Rogers Media-owned OMNI Television has signed on as the Official Canadian Broadcast Partner of the International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) 2011, a three-day awards event this June.
IIFA 2011 (often referred to as Bollywood’s version of the Oscars) marks the first time the event will be held in North America, and will be open to the public at the Rogers Centre.
The partnership involves extensive coverage of the event itself including fashion shows, film festival highlights, events, and the IIFA Awards Ceremony, as well as an array of South Asian entertainment leading up to the event.
OMNI will also launch a new four-part series, Best of the IIFAs, which will showcase the best moments from the festival’s 11-year history. In addition, Bollywood’s Best, a news entertainment series starring Canadian actress Lisa Ray and celebrating the best of Indian Cinema, starts this March.
Mitch Dent, executive vice-president Rogers TV sales, said the IIFA partnership is a perfect fit for OMNI and a great opportunity to deliver unique content to viewers of its five stations (two in Ontario, two in Alberta and one in B.C.).
“What it’s doing for OMNI is putting a whole focus on our South Asian programming and it’s an area we were already focusing on, but the IIFA deal is causing us to turn up the taps and generating an incredible amount of interest,” he said.
“Everyone is recognizing that Canada is changing multiculturally but [advertisers] are looking for opportunities with a certain level of scale.”
“We’re offering a myriad of national opportunity to get involved with the South Asian community,” he said.
Dent said OMNI is still in negotiations with several advertisers, adding that the partnership was only finalized three weeks ago.
“We are happy to partner with OMNI Television as our Official Canadian Broadcast Partner of IIFA 2011,” said Sabbas Joseph, director, Wizcrat International Ent. & IIFA, in a release.
“For the Indian cinema fans in Canada, we find that OMNI, with its entertainment focus and large television base is a natural choice to spread the IIFA magic,” he said.
