ESPN plans to counter SETMax on World Cup

In an attempt to take the sting out of SETMax's live coverage of Cricket World Cup 2003, ESPN Star Sports has worked out special programming out of South Africa, the venue of the event, which will be shown during the World Cup.

The programmes planned by the channel include programmes before and after the matches and special news bulletins during matches.

The pre-match shows include analysis from experts on the match, while the post match programmes would be an analysis of the outcome of the match.

"We have handled programmes in this way in other markets and are confident that it would be a success in India also," Rik Dovey, managing director, ESPN Star Sports, said.

Other programmes planned by the channel include match highlights, special bulletins during SportsCentre and SportsLine, and news highlights amongst others.

According to Dovey, the channel's programming will be centered around serious cricket programming rather than trivialising for making it entertaining.

"We take cricket very seriously. We do not think that you can trivialise it to make it entertaining," he said taking a dig at SET Max's emphasize on entertainment as a part of its cricket broadcasting.

He also said that the channels' programmes during the recent tour of West Indies to India, in which daily highlights were shown, were a great success and have exceeded the channels' expectations.

"Despite some of the disturbances that we faced while the tour, it has been a great success. It has actually exceeded out expectations," he said.

According to Dovey, India is the biggest market for the channel in the Asia-Pacific region.

"The Indian market is bigger than the Chinese market and is also growing," he said.

When asked about the opportunities that the company sees in the market, he said, "We consider programming for interactive television, direct to home broadcasting, radio and publishing as great future opportunities as these areas are opening up."

"Publishing is a great opportunity. But we think that the economics at present does not permit us to enter this field. We will look at it at an appropriate time," Dovey said when asked about the company's plans to bring its international sports magazines to India in the wake of recent policy changes.

The sports channel is also fine-tuning its plans to offer sports content for radio companies.

"We are happy that we did not bid for the FM radio licenses. We are looking at ways to give them content," he said.