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Sahara to launch news channel

Sahara group which launched Sahara TV three months ago is on a major expansion mode. At a recently held press conference, Subarata Roy, chairman of the Sahara group announced that they are embarking on a plan to start an academy of film and television arts which will be affiliated to a university of international repute. He, however did not disclose the university’s name as “negotiations are still on.”

Besides being a training institute, the academy which is to be set up in Mumbai at a cost of Rs.200 crores will include four air-conditioned studio floors, three audio studios and a studio exclusively devoted to animation, among other things. They are installed with a capacity to produce 20 feature films and 10,000 half-hour episodes of software annually. They are looking at generating a revenue of Rs 60 crore plus from this studio.

The group is also launching a news and current affairs channel which is slated to start by the end of this year. The main thrust of the channel according to Roy will be on India-centric news with the focus on local happenings, zonal wise. Sports, Bollywood, education, health, science and technology related news will be a regular feature. Roy sees the channel ultimately covering the entire world, in a similar way.
A state-of-the-art Media Club, which proposes to be a meeting ground for creative personalities, is also on the anvil.

As for its on air round-the-clock entertainment channel, Sahara TV, six new weekly programmes, a daily soap, films, regional as well as classic, interactive shows and plays are in the pipeline. “Our main aim is to develop high quality software which are not just technically superior but superior in content.”

However, the most important requirement of a channel is its networking. And Sahara TV, so far, has been unable to achieve a good distribution network though they claim to have a 60-70 per cent penetration level all over India. Even the audio\video quality of its programmes has not been upto the mark. “We are closely studying the ground networking and our focus in on broadband which will be a major technological advancement,” said Roy.

Talking about the quality, Roy agreed that initially they did have teething problems which included audio-visual imparity and lack of fixed point chart for programmes. He, however, claimed that things have changed and “the quality of transmission is better than any other channel.” “If at all there was any imparity it was because of digital interference by other channels,” he informed.

Chaya Unnikrishnan