And rightly so. Subhash Chandra has been posturing as such and they have swallowed the bait. However, financial institutional investors do not seem to be too enamoured with the deal. The Zee Telefilms share has over the past week dropped almost 15 per cent. Over the weekend, the price was hovering around Rs 4,200. It is slated to fall further.

Some can attribute the fall to uncertainty of the outcome of the polls. (In fact, Chandra has predicted there will be another round of elections next year.) But analysts are not happy about Zee Multimedia Worldwide's merger with Zee Telefilms. This is mainly because no details have been disclosed about the valuation of the firm. "We don't know what its assets are; we don't know anything about itsprofitability; we do not have an annual report; no proper disclosure norms," says one. "Yet Chandra is walking away with around 20 million additional shares of Zee Telefilms and Murdoch with 3-4 million shares. For what may we ask?"

Chandra has committed to make the required disclosures soon. But are investors willing to wait? The share price plunge makes it appear as if not.Another area of concern for analysts is the fact that Chandra is handing out a war chest to Murdoch to do battle with him. Sure enough, STAR TV is going to localise further. Sure enough, it will form another DTO front (it already has one which is reportedly being dropped by SitiCable) with other regional and local channels as an option to Zee TV's DTO. But above all, he will be doing this with the money that Chandra is handing him. It gives Murdoch breathing space in the Indian market for at least another two years.

Two solid years in which he will likely go for Zee TV's jugular -- no holds barred. STAR TV has lost an estimatedbillion dollars in Asia over the past decade and yet shows no sign of breaking even. The $300 million will give Murdoch a cushion to continue to make his play in China too. In fact, that's where he has been banking his bucks with ventures in internet and television. He has cleverly tied up deals with local government outfits and has even married a lady of Chinese origin to help him get over any ownership restrictions.

Be that as it may, Chandra seems to be reaching for the skies with his plans for almost every aspect of the media business right from television to music retailing to multiplexes to entertainment parks to telephony.

Election coverage

The coming week is bound to be interesting for those in the television business. Specially for those channels offering television news. Last time around some Rs 12-15 crore was spent during the vote counting phase. And there were only a handful of channels then offering comprehensive election coverage. This time, the number has grown large enough to fittwo hands.

Almost every channel -- Alpha Marathi, Bengali, Zee TV, Zee News, STAR News, STAR Plus, DD News, DD I and II and the regional bouquet, Jain News, Sun, Eenadu, et al -- is offering coverage. This leads to a question: Will advertisers expand budgets to catch eyeballs during the election results rollout? Or will they squeeze them in during this phase? Or will they spread out their spending over the coming festival period when it peaks? If they do expand their budgets some of the channels are going to end up reporting rosy revenues. If they don't they could well be sporting red bottomlines. It is a matter of time before we find out which way the die rolled.

(The writer is developing an internet portal http://www.indiantelevision.com. Feel free to e-mail with your comments to television@hotmail.com)