Rajat Sharma-owned Independent News Service (INS) will soon be launching a news television channel titled ‘India TV Wiz’, in both Hindi and English. The channel, which received government approval on Tuesday, is scheduled to launch in six months’ time.
It is the first news channel to receive approval from the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in its second tenure, the company officials said. The company, which already runs the Hindi news channel India TV, had started the process of seeking approval from the government before the Budget session of Parliament.
Sharma, the Group Editor-in-Chief, in a statement issued today, said, “INS will position Wiz as a formidable twin to market-leader India TV. It will be up in six months, perhaps earlier in beta form. It will give premium advertisers a bouquet of screens that support true marketing innovation and it will power a world-class partner for international news.”
(Source: Press Trust of India)
on Aug 13th, 2009 at 09:23
We already have this sort of thing on Skydigital in the UK with Star News on subscription only, so that’s nothing new!
on Aug 13th, 2009 at 09:26
So what is your point?
on Aug 13th, 2009 at 10:09
Bilingual news channel launches on satellite/cable/digital terrestrial and other platforms happens all the time, and it would only make sense to consider launching bilingual news channels in countries and continents where the residents of those countries and continents can speak languages other than their native local tongues relatively well. Otherwise what is the point? Sky News in Gaelic and English across Europe via DTH satellite and cable! There may well be expats of the native languages of their homelands living in Europe and beyond who can receive their native language channels via satellite, but it makes little sense to make them bilingual to serve that purpose.
on Aug 13th, 2009 at 12:19
I wonder what exactly bilingual means in this case. Does it mean that they will have alternating blocks of Hindi-only and then English-only programming? Or does it mean that for example the presenters will hop freely between the two languages during one and the same programme? If that’s the case it does sound kind of unusual. In the early days of arte there were a few programmes which were presented in both French and German at the same time, but it never caught on. I guess because (for me at least) it was kind of confusing. But I should it’s likely the number of native-level speakers of both Hindi and English in India is much higher than native-level speakers of both French and German in Europe.
on Aug 13th, 2009 at 12:26
I suspect they will try different formats to determine which is most popular with the viewers, which is what Mr Sharma probably means by “beta form”. BTW I don’t understand why Anthony equates Gaelic, spoken by less than 100,000 people, with Hindi, spoken as a first language by about half a billion people.
on Aug 13th, 2009 at 13:02
Star News India on Skydigital transmits a mix of English and Hindi news bulletins and keeps dual illuminating several hours of Hindi news interspersed with English bulletins thrown in as well from time to time. The only channel in Europe that transmits two languages is the Franco-German arts and culture channel Arte. On satellite when it isn\’t transmitting two languages the output is generally stereo with Dolby Surround audio transmitted on programmes where available, but when dialogue starts up you hear German on one stereo channel and French on the other stereo channel. Similar things can be done with MTS stereo in America,NICAM Stereo in the UK,the Zweiton A2 stereo system in Germany and DVB-S/DVB-T MPEG2 Stereo in UK and Europe;with two languages occupying one of each of the L/R stereo channels if desired(this was going to happen with NICAM Digital Stereo in the UK with world cinema seasons on Channel 4 but this idea was binned and never used).