show while earlier handing out strict punishments to presenters such as Carol Thatcher.
The row emerged when the News of the World revealed that Du Beke had said Laila Rouass “looked like a Paki” after she turned up to a rehearsal with a spray tan two weeks ago.
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Friday, September 25, 2009
A three part series on the life of Mahatma Gandhi will air on BBC 2 from next week.
The one hour programmes will challenge people’s idealised images of the non-violent campaigner and may prove controversial with many of his supporters.
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Monday, September 21, 2009
The Cultural Diversity Network has launched a new ‘mentoring scheme’ starting next year to address racial diversity in the broadcasting industry.
The deadline to apply is next week.
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Sunday, September 20, 2009
B4U Network, which airs the B4U and B4U Music television channels are launching a yearly magazine.
The broadcaster told AIM Magazine this week that it would be offered as a ‘yearly edition of B4U in print media’.
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Tuesday, September 15, 2009
The actress Archie Punjabi is starring in the American TV series The Good Wife. It will start broadcasting later this month.
The legal drama is being produced by one of the three major US networks – CBS.
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Thursday, August 20, 2009
Star, the India-based television network, is launching a day long event next month to showcase its programming in the UK.
The event will also serve as a type of Mela with live performances, celebrity interviews and appearances, exhibitor stalls, a food court and an array of activities for families.
The ‘Simply Star’ event will be held on 12th September in London.
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Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Broadcaster Channel 4 has commissioned its first ever Urdu-language drama.
The stylish black-and-white comedy will be screened next week on August 25th just before midnight.
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Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Mihir Bose, the respected sports journalist, abruptly resigned from the BBC today. He was one of the top journalists at the corporation – employed as its sports news editor.
The former Daily Telegraph journalist took up his position January 2007 and had been there since.
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Monday, July 20, 2009
The BBC’s latest annual report admits that the corpration continues to miss its targets on diversity. It has an internal target of having at least 12.5% of staff from an ethnic minority background.
It also has internal targets to have at least 7% of senior managers from an ethnic minority background. But both targets have been missed third year in a row since they were first mooted.
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Friday, July 17, 2009
Fresh from his success at the Brussels Film Festival, Faisal Qureshi’s script: The Screaming Phone, won Best Short Script at this year’s Super Shorts Film Festival in London. It is a horror story about a young
woman who’s tormented by the phone ringing in the apartment next door. What is her neighbour hiding and how far will she go to find out?
Faisal is a North West based filmmaker who has directed several short films and is currently getting his first feature off the ground. He won Best Film Story at the Brussels Film Festival for The Footsoldier.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
The thorny question of faith schools will not go away. Every time there is a debate on this subject , the supporters and those who oppose it lock horns without reaching a conclusion.
It is not until you see it in reality that you realise how this system of education actually affects children.
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Wednesday, July 8, 2009
The Bollywood focused television network B4U announced this week it has successfully launched two channels in the Caribbean.
B4U Movies and B4U Music started broadcasting via Columbus Communication in Trinidad from 1st July. Last month it also launched in Malaysia.
CEO of B4U Network, Sunil Rohra said: “We are confident that both channels will cater to the large Bollywood fan base in the community and that they will enjoy the variety offered by B4U.”
Sunday, July 5, 2009
The BBC’s new head of religion Aaqil Ahmed takes up his post on Monday 6th July.
The date of his start at the BBC has been highly anticipated given the controversy surrounding his appointment.
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Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Did you know that there was a time when Jewish women were among the leading ladies of Bollywood? No, neither did we.
But there was an era when Baghdadi Jewish families who had emigrated to India starred in Bollywood.
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Monday, June 29, 2009
Frustrated by constantly being mistaken for people of other cultures, J. Singh-Sohal decided to take things into his own hands. He decided to make a documentary.
The subject: the Sikh turban, an integral part of his own identity and yet a constant subject of bafflement for others.
The former ITV journalist is making an hour long documentary that will get its initial broadcast next week. It will explore how British attitudes since the terrorist attacks of 7/7 have impacted people who tie turbans.
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