History of Indian TV Channels

The Ramayana and Mahabharata were the first major television series that were aired. These two serials notched up the world record in terms of viewership. By the end of 1980s, more and more people began to own television sets. Television programming had reached its saturation as there was an only one channel. Hence the government introduced another channel, which partly had national programming and partly regional. This channel was termed as DD 2 later DD Metro. Both channels were broadcast terrestrially.

In the year 1992, 5 new channels belonging to the Hong Kong based STAR TV provided a fresh breath to the Indian television. MTV, Star Plus, BBC, Prime Sports and STAR Chinese Channel were the 5 channels in those days. In south India the first private channel to be introduced was the Sun TV. Today it airs programmes in four different languages: Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. On the other hand, Zee TV was the first private owned Indian channel to be broadcasted in the country. A few years later CNN, Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel were launched for the audience. Star also introduced other channels like Star World, Star Sports, ESPN and Star Gold. Over the years, several regional Indian TV Channels flourished along with other Hindi channels and some English channels. By 2001, HBO and History Channel were the other international channels that entered India. By 2001-2003, more international channels such as Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, VH1, Disney, etc. came in the country.

In India television transmission started on an experimental basis in Delhi in 1959 and the commercial services commenced in1965.  The television services were expanded to Mumbai and Amritsar in 1972.  Seven more cities were covered by 1975 and sole service provider was Doordarshan.The first satellite based, live TV transmission using the INSAT 1B satellite took place with the live coverage of Independence Day celebrations on 15th August 1982. National telecasts as well as introduction of colour TV were launched in the year 1982 to coincide with Asian Games. There was rapid growth since then and today approximately half of all Indian households own a television. As of 2010, a total number of 515 channels are available in the country out of which 150 are pay channels. In 1992 the government liberalized the policies to allow foreign players which saw the entry of players like Star TV, MTv, HBO and BBC.

The total number of households in India now is 223 million. Out of this 134 million households have access to either cable TV or satellite TV.  20 million households are covered by DTH services and the balance households are provided services by cable TV. While the cable and satellite TV subscribers grow at 15%, DTH subscribers grow at 28% in India.  The urban TV penetration is 85%.

Cable TV

Cable TV was started in India during seventies mainly in metros. During this period, the TV services were provided only by Door Darshan and the customers were looking for variety of programmes. When the video cassette recorders were available freely in India, many enterprising individuals in metros started cable services from their apartment homes and garages, telecasting through cable network English and Hindi movies, music and game shows which were in great demand.  These cable TVs became very popular when CNN started telecasting of gulf war in 1990s.