Aaj Tak Goes Sky High

India's largest privately-owned news channel, Aaj Tak, has signed Advanced Broadcast Services (ABS) to provide television playout services via the Sky satellite multiplex.
This latest contract makes the channel's mix of news and entertainment available to Sky viewers throughout Britain.
Aaj Tak (meaning 'Until now' or 'Up to the minute') was launched on December 31 2000 by TV Today Network as a 24-hour Hindi news channel.
An independent poll on behalf of BBC/Reuters named Aaj Tak as the most trusted Indian news source. Aaj Tak has won the Indian Television Academy's Best News Channel award for six consecutive years.
Other accolades include the Abbys, RAPA, Promax, Indian Marketing Awards and Indian Telly Awards. Aaj Tak is part of TV Today Network Limited, India's No. 1 News Network. Along with Aaj Tak, the network has three more 24-hour news channels - Tez (Hindi), Headlines Today (English) and Dilli Aaj Tak and is rapidly expanding its footprints in India and Internationally.
"We are very pleased indeed to have been chosen to manage Aaj Tak's UK playout," comments Sass Jahani, Managing Director of ABS.
"We tried hard to match the channel's expectations and I am confident that we have succeeded.
"Our focus is on supporting niche channels so we knew exactly what the requirements were and the time-frame in which we had to deliver. We are providing cue-tone-based commercials insertion to localise the programme stream with UK-specific advertisements and promo interstitials from our server which plays content for the duration of each break," he said.
"We have extended our broadcast reach to Britain, European and the USA in our endeavour to become a global network," added TV Today Executive Director G. Krishnan.
"ABS was recommended to us by several of its current clients and, having used the service, we can well understand why. ABS has proved exceptionally helpful as well as flexible in its approach. We look forward to a long partnership."
Located at Park Royal, West London, Advanced Broadcast Services (ABS) has been active in the satellite TV sector since 1991.
The company is one of Britain's leading low-cost fully-managed providers of broadcast archiving, scheduling and transmission facilities. The playout operations centre currently supports a large number of television channels, staffed by a team of fully qualified technical and operational personnel using ultra-modern equipment and facilities.
(BMcC)