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The RTL Group, Europe’s leading entertainment network, will enter India’s television market by launching its first TV channel next week.
The Mumbai-based Hindi channel called “Big RTL Thrill” is a joint venture between the RTL Group and the Reliance Broadcast Network, entertainment arm of the Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group, German economic daily Handelsblatt reported today.
It is designed to cater to over seven million households in the Hindi-speaking belt, especially in the state of Uttar Pradesh.
The new channel, which starts its operation on November 5, can be received by cable or by satellite and its programmes are primarily targeted at an audience group of men between 15 and 44 years, the newspaper report said.
Big RTL Thrill is also the RTL Group’s first foray into the Asian television market, the newspaper quoted the group’s management board member Andreas Rudas as saying.
The company has plans to gradually expand the new channel’s footprints to other countries in the region, where Hindi is spoken, he said.
It took him two years to prepare for his company’s entry into the Indian market.
The new channel will show contents produced by the RTL Group’s subsidiaries such as Fremantle Media, Endemol and Red Bull. They include TV serials like “Alarm for Cobra 111” and “Baby Watch” with Pamela Anderson as well as various sporting events.
Fremantle Media has been engaged in content production in India for some time, but TV broadcasting in the country is an entirely new territory for his company, said Rudas in the report.
The RTL Group, which is 92 per cent owned by the media conglomerate Bertelsmann, has interests in 52 television channels and 29 radio stations in nine countries as well as content production in many parts of the world.
The television portfolio of Europe’s largest broadcaster includes RTL Television, Germany’s most popular TV channel.
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