With the Star Group – Balaji Telefilms relationship reported to be turning sour, speculation is rife that the former is looking at partnering with a south Indian television channel to float its regional entertainment channels. Industry sources disclose that Star is already in talks with Asianet, one of the leading broadcasters in Kerala, with four channels Asianet, Asianet Plus, Asianet News and Asianet Suvarna. Sources disclose, ?If Star aligns with Asianet, they will get a readymade infrastructure and a whole host of channels to float their own regional language channels.? Already, Star said to be eyeing a significant stake in Asianet. Star Group already operates a Tamil language channel, Vijay TV. ?These are all market speculations and as a policy we would not like to comment on these,? said Yash Khanna, vice-president, corporate communications, Star Television. Since the agreement with Balaji prevents Star from signing in a third party, either party will have to invalidate the current JV before going for a fresh agreement with another partner.
In 2007, Balaji Telefilms and Star announced to launch regional entertainment channels in South Indian languages in which Balaji Telefilms was supposed to invest Rs 60 crore for a 49% stake in the JV while Star Group would hold the remaining 51%. They also planned to launch channels in key south Indian languages like Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and others. Sources claim that the project kept getting delayed and the two parties blamed each other for the same. Also, Star and Balaji had an exclusivity agreement under which no Balaji show was to be run on any other channel during the time slots on which Star had the Balaji serial running. Star paid more than 200% of the actual rate to Balaji because of this exclusivity. This agreement expired in June. Following the exit of Peter Mukerjea from Star and the launch of general entertainment channel 9X, Balaji sold a number of its key properties to 9X. This also strained the eight-year long Star-Balaji relationship to a great extent.
