Chandra's co-promoter in the venture, Deepak Shourie, has great ambitions for the monthly which is priced at Rs 20 a copy. His model is The TV Guide of the US which sells in excess of 11.8 million copies every week. Its readership: A stupendous 35 million every week.

The print run of TV World for the first issue is 75,000 copies, revealed Shourie, who is known for his stunning run with denting market leader India Today's reader's base with his Outlook foray with media baron Rajan Raheja.

Dealer margins have been placed at the usual 25 per cent. The magazine is to be distributed by IBH. The ad rates are Rs 62,500 for a full page with the back cover going for Rs 1,25,000 with strip ads costing Rs 20,000. But topping all this is the charges that the ad sales department is charging for highlightingcertain programmes in The Programme Guide with either blue tick marks or red circles. The cost for these is between Rs 2,000 and Rs 5,000.

Shourie dismissed any notions that the cover price is too high. "I'm actually selling it at Rs 10 to subscribers," he said. He, however, said there are no major freebies being offered to subscribers. "What we are offering is invites to 1,000 lucky subscribers for the awards night we will be organising." This apart he is offering an area where new talent can be showcased in the magazine as part of the talent hunt.

The fact that there have been many casualties in the past with products such as E-Times and TV Today meeting untimely deaths does not disturb either Chandra or his co-promoter Shourie. "The time was not ripe then when those products were launched," said Shourie. "We did not have enough TV stars either. Today, there are many more channels and we will help create TV stars through our magazine."

TV World has many advantages despite a lot of pessimism about itsfuture. The strong Zee Network backing which will result in a lower promotional bill is among the biggest. Its hold on the television production community cannot definitely be sniffed at. Many a television star has made it big courtesy a Zee TV production.

There are shortcomings too: The lack of language versions to suit the linguistic needs of TV viewers all over India. Shourie said this will be corrected in the near future. A Hindi version is to be launched in 2000. That should help the group get the volumes and possibly take its readership to above half a million.

Chandra in fact wants to make TV World the largest circulated publication in India. If it gets anywhere close to the 1 million mark with its language versions, it will be a another success that Chandra will have notched up. He, however, is already thinking ahead and has sanctioned the launch of a youth magazine. "I've told Deepak and his team to come up with a title for the magazine," said he.

Liqour advertising?
While in India,the anti-liquor lobby has been working over time to ban liquor advertising on television. In good old China, the central television station has decided to allow liquor advertising to get a crack at airing their commercials.

The reason for the change of heart: Dropping commercial revenues and the loss of commercial air time to satellite channels. In India too, we have a similar scenario being panned out. DD has been conceding ground to private broadcasters who were until recently accepting all kinds of liquor advertising until Sushma Swaraj cracked down on them last year. Should DD consider accepting liquor ads freely at specified times during the day or even night? Maybe that will help stem some of the rot. Over to Mr Jaitley.

(The writer is founder & editor-in-chief of www.indiantelevision.com, a portal on the Indian television business. Feel free to e-mail with your coments to television@vsnl.com or television@hotmail.com)