Turner and Warner Bros. Entertainment to Entertain India with the Launch of a New Channel: WB

NEW DELHI and BURBANK – Turner and Warner Bros. Entertainment, Hollywood’s leading studio, today announced the launch of WB, a new Warner-branded channel for India featuring blockbuster motion pictures and hit television series. Available in Indian homes from Sunday, 15 March 2009, WB is Turner’s brand new 24-hour, English-language entertainment channel for India, which will showcase programming licensed from Warner Bros. International Television Distribution (WBITD). Together with HBO, WB expands Turner’s English entertainment package in India and reinforces the commitment by Turner and Warner Bros. Entertainment to provide quality entertainment programming to the Indian viewer. The channel will be distributed by Zee-Turner and will be available on both DTH and C&S platforms.

Steve Marcopoto, President, Turner Broadcasting System Asia Pacific, Inc., said, “Following on the successful launch of Real, our first Hindi general entertainment channel, early this week, we are thrilled to be introducing another distinctive new channel from Turner Broadcasting, WB. For nearly two decades Turner Broadcasting Systems has built its leadership in the India media and entertainment industry on a bedrock of rich, powerful and compelling content. Now we expand our foundation with WB, leveraging the greatest hits from the largest and fastest-growing film and television library in the world. With a distinctive feel and creatively presented franchises, it will indeed be ”entertainment made better"

Siddharth Jain, Vice President and Deputy General Manager – Distribution & Business Operations, South Asia, Turner International India Private Limited (TIIPL), said, "Our tag line – Now That’s Hollywood! – encapsulates and highlights our edge, positioning and programming. Sourcing our content from a premium and legendary studio – Warner Bros. Entertainment – WB will consistently offer Hollywood’s best, akin to an entertainment buff playing the best of the best from his personal, DVD collection, at all times. The channel will bring the best of award- winning Hollywood entertainment to TV sets in India, slickly packaged.”

Jeffrey R. Schlesinger, President, Warner Bros. International Television, said, "We are pleased to be providing our programming and the iconic Warner brand to our sister company Turner to launch the WB branded service and to bring the best of Hollywood entertainment to viewers in India. Available 24 hours per day, WB will showcase our world-class motion picture franchises and hit TV series, and we look forward to working closely with Turner to make WB a hit with Indian viewers.”

WB targets the upscale/affluent Indian audience with a colossal appetite for Hollywood’s best, around the clock. This premier destination will be a haven for all Hollywood enthusiasts/aficionados, offering the biggest movies, hottest action, best dramas, funniest series and the brightest stars from the world’s most prolific studio, in a sleek and exciting environment. The channel will offer hit movies and series on a single destination.

Primetime viewing on WB will include franchises such as WB Platinum that will showcase channel premieres; WB Nitro will feature the biggest actions hits to hit town; WB Triple Play features "must-see” movies that are all-time entertainers that viewers would want to watch over and over and over again; WB Cinematheque is the answer to everything for the Classic Film fan – the finest cinematic masterpieces, movie stars, directors and all the things viewers love about Hollywood; and WB Premieres will offer an interesting mix of comedy and drama series.

www.itsonWB.com will complement the linear TV offering. The website will have detailed information on all movies and TV series, including video trailers, cast information, plot summaries, image galleries and schedules, as well as daily updates on the latest showbiz news from around the globe, including exclusive video features! To further engage the target audience, the site will also have user-generated movie and TV show reviews, ratings, discussion boards and entertainment-based polls. www.itsonWB.com – Now That’s Hollywood!

The launch of WB in India continues the strategy of launching branded services around the globe, featuring content produced and distributed by the Studio. Like Latin America’s Warner Channel, WB in India will be a 24-hour linear offering. In addition to these linear channels, subscription- and advertiser-supported video-on-demand branded services have launched under the Warner TV banner throughout the world. Warner TV has launched with Top Up TV, Tiscali, Virgin Media and BT in the U.K.; FASTWEB in Italy; ProSieben in Germany; OnDemandDeutschland in Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland; USEN Corporation’s GyaO in Japan; and Free in France.

NOTE: While sharing a name with the current TheWB.com online destination in the U.S. and the former The WB Television Network in the U.S., WB in India is a distinct standalone channel (in ownership structure, programming offering and demographic target) unrelated to TheWB.com.

Turner International India Pvt. Ltd.
In India, Turner now offers a distinctly diverse bouquet of world class content across multiple genres: Cartoon Network & POGO, India’s leading kids’ channels; leading news channels, CNN & CNN-IBN; HBO and the recently launched Hindi GEC – REAL. Turner also has a distribution partnership with Zee Entertainment and Enterprises Ltd (ZEEL) – Zee Turner Ltd, offering the country’s largest bouquet of channels. A division of Time Warner, Turner International India Pvt. Ltd. is the arm of Turner Broadcasting System. Inc. (TBS) that manages the sales and marketing of Turner’s news and entertainment services in India and South Asia.

Warner Bros. International Television Distribution
Warner Bros. International Television Distribution is one of the world’s largest distributors of feature films, television programs and animation to the international television marketplace (broadcast, pay cable, basic cable, satellite, pay-per-view, video-on-demand, digital platforms, etc.). It licenses some 50,000 hours of programming (including more than 6,000 ýfeatures and 70+ current series), dubbed or subtitled in more than 40 ýlanguages, to telecasters and cablecasters in more than 175 countries.