UTV signs Rs95 crore syndication deals with TV channels  

UTV Software Communications Ltd said its unit, UTV Motion Pictures, has signed a series of non-exclusive television rights syndication deals worth Rs95 crore with some TV channels.
 

The deals cover the entire portfolio of UTV Motion Pictures’ 2008 and 2009 productions, from ‘Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!’ and ‘Dev D’ to recent hits like ‘Kaminey’, ‘Wake Up Sid’ and ‘Kurbaan’, the company said in a release to the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE).
 

Siddharth Roy Kapur, chief executive, UTV Motion Pictures, said," We are pleased to announce these television syndication deals that are non-exclusive in nature and hence allow us to exploit the same content across multiple additional broadcasters in India and worldwide."
 

As part of the deal, Colors will telecast the premiere run of these movies in India, followed by NDTV Imagine. These channels will have the right to telecast a fixed number of runs of each movie. UTV has the right to further syndicate the television rights to these movies to any other channel in the same period.
 

In other overseas syndication deals, B4U has acquired the non-exclusive rights to air UTV’s movies across its international beams and Channel 4 has acquired the rights to air these movies in the UK market.
 

In the last few years, UTV has carved a unique place for itself as the only non-family-run, true-blue studio model in the industry that creatively develops, produces, markets, distributes and syndicates movies across various genres, star casts, scales and budgets.

The company has in a short span of five years brought audiences such iconic films as ‘Swades’, ‘Rang De Basanti’, ‘Jodhaa Akbar’, ‘Khosla Ka Ghosla’, ‘Life in a Metro’, ‘A Wednesday’, ‘Mumbai Meri Jaan’ and ‘Fashion’.
–Yogesh Sapkale [email protected]