The Hindu Business Line : New channel NDTV Imagine rollout in two months

New Delhi, Nov. 23 NDTV’s new general entertainment channel Imagine, to be launched in two months, will mark the entry of the news company into the big entertainment business. The network’s entertainment venture plans to follow it up with movies from the “NDTV Imagine” banner a year later.

The new television channel has gone back to what, NDTV Imagine CEO Mr Sameer Nair says, a general entertainment (GE) ought to be and hopes content will be “fresh yet familiar”. Programming has embraced everyone between the ages of 6 and 60. So the usual prime time soap, children’s adventure and mythological hero-based serials will come along with talent contest shows. It may not sound very different from what is already being offered by Star TV, where Mr Nair was once CEO, but he says they have “pushed the envelope.”

The channel is yet to announce shows that it is doing with production houses such as Endemol and Balaji Telefilms, the latter has an exclusivity clause with Star and will be producing weekend programming only.

A show hosted by filmmaker Karan Johar, whose Dharma productions has partnered in the venture will also be announced soon.

New entrants

Other new entrants into the general entertainment category such as 9X from the INX Group are expected to be joined by the yet-to-be-named Hindi GE channel from the Network 18 and Viacom joint venture.

“The GE category was the least cluttered of all the segments and it captures 30 -40 per cent of the television audience,” says Mr Nair. Advertisers are currently being shown a preview of NDTV Imagine so that they can make more informed choices, says Mr Nair.

He is also confident of achieving distribution targets of 90 per cent through the One Alliance distribution network that NDTV is a part of.