The channel will only broadcast content in the liberal French-speaking city of Quebec initially, although an English version to be broadcasted across Canada will be introduced in 2011. Subscription for Vanessa, priced at $14.95, is set to begin in September.

The programme content on Vanessa will primarily consist of erotic-themed dramas, documentaries, reality shows and magazine shows. The channel’s softcore content will be broadcast in HD.

The Canada Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) which oversees and regulates content on all channels, has directed the porn channel to follow industry codes related to violence and portray both sexes as being equal.

The rules also say that the channel must obtain 20 percent of its content from local sources. This leaves 80 percent of the channel’s content to be sourced from California’s sex industry located in the San Fernando Valley.

The CRTC allowed the channel to start airing after overcoming earlier protests from religious groups that said that the 20 percent local source rule could give lead more youth into jobs in the adult industry.

Canada, which already has a Naked News Channel, also has adult content broadcast by cable services and satellite TV channels. The programme content for these broadcasts is obtained from US sources.

Named Sports Illustrated India, the Indian edition is being brought out jointly by Time Incorporated, The Sports Illustrated Group, and Dennis Media TransAsia.

According to Richard Downey, publishing director of Dennis Media TransAsia, Sports Illustrated India, priced at Rs 100 a copy, will have an initial print run of 1,00,000 copies.

The content mix of the Indian edition, Downey says, will comprise in-depth analyses of sports and photography as well as guest columns.

The first issue of Sports Illustrated India will have a total of 128 pages, out of which 100 pages are for editorial and the rest for advertising.

Richard Downey told a news conference that the publishers of the magazine expect great success in India mainly because “India is the most sport-crazy country,” with cricket being the most popular game. Due coverage also will be given to other popular sports such as tennis, football, boxing and Formula 1.”We will look at a lot of cricket and other interesting sports as well,” Downey added.

Sports Illustrated India will be a monthly and not a weekly because, according to Downey, “we are starting from scratch, and would not have been able to do justice to the kind of in-depth analyses we are looking at for the Indian edition.”

Since the publishers have arranged a tie-up with Reebok, Sports Illustrated India will be available at Reebok stores across India.
Time Incorporated and The Sports Illustrated Group have been jointly publishing international editions of Sports Illustrated, under licence, in South Africa since May 2006, and in China since September 2006.

According to the publishers, the primary target audience of Sports Illustrated consists of males in the age group of 25-45 years. The secondary target group comprises sports fans.

The Indian edition of the magazine will be “fast-paced” like the other editions, and it will pick, every month, one article from the archives of Sports Illustrated.

The launch of the Indian edition will be accompanied by an advertising drive in the country’s leading print and electronic media.

Sports Illustrated India will be edited by Sundeep Misra, a sports journalist.

Those writing guest columns include Farokh Engineer, Saurav Ganguly and Shiv Kapur.

The cover feature of the debut issue will have ‘Twenty Greatest Indian Cricketers of All Time.’

Sports Illustrated, founded in 1954, is a division of Time Incorporated, which is a leading magazine publishing company in the world and a subsidiary of Time Warner. The magazine reaches a weekly readership of about 21 million.

The Sports Illustrated franchise includes Sports Illustrated Kids (www.sikids.com), which is a monthly magazine for children aged 8 years and above, as well as Golf Magazine.

News Corp’s Dow Jones & Company, the publisher of The Far Eastern Economic Review, says it has been forced to resort to this extreme step because the magazine has become “unsustainable” after losing readership owing to “migration to the internet” as well due to shortages in advertising revenue.

Todd Larsen, chief operating officer at the Dow Jones Consumer Media Group, explained in a statement that the decision to end the publication of The Far Eastern Economic Review was “a difficult one” which was made “after a careful study of the magazine’s prospects in a challenging business climate.”

The Far Eastern Economic Review, which became one of the leading print publications in Asia, was funded in 1946 soon after the World War II came to an end.

The Hong Kong-based magazine – with a circulation of just about 20,000 copies at present – has enjoyed excellent reputation for its in-depth and fearless coverage of politics and business in Asia since World War II.

According to many media-watchers and former journalists of The Far Eastern Economic Review, the announcement of the magazine closing shop marks the “denouement” of a gradual decline in the fortunes of one of the greatest titles in Asian journalism,” which was once considered as “essential reading” for the intelligentsia of the region.

Dow Jones had, in 2004, sacked most reporters of The Far Eastern Economic Review and turned the magazine into a monthly publication. Only a few people were retained on the editorial, and articles were for the most part commissioned.

David Plott, who was the magazine’s Editor at that time, described what he called the “upheaval” in 2004 as a loss of “one of the greatest concentrations of knowledge and expertise about the region assembled anywhere.”
In the statement, Dow Jones said it will now focus on the Asian Wall Street Journal, its redesigned website WSJ.com, the launching of a Japanese-language website in a few months, as well as the expansion of its website chinese.WSJ.com

The plan to close down the venerated magazine comes at a time when more and more print publishers are changing over to electronic media.

Asiaweek, another widely acclaimed weekly magazine based in Asia, wrapped up in 2001, after 26 years of being in print.

Hugo Restall, the present Editor of The Far Eastern Economic Review, was quoted as expressing his unhappiness at the magazine becoming extinct thus: “It is quite paradoxical that, as the Asian region is becoming more and more important, there are fewer and fewer publications producing quality coverage.” Restall is to stay on the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, which also is owned by Dow Jones.

The long list of distinguished personalities and correspondents who have worked for The Far Eastern Economic Review include John King Fairbank, the sinologist at Harvard University, and the Anglo-Dutch writer and academic Ian Buruma.

It may be noted that, all through its history, the magazine’s critical and investigative style of journalism has led to clashes with many governments in the Asian region. Right now, The Far Eastern Economic Review is involved in a legal battle with the government of Singapore. The High Court of Singapore has ruled that the magazine “defamed” elder statesman Lee Kuan Yew and his son, Lee Hsien Loong, the incumbent prime minister.

Bloomberg TV is a worldwide leader in business news, while UTVi, the business news channel from UTV is a laggard in the Indian business news channel space with about 10% market share.

Bloomberg was earlier reported to be in talks with NDTV Profit, another business news channel in India. A press release issued by Bloomberg said that Bloomberg UTV will provide what it called “unsurpassed real-time business, economic and political news to households across India.”

Bloomberg and UTV did not specify whether Bloomberg UTV will be merely a content and distribution sharing partnership, or whether the news channel deal has an investment angle too. According to rules regarding foreign news companies, joint venture news companies – both print and television – can have a maximum of 24% equity holding by the foreign company. The balance 76% stake must remain with Indian promoters.

Bloomberg TV is owned by Bloomberg LP, the New York-based business news conglomerate. Apart from providing business data through its twin-screen Bloomberg terminals, Bloomberg also operates a news wire service, and publishes Bloomberg Markets. The company is owned by Michael Bloomberg, currently the mayor of New York City.

A Bloomberg press release in PR Newswire attributed “remarkable breadth and depth of reporting for the Indian market” for UTV. However, UTVi commands barely 10% share of the all-India business news channel market. ET Now, promoted by Bennett, Coleman and CO Ltd (Which also publishes Times of India and Economic Times) has 11%, while NDTV Profit has 22%. The market leader of the business news channel segment is CNBC TV18 which has 58%.

BCCL already has a content tie-up with Reuters for Times Now and ET Now. TV-18 partners CNBC, while UTVi already has a a financial investor in Walt Disney Co. NDTV Profit doesnt have any similar content partnership. It is not clear if Bloomberg will buy an equity stake in UTV, since it already has a financial partnership with UTVi, the business channel from UTV was started by Ronnie Screwvalla, a Mumbai-based entrepreneur.

Bloomberg TV has an international audience of about 200 million households. With its content now coming to UTVi, the audience expands by 30 million Indian viewers.

Business channel mindscape in India has been dominated for long by CNBC-TV18, the news channel from Raghav Bahl’s TV-18. It was joined by NDTV Profit, which has failed to make a major dent. A couple of years back, UTVi was launched. This year, the latest aspirant ET Now has entered the scene.

It is estimated that in India, 15 million televisions are added every year, which makes business channel space in India an attractive proposition for Bloomberg.

Bloomberg seems to be in an overdrive to expand. The company hired Andy Lack to look after its multimedia business in June. As recently as yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the company is bidding to buy Business Week, the weekly business news magazine published by McGraw Hill group.

Said Andy Lack, CEO of Bloomberg’s Multimedia group. “By working with UTV to realize our shared vision for business and financial television, Bloomberg renews its commitment to delivering business, economic and political news and analysis to viewers in India, and at the same time to delivering news about one of the world’s most dynamic economies to investors across the globe.”

Wall Street Journal Japan KK will have an arrangement with Dow Jones to translate and publish content from Wall Street Journal Asia and other Wall Street Journal editions, apart from Far Eastern Economic Review, AllthingsD.com, Barron’s and other Dow Jones publications. Later, Wall Street Journal Japan KK will also launch mobile products and services which customers can make use of. The Wall Street Journal Japan KK will shortly appoint a managing editor for the Japanese venture, who will supervise the editorial team in Tokyo. Wall Street already has two regional websites in Asia – for China and India. While the Chinese WSJ website is in Chinese language, the Indian website – india.wsj.com – is in English. So, the Japanese venture will be the second language edition of the Wall Street Journal in Asia.

Dow Jones obviously sees its Japanese venture Wall Street Journal Japan KK as a stepping stone to the large Japanese market. This will help the Journal expand its WSJ franchise in Japan, the world’s second largest economy, which has a highly-educated and productive population. A couple of months back, Dow Jones entered into an agreement with the publishers of Yomiuri Shimbun, the largest Japanese newspaper, which is also the largest newspaper in the world by daily circulation. As per the agreement Yomiuri Shimbun will get the rights to reprint articles from the Wall Street Journal editions, while Yomiuri Shimbun will print and circulate the Wall Street Journal in Japan. Wall Street Journal will be published 5 days a week in Japan, thanks to Yomiuri Shimbun. Wall Street Journal has started printing in Japan from March 2009.

At the signing of the agreement, Yomiuri officials spoke highly of the Wall Street Journal brand: “The Wall Street Journal Asia is highly influential and is widely respected in the world’s political and economic spheres for its acclaimed news coverage—in particular economic and financial news. Today’s wide-ranging agreement to print and distribute The Wall Street Journal Asia in Japan and to publish Wall Street Journal articles in The Yomiuri Shimbun is a historic decision. Indeed, it is good news not only for the top echelons of Japan’s political, governmental, business and academic sectors but also for the country’s general readership,”  Mr. Shoichi Oikawa, president and executive editor of The Yomiuri Shimbun, said.

Yomiuri Shimbun, the largest newspaper in Japan, also aligns well with the conservative nature of The Wall Street Journal. The other large Japanese newspaper, Asahi Shimbun, has an alliance with New York Times/International Herald Tribune, both of them sharing fairly liberal ideologies.

The Wall Street Journal Asia is edited and published in Hong Kong. The paper is printed in nine Asian cities-Bangkok, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Seoul, Singapore, Taipei and Tokyo. There are also plans to start a facsimile edition of The Wall Street Journal from New Delhi in India.

Wall Street Journal recently received from the Indian  government to launch its facsimile (fax) edition in India. The foreign investment promotion board (FIPB), has granted approval for a Dow Jones proposal to invest Rs 2.1 crore for an Indian subsidiary, which will bring out the fax edition. Unconfirmed reports have said that The Indian Express in New Delhi will print Wall Street Journal at its presses, which will be prices at Rs 30 and headed by Suman Dubey.

As per Indian regulations, foreign media firms are allowed to hold upto a maximum of 26% in the print media. Dow Jones officials have been quoted in the media as saying that the company is willing to think of an Indian edition, only if the obstacles to foreign media are removed.

In a recent interview, Mitya New, managing director Dow Jones in India expressed confidence about the company’s prospects in the country. He said that Dow Jones plans to double its investments in India in the next couple of years. The expansion will be Dow Jones Newswires, the facsimile edition of Wall Street Journal, sales and marketing and Factiva. Dow Jones is expected to expand its Bombay office first, followed by Delhi.

With the Hindi language channels raking in the ratings, the high profile English news channels saw themselves in the back-seat though the coverage of the terror attack was possibly better on the English channels than the Hindi channels.

An Indian financial newspaper has reported that Mumbai-based online ratings agency aMap, which did a study on November 26 and 27, found that Hindi news channels had recorded a viewership of 6-7 per cent of the total cable and TV homes, that is with people above 15 years of age, between 9 pm and 11pm.

Meanwhile, the English news channels saw viewership stay put at 0.8-1 per cent. A day before, the average viewership of the Hindi news channel was 1 to 2 per cent, it said. Viewers who are in the age group of 15 years and above across the country, except the data from Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa were compiled for the study. There are an estimated 80 million cable and satellite homes in the whole of India.

Going into the details, the agency has clarified that Aaj Tak stood on top by bagging a gross rating point (GRP) of 28.8 on November 27. This is 7.9 more than what was recorded a day before. Meanwhile, India TV grossed 21 GRP, Star News 20.6, IBN7 17.5 and NDTV India 10.2. GRP means the total television rating points generated in a day.

Besides these numbers, aMap reports have been quoted as saying that even on the parameters of market share in Hindi news, Aaj Tak recorded a high 5.2 per cent, up from 1.5 per cent the previous day. There was also a 3-4 fold increase in the market share of most leading Hindi news channels including India TV, which stood at 3.8 per cent, Star News (3.7 per cent) IBN7 (3.1 per cent), and NDTV India (1.8 per cent).