Zee Telefilms found disdain in the market on Monday as the World Cup Cricket was firmly diverting advertisements to the now more avidly watched sports channels.

Obviously, the Zee Telefilms scrip was bound to take a hit, falling 2.7% to Rs 83.75 on BSE in mid-afternoon trades. The stock has been southward bound for most part amid intermittent rallies.

The scrip plunged to a 52-week low of Rs 78.90 on 29 January 2003 after the company warned while announcing its Q3 results that its advertising revenues would be affected in Q4 as focus would shift to sports channels due to the Cricket World Cup. From that low, the scrip witnessed bargain hunting to settle at Rs 86.10 on Friday, 7 February 2003. It has slipped once again today to the Rs 83.75 level. The scrip today clocked a volume of 700,000 shares.

There, in fact, has been fall in trading interest in the stock recently. The scrip last week clocked average daily volumes of 1.42 million shares on BSE. That was much lower than the average daily volumes of 25.7 lakh shares a week before that.

The current easiness on the Zee counter comes amid concerns that the Cricket World Cup Tournament, which began yesterday, would affect the company's advertisement revenues as advertiser focus shifts to sports channels. The World Cup was kicked off in South Africa on 9 February 2003 and it will continue till 23 March 2003.

At the time announcing its Q3 results last month, Zee had said advertising revenues would be affected in Q4 as focus would shift to sports channels due to the World Cup . "In the fourth quarter of FY 2002-03, there is low visibility in the advertising revenue scenario because of the Cricket World Cup. There could be an impact on the business of Zee because of the shift in advertising revenues to cricket, particularly during the duration of the cricket matches," the company had said .

For the quarter ended 31 December 2002, Zee Telefilm's consolidated net profit jumped by 36% to Rs 70.88 crore on a 9.89% rise in total income to Rs 325.02 crore (Rs 3.25 billion).

Recently, Zee Telefilms effected an increase in subscription fees. Zee-Turner, the distribution joint venture, announced a three-layer dual pricing strategy for its bouquet of 16 channels, along with a hike of Rs 8 in monthly subscription rate. The subscription rates per month per subscriber now are at Rs 50 for its bouquet, compared to the earlier Rs 42.

As per reports, Zee intends to revamp its advertising rate card from 1 April 2003. The company is likely to implement a new system that will bring in transparency into the advertising business. There are also plans to revamp the Zee group's education business managed by Zee Interactive Learning Systems.

Meanwhile, Zee Telefilms plans to relaunch its music channel with a new look and feel by this month end. According to reports in a section of the media, the Zee network has invested around Rs 5 crore to make the revamped music channel highly interactive and get the viewer more involved with the channel.

Zee has another music channel , ETC Music, with a large viewership base. The group had acquired the ETC channel last year.

BSE Code: 505537