The first anniversary of Star India?s flagship channel Star Plus becoming a 24-hour Hindi channel - 3 July - has been chosen as the kick-off date India‘s first private FM radio station, Radio City.

Star India CEO Peter Mukerjea confirmed this on the sidelines of a press conference at south Mumbai‘s Taj Mahal Hotel celebrating his team‘s achievements in taking Star to the top of the satellite television heap.

With Radio City‘s scheduled launch in Bangalore, capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka, Star completes all but one part of its "grand vision to become a multimedia company into radio, Internet partnerships, cable partnerships and films." Film production now remains the only activity that Star is not currently involved with.

Mukerjea is gung ho about the prospects of FM in India and says: "Radio will expand the market significantly. We expect a whole new set of advertisers to enter the field once FM really takes off."

"I have always been positive about radio," Mukerjea said, pointing out that in India only 1 per cent of the ad pie went to radio while abroad it was 10-12 per cent. This was what was waiting to be tapped, he said.

Queried on Star‘s stake in Radio City, Mukerjea said content, ad sales and marketing support was its responsibility. The PK Mittal-promoted Music Broadcast Pvt Ltd (MBPL) is the licence holder for the new radio station while the operational part is reportedly with Digiwave, a 50:50 JV between Star and the Ispat group.

The radio station was initially christened Radio 1 but the Mumbai-based Mid-Day publishing group raised objections as it held the rights to the name, after which Star plumped for Radio City.

The Zee bouquet of channels, which was expected to go pay from 1 June, will become fully encrypted from 10 June, official sources in the channel said.

Zee has fixed the price of its complete bouquet package (including Alpha) at Rs 30.

The promoter of a Mumbai-based cable network, however, pointed out that this could be delayed further because some set top boxes had yet to reach the respective headends (he counted himself among those who had not received the decoders).

The Zee official clarified that while decoders may not have reached some headends, by and large the process had been completed and the network was going ahead with activating the encrypted feed from 10 June. There might be some initial teething problems but that would get sorted out over the next few days, he said.

Is information and broadcasting minister Sushma Swaraj listening to the pleas of wannabe players that the country should not take the open architecture route on the DTH television front? (All broadcasters have been unanimous that this would make DTH a non-starter.) If one goes by statements being attributed to her, it appears as though she is, though she might well be playing to the gallery in order to keep the groaners at bay.

A local business daily has her reportedly telling reporters that that there was no technology which allowed a set-top box to access any number of DTH services. "At most, two DTH services can be accessed," she had said.

Swaraj, reportedly, made these statements after being taken on a tour of the News Corp owned UK DTH service BSKyB‘s facilities in England. Swaraj had paid a visit to Cannes to promote Indian cinema as leader of an official delegation to the film festival there. She reportedly had a stopover in Britain.

If the statements being attributed to her are true and they do get translated into changes in what are being seen as draconian DTH regulations, some private broadcasters may go ahead with their DTH plans which are in cold storage now. Among them: Zee TV, Star, Sterling Group, and Modi Entertainment.

A senior industry official, however, was not very optimistic about the statements from Ms Swaraj. He pointed out that no private broadcaster has submitted a DTH proposal to the government till date.

And secondly, he added that DTH has currently been relegated to the backburner by both private broadcasters and the government. "The convergence bill (it is likely to be tabled in parliament during the monsoon session) is what the focus is on currently. Circa 2002 is when we will see any action on DTH. And the only serious player I see is VSNL. Being a telecom company and government owned, it is not impacted by the restrictions laid down for broadcasters in the DTH regulations.."