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Al Campbell

ASIAN Business News (ABN) will launch in India next month to further its mandate to provide complete regional coverage.

Paul France, chief executive officer of ABN, said the two-year-old network did not originally plan launch this early but demand created the move.

'It's a tumultuous market and a hard one to get right,' Mr France said.

'But we have local partners who are enthusiastic about what we are planning to put together. These are key people who we have spent years trying to find.' The India launch will bolster the amount of original programming ABN produces. The network has been broadcasting 24 hours (nine hours live coverage daily plus updates) since October 23.

He said the station also launched in Australia last month.

   'The way it is set up now, our programming is indicative of the various time zone shifts.

 'To provide 24-hour coverage before [the Australian launch] would have been pointless as there is only a modest number of people watching at 3 am,' he said.

 'With Australia on board and our launching in India, we might as well be committed.'  Mr France said the network was also considering launching a Japanese channel within 12 months and possibly a Mandarin version as well.

  The station is seen weekdays in Hong Kong and southern China on TVB from 6 am to 7.25 am.

 'The relationship with TVB has been very good,' he said.

 'They have worked with us from almost day one and it has worked out well for both parties and it's a very rewarding process that's given us a great start.

 'We would very much like to find the right group of people to put together a Mandarin version of ABN. That's not something that is going to happen overnight.

 'It's in the pipeline but, if you do a Mandarin version of ABN, you're talking about replicating the costs.

 'This is something we have to take our time with and do right.

 'We're conscious of the fact that, if we go out and make a lot of noise about distribution in China, we will risk distribution.'    Mr France said this year had been a strong one for business channels with CNBC Asia launching in Hong Kong and CNN announcing it would be starting a business news service in the US.

 'What it does is develop the concept of business news on television and addresses it to the stage that it has some sort of credence in the market.'  Mr France said ABN had such strong advertising clients as Ford, BMW, Cathay Pacific and MasterCard behind it and such a strong client base had increased the credibility of the network to potential advertisers and the advertising industry.

 'They [advertisers] look terrific. They are all blue-chip clients and there isn't a single dog-hair mitt among them.

 'The whole advertising industry in Hong Kong has felt it has been seriously burnt by satellite TV.

  'It had come along with a huge amount of hype, there wasn't any credible research to rely on and clients had been persuaded to spend a lot of money.

 'So, we made a promise to ourselves that we frankly would not deal in the hyperbole - that we would offer real information and we made promises that we believed we could keep.

 'We've done our best to avoid misleading claims and I believe we have done that,' he said.



ABN to launch India